Never underestimate how influential your employee-facing customers are. In fact, the more engaged, productive, experienced and valued they feel, the better their service and the more your company will actually make. So what can you do to improve your employee experience and ensure your employees are bringing their best selves into work with them each day? Here are some ways.
Why employee experience matters
As lockdown restrictions are lifting, and things are returning to normal, we are starting to really see the effects that Covid had on our workforce and how things have really changed. Particularly with people and how they engage with their places of work. Now more than ever it is vital to get staff to engage with the business, really understand how their needs have changed and find innovative ways to meet them in the middle. Businesses are now understanding that they don't need to drive their employees to burn out in order to achieve, and actually, there are better ways to invest in their people in order to inspire the best in them. This is not an area solely led by HR, but rather something that needs to be embraced by all the leaders in the business in order to ensure that the culture is authentically sound, from top to bottom.
Improving your onboarding experience
Your onboarding process is an important step in orientating new recruits to what your company stands for and how they will contribute to the bigger picture. But actually, this process begins way before the staff member has been employed by your business and rather begins with the way your company is positioned in the market. When done well, this will draw recruits who are better suited to your brand values and who will authentically embrace what your company stands for.
Once you have selected your ideal candidates, there are ways to create cohorts for new hires to engage with the company culture from the beginning of their employment. This can include mentorships, team building activities as well as coaching opportunities. It is also important not to see onboarding as a quick 1-2 week process. Rather, view it as a year-long initiative that helps new recruits become part of the company culture, invest in the brand strategy and grow into their roles.
Increased personalisation
The more personalised the experience, the better your chances of improving the employee experience. The companies that are really changing the game here are the ones that are focussing on the human side of their workforce. Rooted in the understanding that employees are human beings with ambitions to self actualize. This intercepts with your employee engagement in important ways: Like helping them discover a sense of self-worth to achieve their potential. By providing support from management through individual goal settings and coaching as well as offering an open door policy. It is also important to build a sense of community in the spirit of inclusion and staying core to the company’s vision and mission. As well as ensuring there is room to grow which requires companies to offer opportunities for learning. Finally, it is essential that there is trust in the leadership which needs to remain transparent and focussed.
The bottom line
More and more business owners are seeing that when your workforce is engaged, they exhibit far greater well-being and when this is done well, staff perform more efficiently, directly impacting the bottom line. In this way, happy employees result in commercial success. Improving your employee engagement strategy may require some investment in resources, training, coaching and other programs to ensure growth. But this is a small price to pay for what can translate into a high performing workforce, increased job satisfaction and a much healthier bottom line.
To fund your next employee engagement strategy, contact Merchant Capital and fund your business in the next 48 hours.
