As we enter the Great Rehire of 2022, employers must ask themselves how they can create an environment in which employees are truly satisfied with their jobs in order to retain this new talent. One major deciding factor will be the overall employee experience (EX) they encounter, right from the very start of the recruitment and onboarding process. This is a big reason why employee experience management programs need to top the list of priorities for organizations this year during this period of reshuffling.
Add to that the data behind the cost of turnover — replacing just one employee can cost between half to twice their salary — and the abysmal state of employee experience across industries, with research indicating that only about 58% of employees feel valued by their current employer and 20% of employees report not trusting their organization — there’s never been a stronger case for investing in employee experience.
The question is, what are some of the best practices for implementing effective employee experience initiatives?
What sets best-in-class employee experience programs that deliver results apart from the rest? Here are the fundamental steps organizations must take to not only capture the voice of the employee, but act on it by implementing changes that drive satisfaction.
Taking things a step further, the Medallia Institute and Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and CEO of the Josh Bersin Company, researched employee experience programs across more than 600 organizations to understand the link between strong employee experience practices and positive people outcomes like employee satisfaction and engagement, and found key elements that separate employee experience leaders from employee experience laggards.
For one, employee experience leaders capture timely data, using a diverse set of direct and indirect sources, monitoring community channels, using crowdsourcing software, analyzing call center calls, and surveying employees via SMS, video, digital, and other forums during their regular flow of work, such as immediately following an HR or IT transaction. In addition, leaders check in on how their employees are doing more often than employee experience laggards, and are 3.5X more likely to collect employee feedback on a monthly basis or even more frequently. This matters as laggards who check in with employees via fewer channels and gather their feedback less frequently risk making critical business decisions based on incomplete or outdated information, hampering them from achieving the true agility needed to thrive in today’s landscape of continuous change.
Technology is another differentiator between leaders and laggards. Nearly half (43%) of leaders say they use AI to automatically analyze employee feedback to get a clear picture of sentiment, emerging themes, and trending topics, compared to only 5% of laggards who report doing the same. AI can help organizations scale their listening programs to make sense of millions of data inputs from a range of sources in the moment, versus taking weeks or even months to manually analyze the data.
Having the right tools in place to capture and analyze employee feedback isn’t enough. To be truly effective, employers must create an environment in which employees feel safe enough to share their experiences, even when it comes to speaking up about difficult topics. When asked to self-report the degree to which they agree that they foster an environment in which employees are secure enough tell the truth, the Medallia Institute and Josh Bersin research found that EX leaders are much more likely to agree rating their agreement as a 3.37 out of 4 — compared with EX laggards who report a 2.06 out of 4. Similarly, we find that over half of EX leaders survey their workforce on topics related to diversity and inclusion in contrast to only a third of laggards.
It’s easy for employee experience to be relegated to the function of HR, and that’s often where it lives within laggard organizations. Nearly all (93%) of EX leaders, however, have a dedicated employee experience team, compared with only 59% of EX laggards. Beyond setting up an EX function, EX leaders recognize that employee experience initiatives need to be cross-functional efforts, inclusive of senior leaders, managers, HR, IT, facilities, and other relevant employee-facing groups.
Findings from the Medallia Institute and Josh Bersin also reveal the potential ROI of employee experience. The research indicates that EX leaders are more likely to report they’ve met or exceeded their financial targets and agree that they have high levels of customer satisfaction and retention, compared to laggards, and they’re 12X more likely than laggards to self-report 20% or more year-over-year revenue growth. EX is also a powerful shield against turnover, with experience leaders reporting 40% less employee churn compared to the competition.
Research from Gallup and the American Psychological Association aligns with these findings, drawing further links between employee engagement and stronger business outcomes, including lower absenteeism and turnover and higher productivity, sales, and creativity.
Organizations can take things a step further by pairing EX data, like employee attrition rates, sentiment, and engagement scores, and customer experience (CX) data, including NPS®, customer satisfaction, and customer retention, and be able to clearly see the impact of their EX programs on CX KPIs and overall business outcomes.
Melissa Arronte is employee experience solution principal at Medallia.