Enhance your employee's experience: a Post-COVID-19 approach

Before we go into the details of how employers can enhance their employee experience amid post-COVID-19 scenario at the global level, we need to know what employee experience itself is.

Employee Experience, often termed as EX, is the employee journey of the employee lifecycle with the employer. Moments that matter for human resources is the job adverts, their selection with your company, their working with you including their workspace, job conditions, workplace and company's culture, positive or negative employee experience(s), work life balance, performance review they get marked for; and up to the exit interviews. 

So, the EX, like CX-Customer Experience, is the journey throughout the lifetime in connection with workplace experiences. The days and nights, either sunny or rainy, the best or worst, all are the moments that are kept in safer custody of employee’s mental memory, whichever serves them right to time to recall any event consulting their - what it is called as - Employee Experience (EX).  

Specifically, after the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, business leaders are needed to try their utmost to keep their top talent as engaged employees providing a positive employee experience. Indeed now employees are treated as customers for organizations, thus employers try to keep customer satisfaction as one of their priorities for retention purposes, hence avoiding job switching by employees, employers curtailing recruitment heavy costs along with loss of talented workforce.

What are Eight Stages of Employee Life Cycle (8-ELC)

There are eight stages in an employee life cycle:

1. Recruitment: When employees are placed on the job through recruitment and selection 
2. On-boarding: Employee’s job placement (on-the-job) by HR team including orientation
3. Engagement: Tasks and Targets completions, along with keeping organizational performance high with enthusiasm and dedication
4. Performance: Here engaged employee performs well and up to the mark, considering her/his performance matters for the organization, hence they were/are worthy workforce
5. Retention: Growth and Development stages throughout the employee journey while serving the employer is called retention in the employee experience lifecycle
6. Exit: Ether retirement or any other way, thus this is a countable stage in ELC
7. Alumni: Employers are advised to celebrate the Alumni of Employees, this creates an encouraging environment for remaining employees
8. Employee Referral: The exiting employees may be given chance to refer to you their know contacts for considering employment with you, this step is considered as the 8th and important, like other stages, in the ELC. This stage gives leaving employees hope and connection with you even after leaving, and it may provide you the talent, thereby curtailing heavy recruitment costs.

How to enhance positive Employee Experience (P-EX) 

Following are the key points that if followed in total letter and spirit, would benefit your business by enhancing your employees’ positive experience:

Horizontal Communication and Vertical Communication - Chanel to administer: Horizontal communication should be made that is same level grades employees should communicate clearly to share job information and experiences.

Vertical communication may be given importance to as well, like with subordinates and supervisors.

A blend is much better for better EX, as encouraging the enhancement of horizontal channel (one like in organic cultures and designs of organizations consisting of both horizontal and vertical command communication and ease for communication– for example private sectors) with vertical people in the chain of command of organizational hierarchy even in mechanistic organizational design and culture (where there are strict rules like bureaucracy) would create a sense of involvement by the juniors into the senior level’s strategic positions, giving employees value gives them positive EX.  

Effective Onboarding: Efficient, and not deficient, orientation; and effective and not defective, on-boarding may solve the problem of negative employee experience. As the first impression of provision of positive EX by employers, employees must be given warm welcome and effective on-boarding communicating to their policies, procedures, rules, regulations, benefits, growth opportunities, and importantly your business’s mission and vision statements of purposes, etc. This makes them feel important to you. 

Job Conditions - Physical Environment: If not completely, but possibly conducive job conditions (like field jobs/shifts in factory environment/office work on high tech; etc.) do matter to the mental levels of your employees, hence creating either positive or negative employee experiences.

Mentorship programs – Peer mentoring: Ii is advised to keep in practice mentoring – both peer and supervisory – programs intact, so as to enhance employee experience. 

Regular Feedback Response-System Administration: Feedbacks are usually received, but important is to respond to feedback in a win-win way.

CTW – Culture-Tech-Workplace environment hub management: Culture-Technology-Workplace environment blended (like a connection hub) approach should be adopted as it is evident that it creates positive EX.

Customer relationship: Involve your employee in customer meetings to make relationship management a part of the employee experience. 

Strategic decision making: It is strongly suggested that employees for having positive experiences with you, should be involved on a certain admissible level in the strategic decision making process, their involvement and giving them the opportunity to be listen-to and/or suggestions-giving for the organizational progress would be a big deal for the employees make them feel very involved in the business profitability of yours.

Leadership: Top leadership should be available for employees to learn from and communication approach to them be made not difficult. This would create more leaders within your supervisory and that for your business too. 

Transparent cultural values management: Making transparency a hallmark of your organization for employees make them comfortable having a warm feeling of everything every job being justified, this incorporates within employees the positive experience. 

Being an active listener and available for employees: Your active listening to the concerns and suggestions by employees, making you available for them on time, make them feel connected with you, and as a result of this positive employee experience can be improvised.

What are the benefits of a positive employee experience?

Engaging Platform: Positive employee experience works as a tool for engaged workforce keeping and hence the employee performance gets enhanced resultantly organizational performance boosts up. 

Absenteeism lowering tool: Positive EX lessens absenteeism by involving employees being engaged and on the job present attending office most regularly.

Qualitative cum Quantitative output: Positive EX produces positive qualitative output because the employees are target oriented and benefit foreseeing in favor of themselves as well as the employer, due to their involvement at strategic levels, consequently producing both the quantity as well as the quality of work.

Better relationship management (Know your customer - KYC): If you give chance to your employees to participate in your customers’ meetings, surveys, and thereby decisions you take, your employees feel have a sense of ownership like you and that may result in better know-your-customer aptitude and enhance relationship management.

Positive Employees Experience as HR Retention tool: For your top talent to retain, you need to make sure the provision of employee positive experience for your workforce to be with you for a longer period of time.

How to improve the employee experience amid global pandemic? During and Post-COIVD-19 Consequence

Following are the keys to success in during and post-lockdown situation the globe is in:

Improvement in technology

Improvement in technology is a great deal for employees to work while stay connected virtually while living in lockdown situations and distant work-from-home 

Creation of online assistants

Online assistance by your techno experts to those who have techno-stress

Collective nature of accountability

Create an environment of collective accountability on all

Responsibility and Authority delegation

Do NOT only delegate responsibility without authority, but also give both at the same time to get better results and create at-will working talent

Employee physical health focused activities for wellbeing

Provide physical health activities like gym provision or running activities etc., when you are back in physical offices in post COVID-19 situation, this creates a healthy environment  

Improvement in an office ambiance

Improvement in office environment and ambiance, that is atmosphere, makes your employees feel better at work 

Employees first

Put employees first in every respect

Healthy Food

Healthy food intake for your employees makes them a wealthy workforce for you

Communication channels

Make communication channels easier, like in organic organizational culture and design

Growth and Career enhancement schemes introduction

Career growth enhancement programs retain your talent with you and keep them intact to your vision 

Training provision to Supervisors

Managers and supervisors need training for keeping their subordinates good performers, and that training of trainers is also necessary from time to time 

Employee feedback importance

Give importance to your employees’ feedback. By encouraging employees, they feel important and resultantly they are in possession of encouragement and a sense of ownership

Customer’s feedback sharing

Share customers’ feedback with employees. This tells them they are important for you

Retention interviews

Introduce and implement retention interviews so that managers know that what is current or near-future requirements of employees by employees, seen through the eyeglasses of employees. This would curtail exit interviews need, discouraging switching, hence lessening HR talent turnover