It’s the question on the working world’s lips: What is the employee experience? Let’s start with a simple definition.
Employee experience vs. employee engagement: What's the difference?
Employee experience and employee engagement have a well-defined relationship.
Employee engagement is the energy and effort employees bring to the job every day. And it's absolutely connected to the quality of the employee experience. The one arises in response to the other. Great employee engagement is what you get when you offer a great employee experience.
Engagement drives KPIs like retention, productivity, and profitability. And it's often where organizations start when they want to make changes in those outputs. The problem is that used in isolation, engagement initiatives don't often work. That's because engagement is a result of the employee experience, not a driver.
Need proof? Bersin Associates notes that companies are spending more than $1 billion each year on "engagement." But the number of engaged employees has stayed static (around 30%) for more than a decade.
Ultimately, the winning strategy is to look at the day-to-day activities that will lead to the results you want.
What makes employee experience important to business outcomes?
By considering the entire employee lifecycle and every element within it, you take a holistic approach to life at your organization. Onboarding to offboarding, people to technology, DE&I organizational culture, company policies, physical environment — all of it is part of the employee experience.
When all of those pieces are working harmoniously, the people in your organization goes from simply surviving to positively thriving.
Organizations want employees to be aligned and engaged. Employees want to be nurtured and inspired. So, what's the trick to achieving this balance, and creating an aligned, inspired experience?
Our research found four key areas to consider — and they may not be what you expect.
What are the four key areas of employee experience?
Behavioral science shows that people perform best when they have positive intrinsic, or internal, motivation. When employees get pleasure from doing their work, working is a reward. In other words, individuals and teams are most successful when they like their jobs.
Let's define each one.
- Connecting. The bonds between an employee and their manager, coworkers, and your organization’s mission and values.
- Performing. The employee’s clear understanding of what they need to do to succeed at their job.
- Being appreciated. The employee's sense that their work has value, and being consistently recognized and rewarded for their contributions.
- Growing. The learning opportunities, continuous feedback, and ongoing support for career development that an employee receives.
We're accustomed to thinking about customer experience, as something deeply rooted in human emotion and psychology, we need to think about employee experience that way too. Because even in this data-driven day and age, your employees are... human. And their experience should be, too.
But that doesn’t mean technology can't help.
How does technology support a human-centric employee experience?
As you idly browse the HR corners of the internet, you’ve likely stumbled across headlines like "Is 'Human' Disappearing from Human Resources?"
The answer, of course, is no. In fact, the goal of HR tech is to tap into the powers of technology — like instant connectivity, social sharing, and data tracking — to better serve the needs of the people who make up our organization.
Like the ability to connect with each other. To sync goals across teams and departments, and track their progress. To measure the impact they’re having on their organization, and the world.
If your performance management tech is removing the human from human resources, it may be time to reassess your technology and your strategy as a whole to move away from "performance management" to "employee success" and from technological tools to collaborative platform. Or at least, to rethink the way you’re using it.
How does an employee experience platform address all four EX areas?
WorkTango’s Employee Experience platform combines two comprehensive solutions – Recognition & Rewards and Surveys & Insights – to allow you to support the many pieces of the employee experience all in one place.
Recognition & Rewards
Having a recognition and rewards program means that the opportunity for peers or leaders to give real-time, meaningful recognition is never more than a few clicks away. Rewards are actually meaningful and reach every employee so the ROI is maximized. Use incentives to keep people motivated and to build in behaviors that support a thriving organizational culture.
Key areas of EX addressed: connecting, being appreciated
Check out our interactive Recognition & Rewards demo:
Surveys & Insights
A strategic employee survey program allows you to tune in to the voice of employees on any issue you choose — engagement, DE&I, quality of performance feedback, opportunities for growth, effectiveness of management. Slice and dice results by department, team, region, or any other designation. And with Constellation, WorkTango's AI-facilitated conversation tool, you can go beyond survey scores to understand the why behind the data — surfacing themes and insights that would take weeks to find manually. When employees see that leaders are listening and acting, their engagement and their employee experience are strengthened. They know the organization cares about them.
Key areas of EX addressed: performing, growing, connecting
Check out our interactive Surveys & Insights demo:
You only need one platform to pour into all four of the areas that employees say matter most in terms of employee experience. No running yourself ragged. No reinventing the wheel. The platform is intuitive, accessible, and it works.
Why is employee experience a priority right now?
With five generations in the workplace, an always-on culture, and a competitive talent market, the working world has changed. We're no longer a "get a paycheck" culture. People want more from their work than a salary. They want meaning, connection, appreciation, growth, and the opportunity to perform at their best. And they're increasingly less shy about asking for it.
Winning organizations want those same things, too. That’s why we’ve seen giants like Google, LinkedIn, Apple, and Adobe shift away from sporadic employee engagement programs to a more holistic approach that centers around the employee experience.
Jacob Morgan noted in his book The Employee Experience Advantage, that the focus on EX signals "the next evolution of the workplace."
Don’t let the moment pass you by.
Your next steps
At the end of the day, supporting a great employee experience is all about meeting employee needs. And they’ve told us what they want: connecting, growing, being appreciated, and performing at their highest.
Ready to see what a great employee experience looks like in practice? Explore how WorkTango helps mid-market HR teams improve EX or book a demo to see the platform live.
Your employees have told you what they want. WorkTango helps you deliver it.
