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On average, HR teams use 16 different tools to manage aspects of the employee experience, including recruiting, talent assessment, employee recognition, surveys, and more. If your organization is one of these, it’s time to have a serious conversation about why it needs an employee experience platform.
What is an employee experience platform?
An employee experience platform is a solution that supports all aspects of an organization’s employee experience in a single place. A good employee experience platform will support employee engagement, enable leaders, increase retention, and boost individual and company performance.
What does employee experience mean in today’s workplace?
Let’s take a minute to get on the same page with terminology. What do we mean when we talk about “employee experience”?
The term refers to employees’ total workplace experience (i.e., their perceptions, emotional and intellectual stimulation, and challenges) at every touchpoint in their lifecycle. It encompasses onboarding, career growth, workload, company culture, relationships with peers, managers, and leadership. (See WorkTango’s HR Glossary for more)
If you’re accustomed to thinking about customer experience (CX), that definition likely looks familiar.
As we explain in the Employee Experience Manifesto, though, employees give more of themselves to their jobs than ever before. In return, they desire—and deserve—a workplace that treats them like whole people. When your organization thoughtfully nurtures its employee experience, treating them like humans whose unique skills and talents can be cultivated to grow and shine, it’s great for your bottom line.
TL;DR: It’s a new age for the employee experience. The movement toward a more human mode of work has only accelerated in the post-COVID-19 work era. So, increasingly, organizations are looking for simple solutions that embrace the whole person—from recruiting to exit and from shining moments to those challenges that lead to growth.
What can an employee experience platform do for your organization?
Simplify and streamline
Josh Bersin reports in 2023 that “the average large company has 80+ HR tools and many global companies have twice that.” As anyone rolling out new HR programs can attest, people develop login fatigue quickly. That leads to overall lower tech adoption and use, not to mention security issues (Post-it covered in passwords, anyone?).
Keep it simple. By driving many components of the employee experience with a single employee experience platform, you improve the adoption and use of the tool you’re paying for, increase security, and bring elements like employee recognition or employee feedback to the forefront of people’s experience.
Bring all the pieces together strategically
The power behind the employee experience platform is that all of these elements work better together. Need proof? A recent Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey suggests that holistically treating engagement and employee success drives business value. In fact, 32% of respondents saw the disconnect between employee engagement and performance management systems as one of the greatest barriers to getting business value from their company’s investments in employee engagement.
So when you bring it all together, your people and your organization can thrive. The employee recognition you share naturally drives employee motivation and success. Employee surveys confirm actions are working and flag gaps and opportunities for improvement. When all these elements of the employee experience talk to each other, it changes the conversation. And that’s when work starts working.
Grant high-level visibility into employee success
It’s not enough to have all the pieces working together if you can’t see how they work. Employee experience platforms allow HR to see which teams are participating, excelling, or needing help.
Keep you connected, no matter where you’re working
Feeling connected is one of the major challenges in newly remote workplaces. But it doesn’t have to be. Emotionally strategic programs like Recognition & Rewards can happen from anywhere. And they bridge geographic and generational gaps to unite people.
(Bonus: Learn more about the power of connecting people in The Science of Employee Recognition & Rewards.)
Drive employee engagement
Gallup finds that companies with highly engaged employees experience 21% greater profitability, 17% greater productivity, and more. Which is to say, employee engagement counts. For a lot.
So, use an employee experience platform to drive employee engagement, no matter where your team members are working. Nonprofit Emmaus Homes did just that. With high turnover and a sense of disconnect across its 80 locations, Emmaus brought on the WorkTango Employee Experience Platform. After one year, its employees earned 1,800 bonuses for program participation, and their Glassdoor score increased by 21%.
Keep the culture alive, even for remote workforces
In the future of work, we may not have a water cooler. So we need new solutions to keep culture strong. Employee experience platforms create a centralized space where culture flourishes. Nominate team members for awards, rally your culture around employee recognition, and more — all in one space.
Bonus: The WorkTango Platform takes it even further with Incentives. The Incentives feature allows people to earn points for actions you want to support, such as attending a virtual lunch and learn, getting a check-up, presenting at an all-hands meeting, or whatever you choose that promotes your culture. See how it all comes together.
Act on employee feedback using frequent surveys
Does your organization engage employees and inspire success? A holistic employee experience platform lets you find out. And pinpoints where and how to improve. By using surveys and correlating people-analytics data in your employee experience platform, gaps and opportunities are clear. Insightful reports that analyze trends and identify key focus areas guide actions across all levels of your company.
Help up-level your leaders
An employee experience platform puts all the data and tools in leaders’ hands. That way, they can see who’s thriving on their teams. And it puts the data in your hands to see how they use those insights. So, this not only gives your managers the tools they need to succeed, but it also helps you identify who needs extra training.
