Most leaders know by now that improving employee experience (EX) is really, really important. But organizations are often on the back foot about enhancing employee experience. They tend to ignore it while pursuing more short-term goals. After all, there’s always something more urgent to focus on.
From improving profits to attracting better talent, a better employee experience influences every aspect of your company. And now, there’s enough data to back that up. It turns out that whether your priority is customer satisfaction, increasing profits or just retaining talent, it all comes down to a great EX.
Don’t take our word for it, though. We’ll walk you through 15 reasons why you need to prioritize improving employee experience.
Before we get into that, though, let’s begin by understanding what we mean by employee experience.
What is meant by employee experience?
The term is pretty much self-explanatory. Employee experience is the umbrella term for everything that a person encounters during their time at an organization.
Employee experience is not entirely in control of the company. After all, we are all responsible to some degree for our experiences. But organizations constantly make choices about how to craft their employee experience. These choices can be as small as the color of the office walls or as significant as the company’s leave policy.
A positive employee experience benefits every firm in many ways. Here are fifteen reasons why it matters.
15 reasons why improving employee experience matters
- Ease your recruiting efforts
- Boost employee engagement
- Better employee experience, more productivity
- Lower employee turnover
- Superior customer experience
- Increased revenue
- Protection against talent shortages
- A stellar Glassdoor profile
- A place millennials want to work for
- Positive company image
- Tight-knit teams
- Boost creativity
- Greater incentive than money
- Fewer sick days
- Outperforming your competitors
1. Ease your recruiting efforts
A company is only as good as its employees, which is why conscious hiring is so important. Attracting talented people, though, is not just about the hiring process. How your current employees feel at work matters a whole lot.
We all know companies that have a reputation for treating employees well. We also know of companies who treat their employees really badly. Why do we know? Because word spreads. Talented people will only want to join your organization if they hear good things about working there.
By improving employee experience, you’re indirectly working towards making your hiring process easier and more effective. Employees who love their jobs don’t keep that fact to themselves. If you ensure that your employees are satisfied, they will act as your hiring ambassadors.
2. Boost employee engagement
It might seem obvious that employee engagement is dependent on employee experience, but it’s not. When making managerial decisions, leaders don’t imagine that giving employees more benefits would mean better work quality. It’s often the opposite.
The notion of improving employee experience is that it is good to care for your employees. The business case for it is not taken seriously. The fact, though, is that employee engagement goes up when we focus on improving employee experience. When your employees are not engaged, they do the bare minimum and the company as a whole suffers. You may have hired talented workers, but if you can’t ensure engagement, then you’re not pushing them to explore their potential.
If you want your organization to do great work, you have to make sure your employees are satisfied. It’s the only way to retain great people and have them do great work.
To begin with, you’ll need an employee engagement survey software like SurveySparrow to create employee satisfaction and employee engagement surveys. Here’s an employee survey created using SurveySparrow.
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3. Better employee experience, more productivity
When it comes to productivity, organizations often make the mistake of going the insecure route. They restrict paid leaves, mandate a set number of hours, and try to control their employees as far as possible. The assumption is that if employees are not coerced to work more, they won’t.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. If an employee doesn’t want to work more, no number of rules will make sure that they do. The key to increased productivity is to make your employees want to work for your organization. That’s not something that will happen if they feel controlled.
When employees notice that the organization cares for them, they give that care back. Improving employee experience means having your employees be willing to go above and beyond for you. Satisfied employees do better, more focused work. They also aren’t afraid of putting in the extra hours when needed.
4. Lower employee turnover
Employee turnover is a serious problem for companies. According to Gallup, each time an employee leaves, replacing them can cost an organization up to twice their annual salary. Voluntary turnover also harms team morale and reduces the productivity of those left behind. The costs add up.
Something we don’t talk about enough is that companies have a huge role to play in their employee turnover. A shocking 52% of employees who left said that their organization could have done something to retain them.
Retaining employees isn’t black magic. It just takes putting in some effort into improving employee experience. When companies aren’t willing to do that, they pay heavily for it. If replacing employees is so costly, why not invest a fraction of that money into trying to retain them? Both financially and for the sake of team morale, prioritizing employee experience is a no brainer.
5. Superior customer experience
Companies may not prioritize employee experience, but every business that wants to be profitable cares about their customers. But here’s the catch – your customers will only be satisfied if your employees are. After all, for the customer, the employee is the face of your organization.
Great customer experience is delivered when employees care about the customer as much as the business does. The larger goals of the business must motivate employees to treat customers well. That will only happen if employees care, and they will only care if they are happy.
When you prioritize improving employee experience, you are also ensuring that your customers feel satisfied. When an organization neglects its people, that neglect is carried forward to its customers. That’s why employee experience is the new customer experience.
6. Increased revenue
If you think the reasons to improve employee experience till now have been too indirect, we’ve got you covered. As far as business incentives go, increasing your profits is as direct as you can get. It’s a good thing employee engagement helps you achieve exactly that.
According to Harvard Business Review, companies that take employee experience seriously earn double the amount of profit when compared to ones that don’t. That’s not a statistic anyone could have seen coming, but it’s true. The case for prioritizing employee experience is now clearer than ever. Employee satisfaction leads to more profits.
One might wonder why employee experience makes such a stark difference. But on second thought, it’s pretty obvious. Employees are really the backbone of your organization. Satisfied employees create a more efficient organization that’s focused on its goals. It’s as simple as that.
7. Protection against talent shortages
This is not a problem for more general roles for which candidates are easily available. But a lot of industries frequently face talent shortages. Currently, data science is a field with major talent shortages. If your industry faces this challenge, then you have all the more reason to take employee experience seriously.
Like we’ve said above, improving employee experience is key to retaining employees and reducing turnover. For companies that have sought-after employees, this is all the more true. Your employees know that there is a market out there for them. That’s why ensuring employee satisfaction should be your top priority.
Companies in industries with talent shortages simply can’t afford to ignore employee experience. Otherwise, you will find yourself spending exponentially more in finding replacements, and you will also probably have to pay them more. Ensuring that your employees are satisfied is how to avoid all of that hassle.
8. A stellar Glassdoor profile
It’s 2021. There is no candidate who doesn’t Google a prospective company beforehand, and what Glassdoor has to say about them. You might think that you have no control over that, but you would be wrong. If you focus on employee experience, your glassdoor reviews will reflect that.
A good Glassdoor profile helps you attract top talent. That is obvious. But it also helps employees who are already working for you. A reputation for caring for your employees is a tremendously valuable thing. When word goes around, your employees will also feel proud and lucky to be part of your organization.
Gone are the days when what happened within a company stayed in the company. With Glassdoor and other social media sites, everything is out there. And if it’s out there, it’s well worth the effort to make sure it’s all good. That is why improving employee experience can no longer be ignored.
9. A place millennials want to work for
Whether you like it or not, millennials have entered the workforce and will soon be in leading positions. Companies need to adapt to cater to the needs of this new generation. As it turns out, millennials care about employee experience—a lot.
According to a LinkedIn survey, 70% of professionals in the U.S today would not work at a leading company if they had to tolerate a bad work culture. This shift has clearly happened since millennials came in with a new set of expectations.
Employees today are not attracted just by high salaries. They care deeply about how they are treated at work. Ensuring a good employee experience means attracting and keeping talented millennial employees.
10. Positive company image
There’s a reason that Amazon has been getting so much flak lately. The company has earned itself a reputation for bad employee experience, at least at the lowest levels. A single-minded focus on productivity has contributed to its negative image.
Amazon is hardly a failure story. There’s no disputing that it’s a successful company. But it now has to face the problems that come with a bad reputation. Ignoring employee experience has contributed in no small way to that.
Companies come across as positive when they have happy employees. If horror stories come out of your company about how you treat employees, then that’s how customers will feel about your brand. Improving employee experience goes a long way in managing your company’s reputation.
11. Tight-knit teams
The benefits of teamwork have been known to us for a long time now. Organizations that work together can achieve great things. But teamwork is not something that just happens. It has to be facilitated. In that endeavor, employee experience can be key.
High employee retention is a strong indicator of a powerful employee brand 🔥 When you have disengaged employees looking elsewhere to fulfill their need to grow, it costs the company in recruiting time and productivity. #EmployeeEngagement pic.twitter.com/ZxUHN48w3Y
— Hirebook Hero 🦸♀️ (@hirebookcom) November 23, 2020
Teamwork requires employees to be energetic and involved in a shared goal. Employees who are not driven negatively impact the morale of the whole team. Disinterested employees are also more likely to be withdrawn and do things by themselves. That’s not good for the employee or the organization.
Improving employee experience leads to more driven employees who work well in teams. When employees are engaged, they are willing to ask for help and even help with their coworkers’ challenges. For companies, that’s a huge asset.
12. Boost creativity
No matter which industry you work in, you depend heavily on creativity. From making a sales pitch to coming up with solutions for clients, creativity is highly sought after. But creativity cannot just be bought. You need to create the environment to let it bloom.
Employees only come up with creative solutions when they are engaged. If they care about your organization’s goals, they will be able to respond to challenges creatively. For this, employee satisfaction is crucial. Disgruntled or demotivated employees never take the initiative to be creative in their work.
When you prioritize improving employee experience, you indirectly facilitate creativity. Happier employees are more creative and put in more effort into their work.
13. Greater incentive than money
There may have been a time when employee experience came down to paying them enough. Or maybe we were wrong then as well. But when it comes to right now, employees need way more than financial incentives to keep them happy.
We’ve already covered the fact that we are more productive, collaborative, and creative when we’re happy. But employee satisfaction isn’t limited to finances anymore. A study by economists at the University of Warwick found that companies that invest in employee experience tend to generate happy workers. If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s supported by evidence now.
There is a range of benefits organizations can reap from happy employees. It turns out that all it takes is investing in improving employee experience. It’s cheap, it’s effective, and it’s a win-win for both employees and organizations.
14. Fewer sick days
Earlier in this post, we talked about companies restricting leaves to improve productivity. It turns out that the best way to improve productivity is to ensure employee satisfaction. This is true in more ways than one.
Not only are happy employees more productive when they’re at work, but they’re also at work a lot more. Research shows that unhappy employees on average, took 15 more sick days in a year than happy employees. It’s true – happy employees show up to work more often.
Investing in improving employee experience does not just lead to more productive employees. It’s also an investment in happier, healthier employees.
15. Outperforming your competitors
Companies spend a lot of resources on finding and honing their competitive edge. After all, if you don’t have a few tricks up your sleeve, you can easily be replaced. It’s a good thing employee experience is one of them.
Research shows that companies with engaged employees outperform their competitors by 200%. Such statistics concretely show that the impact of improving employee experience is not just ‘a feeling’. It shows concrete results and can benefit your company’s numbers tremendously.
Employee satisfaction is a powerful competitive edge. Skilled workers who have a choice between you or your competitors will be more likely to pick you. When it comes to outperforming competitors, a better workforce is pretty much the best asset you can have.
Wrapping Up
That’s it, folks. We’ve laid out 15 different reasons why you should invest in improving employee experience.
These reasons cover pretty much every aspect of your organization. We’ve seen how employee experience impacts everything, from your customer experience to your profitability. It’s the one thing you can do to give an overall boost to your business.
The first step to improving employee experience is by getting feedback from employee surveys. SurveySparrow has surveys for every stage of your employee lifecycle from onboarding to exit, as well as 360 survey software for performance reviews. You can create a free account to get unrestricted access to all of our features for 14 days.
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