What is Employee Experience Management | Benefits and Best Practices

By Aayushi | Last Updated on June 30th, 2024 10:33 am

Employee experience management (EXM) focuses on creating a positive and engaging work environment for employees throughout their entire journey with a company. This includes everything from onboarding and development to recognition and exit interviews.

Customer service chatbots, powered by AI (Artificial Intelligence), are transforming how businesses interact with their customers. While directly unrelated to EXM, companies that prioritize a positive employee experience are more likely to see benefits in other areas, including customer service. Happy and engaged employees are more likely to provide excellent customer service, which can ultimately lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Also Read: Top 11 Employee Experience Software Solutions

What is Employee Experience Management?
Benefits of Employee Experience Management
5 Best Practices in Employee Experience Management
Conclusion

What is Employee Experience Management?

An Employee Experience includes whatever an employee sees, says, confronts, observes and learns in the workplace from the moment they are on-boarded till the time they leave the company. It is essential for a company to make this experience seamless and satisfactory for the greater good to the company in the form of increased employee productivity and employee retention. In simple words, employee experience management is the process of optimizing employee experience throughout their journey in the organization.

Employee Experience Management aims at improving employee experience at all stages such as hiring, onboarding, development, retention and exit. Providing incentives, regular performance reviews and appraisals, improving physical workplace conditions, maintaining up-to-date technology, enforcing good work relations etc. are some of the activities undertaken by an organization to create a positive employee experience.

The employee experience manager, or EX manager works closely with the human resource department to collectively decide on employee incentives and appraisals.

Benefits of Employee Experience Management

Employees are the backbone of any organization. They are valuable assets which should be retained through creating and maintaining a good working environment. A good employee experience leads to the creation of a positive image of the organization in the minds of employees and ultimately higher productivity, increased brand loyalty and increased reach through positive word of mouth. Let us look at some of the benefits of employee experience management and why it’s vital for the organization.

Breaks Down the Components of Employee Lifecycle

It’s important to bring into light the various problems an employee faces throughout their lifecycle such as inadequate training, poor work relations, improper work life balance, reduced motivation etc. It might be the case that an employee does not address these issues due to the fear of being judged. Employee experience management helps avoid such circumstances through the company being vigilant and quick in taking corrective action. Each step of the employee life cycle can be analyzed and all the pain points identified can be eradicated.

Increases Employee Motivation

Making employees feel heard and supported is of utmost importance in improving their workplace experience. If they are given a proper feedback mechanism to express their concerns and voice out their opinions, it would create a sense of belongingness in the company and make them increasingly motivated to work harder and efficiently to achieve the desired results. With increased motivation comes increased productivity and less employee turnover.

Improves Relations Between Employees and Management

No one wants to have poor relations with their peers and managers. It reduces overall workplace experience and motivation. Through employee experience management, a system of regular and smooth conversation between employees and managers is created which helps in gaining clarity of work flow, goals and expectations. It also creates a good work culture supported by understanding managers and hardworking employees and strengthens the bond between the two.

Reduced Employee Turnover

If the employee experience is satisfactory, they are less likely to leave the organization for reasons such as low motivation and improper work culture. With less employee turnover, a company saves a lot on costs of recruiting, on-boarding, training and development etc. The cost of keeping old employees is much less than hiring new ones, thus focusing on employee experience management is beneficial for employee retention as well.

Flexible Environment

Change is necessary in every organization. As circumstances change, various processes need to be moulded accordingly. Through employee experience management, an organisation can discover pain points in the employee lifecycle and make alterations in processes, or add new ones as the case may be. Thus, employee experience management also fosters creation of an environment that responds to necessary changes.

5 Best Practices in Employee Experience Management

By now, we know that Employee Experience Management has multiple plus points for both the employees and the organization. To achieve these, there are certain practices that can be followed. Here, I’ll cover those 5 best practices in employee experience management for you:

Obtain Employee Feedback

Continuous feedback from employees regarding their workplace experience is a great way to enhance the employee experience management processes. There is no better source of information regarding this than the employees themselves. Obtaining first-hand feedback helps identify positive and negative points in the employee lifecycle.

An organization can distribute feedback forms to put this into action or in a physical setting with a large workforce, a suggestion box can be put up. Another great way is to use HR chatbots or employee chatbots for quick and unbiased feedback delivery. These chatbots can be built according to an organization’s personalized requirements using Appy Pie’s Chatbot Builder.

Try Chatbot Builder

Clear Organizational Objectives

Objectives set should be easy to understand, measurable, realistic and reliable. These objectives should be clearly communicated to all involved in the organization to ensure there’s uniformity in the goals achieved.

If an employee is clear with what goals are to be achieved and how they are to be achieved, they would face less uncertainty in taking decisions and would be able to carry out their work in a smooth manner. This boosts employee morale and productivity. An organization can use a knowledge base software like Appy Pie’s knowledge base software for delivering all important notices and information like goals, policies, standards etc. to the employees.

Encourage Employee Training and Development

It’s easy to think that once employees are given on-the-job training in the start, they would be able to carry out all tasks without facing any roadblocks. However, this is not true. It’s essential to keep training employees on new technological advancements and other areas for their career development.

This can be achieved through creating learning portals, knowledge base softwares or introducing mentorship programs in the workplace. Through regular and effective training, employees become more skilled which adds to their career growth. This not only motivates them but also increases their productivity as they are able to carry out operations in the correct manner by applying the correct skills.

Make Information Easily Accessible

Things can be made much easier by a company for its employees if they make important information that guides an employee’s work, easily accessible to them. One way to do this is by using knowledge base softwares. It is also necessary to ensure that all employee queries are handled promptly and resolved properly for a smooth workflow to be maintained.

For this purpose, help desk softwares like Appy Pie’s Help Desk Software can be utilized to create a customized help desk for the employees. Tickets can be created for each employee query that arises and through the ticketing system, all of them can be attended to one by one. This way, employees can overcome the problems they face as and when they arise, leading to efficiency and effectiveness in their work.

Measure and Improve Employee Satisfaction

Change is necessary in every organization. As circumstances change, various processes need to be molded accordingly. Through employee experience management, an organization can discover pain points in the employee lifecycle and make alterations in processes, or add new ones as the case may be. Thus, employee experience management also fosters creation of an environment that responds to necessary changes.

Going further, a company can identify reasons for low satisfaction levels in certain areas and work to improve those by formulating strategies like incentives, improved work life balance, appraisals and so on. Thus, the process of employee experience management does not end at incorporating best practices, but also involves measuring their effectiveness and taking corrective action if required.

Conclusion

The main purpose of employee experience management is to create a seamless and positive work culture for all employees, be it a new hire or an old employee. Companies that contribute their time and efforts to optimize employee experiences are better off than most others, where employee retention and employee satisfaction is concerned. By adopting the above mentioned best practices, a company can make its workplace a happy place for the employees where they want to grow, learn and achieve greater goals for themselves as well as for the organization.

Aayushi