Use Employee Experience to re-imagine your business in 2021

Everyone recognises the importance of customer experience and how it impacts the success of their business. But how many businesses think about the significance of the employee experience and how that affects their organisation?

As a business designer, I have come across “progressive” employers who take pride in talking about employee “satisfaction” or even employee “engagement” (for the more progressive ones). Businesses prided themselves, and competed to provide a “cool” workplace which had (as they believed) taken care of the satisfaction/engagement requirements of their employees.

This was all good pre 2019. Last year was a watershed. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended workplace routines and destroyed norms. A large section of employees will continue to work from home for the foreseeable future. For the jobs where this is not possible there will be split shifts to comply with health and safety requirements. All such measures impact employee experience in a number of ways. And, amidst all the changes what a business is making in response to the pandemic, employee experience is conspicuous by its absence. Broadly, employee experience includes daily activity (what is it like to work somewhere), productivity (getting things done), values and culture (what makes work meaningful) and career (learning and development).

Employee experience goes far beyond making workplace safer and/or providing for remote working. Specifically, it is influenced by three things:

1. The physical environment in which an employee works

2. The tools and technologies provided to the employee, and

3. The commitment that an employer demonstrates towards the health and success of their employees

Include your employees in planning for remote working: While you can control the work environment in your premises, you can’t do the same in an employee’s home. Ask them. Engage with them. What would make a difference at their home to their work environment. Most often, it can be as simple as a better WiFi, a noise cancelling headphone or a piece of ergonomic furniture. When you include them in decision-making, your employees feel engaged. And cared for! It makes them care more deeply about their contributions to the business.

Powerful, user-friendly and collaborative technology is integral part of employee experience. As you focus on customer experience in their use of the tools you provide, you should also focus on the employee experience for the tools you have provided them for working remotely. It should facilitate remote working and the employee should not be battling with the tools (or the restrictions imposed) day in and out. By providing a workplace technology that exceeds the needs of your workforce, your business provides its commitment to making the lives of its employees easier. When you invest in your employees; they invest in you.

All (or should I say most of) your workplace practices and policies have gone stale. The sceptics who looked down upon “work from home” are surprised at how well it has worked. The success of the last 9+ months has led to many businesses trying this for longer than planned. The important thing to figure out is why it has succeeded in your case and how you can improvise it? Some might argue this is not the right time to try out new things. In fact, it is an ideal time. We shouldn’t be talking just about how to get people back to the office, or just about how to make work-from-home productive. We should be rethinking how to do the work and involving employees in the process. Study the improvisations and work-arounds your employees have been using. What’s working for them? For you? What should be scaled up?

For many businesses, the last 9+ months have exposed their internal weaknesses - how silos, boundaries and hierarchies come in the way of getting work done. Before the pandemic is was possible to cover up poor processes or lack of knowledge sharing by running down the hall to get the answer to a question. Something which was exponentially difficult in the emote working environment. We have been using customer journey maps to assess customer experience. Now is the time to do the same for your employees. Create employee journey maps to chart the steps an employee takes to get the work down: how is the work assigned; which tools and resources are utilised; how/when is it handed off. Enhance the employee experience by making sure the employees not only have the right tools and equipment, but also the right level of empowerment and the right access to colleagues.

And while you are engaging with your employees, please remember not to do the old-fashioned way of long questionnaires. There are plenty of tools available which gives you instant results which are transparent to your employees as well as you. If you are worried about how to steer your business in 2021, so are your employees. There’s never a better time that today to engage with them and co-create a future model which is pandemic proof and works in the best interest for you and your employees as you have jointly created it.