Your employee experience initiatives might sound good on paper, but if you're seeing results like low employee sentiment or high voluntary attrition, evaluate where program consolidation and new initiatives are needed. There's an opportunity to hone your strategy.
New hires start excited because of a strong onboarding experience to adapt to the new workplace. But over time, you don't see participation in your mentorship programs. Your team had a well-being series but it was cancelled due to low attendance and you never tried it again with a different strategy.
Much like any business strategy whether it’s marketing or financial planning, a tactical approach with employee engagement takes time. It’s about gathering data, like employee feedback, and adapting as needed.
What does an effective employee experience truly look like?
Strong employee experience creates an environment where your people can thrive. There’s a reason employee experience impacts 49% of job satisfaction. It creates more connected teams, attracts new hires and retains great people.
An effective employee experience program resonates with your workforce. Programs often fall through when they lack strategy or don't adapt to their people's needs. For instance, “career development” is consistently the number one reason many employees switch jobs.
Managers also influence 70% of a team's engagement. Leadership development creates more resilient higher-ups who can navigate change, communicate effectively and use tools like recognition to motivate team members. Strong leadership retains talent and also builds employer trust.
It’s a great basis for team pride, also known as employer branding, which can retain talent—in fact, 75% of job seekers review company reputation before applying.
Effective employee experience goes beyond serving one need. Instead, organizations should look to create a more connected culture with initiatives that work together to nurture its people, leadership and brand.
As organizations continue to expand globally, in terms of customers and hires, strong employee experience is a need, not a nice-to-have. So ask yourself: Is your employee experience serving your goals and your people?
Prioritize an employee-centric approach
Even the best programs and technology are useless without engaged, empowered people. Gather employee feedback using surveys or focus groups to get information from the source. This will help your team identify gaps between leadership intent and employee perception.
Let team members know how you'll use their information. More importantly, share what actions you'll take with the final data. This centers your strategy around your employees' needs and builds employee trust.
Lead with a purpose-driven strategy
Your programs should align with your business goals and company culture. It needs to answer, "Why do we need this program? What do we want to achieve?"
For your employee engagement program to be a success, understanding your "why" can help you plan. As a bonus, it helps you engage leadership too.
For example, employee recognition is a great motivator. Along with building engagement and pride at work, you increase productivity. Use recognition to drive business results like closed customer tickets or higher CSAT scores.
Define success metrics
With any strategic planning, you need clear goals and a way to measure and work towards them. You can use an employee engagement metric like eNPS or number of recognitions. This could also be participation at an event or even voluntary attrition.
It depends on your business and culture goals, but make sure you have a target you're working towards. Even if you want to improve morale, define what success looks like: is that more peer-to-peer recognition? High percentage of sentiment feedback?
Related: 3 metrics to track employee engagement
Integrate technology
App integrations are an easy way for your employee programs to connect where your people are. For instance, apps like Slack or Teams seamlessly integrate with our employee engagement platform. It makes it easier to recognize or receive notifications.
Integrating your programs with other tools helps teams avoid "technology overload." From recognition and rewards, wellness or team-building communications, a one-stop platform has everything your employees need in one dashboard, promoting adoption and participation.
Consistently send communications
Clearly communicate your employee engagement strategy on an ongoing basis, not just during onboarding. Employees should know how to access new tools like recognition. Leadership should know why engaging their teams more with new training can help sales.
Your employee engagement program is a living entity. Monitor according to your goals but also take time to consistently re-evaluate and improve your strategy.
ITA Group works with clients to assess employee engagement on a quarterly basis. Reviewing metrics regularly opens opportunities to see what’s working and what needs to be adapted.
Bonus: Stay focused
Limit your employee engagement initiatives to a few highly effective programs. This means you can invest more in the programs that your team truly wants. That might be rewards and recognition, training or mentorship programs. It depends on your employees' needs.
4 steps for evaluating and streamlining your engagement program
1. Identify signs of disconnected programs
This might be low participation rates or recognition overload (employees disengaging from excessive or impersonal rewards). Do employees have a seamless experience across different engagement initiatives? Are leaders and managers equipped with insights to support engagement effectively?
2. Gather and analyze employee feedback
How do these results compare to last time? How and when do your employees want to be recognized? What other initiatives appeal to their wants and needs?
Review retention rates, performance metrics or peer-to-peer recognition rates to learn more. Check out feedback from one-on-one interviews. Review what's meaningful to your program's purpose and goals.
4. Optimize your program with a clear, cohesive strategy
Use the information you gathered from employees, managers, and data. This will help you refine your strategy. Remember you're going in with an idea, seeing how people respond, and modifying to their needs and your goals.
Evaluate your employee experience
Use our free 10-minute assessment to help reflect on the current state of your employee experience. Once complete, you’ll receive a curated toolkit with resources and guides to help you take your engagement programming to the next level.
Take our interactive assessment to see how aligned your employee engagement programs truly are.