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  • Is there a reason why different organisations compete so severely to be rated best employer by the people working for them?
  • Is Employer Branding important? Why?
  • What makes a candidate apply for a position at a particular company and not another?
  • How an employee decides to refer a friend for a job at the company they are currently working or used to be working?

The answer of all of these questions is very simple – the quality of the Employee Experience at a certain organisation. The better it is, the more successful the Employer Branding becomes, which in simple terms means the employer’s reputation and image become flawless. A highly rated company attracts more bright talent, which in turn increases efficiency and ultimately leads to business growth.

bravoSURVEYS is the tool to help you understand the quality of your Employee Experience and guide you through the creation and establishment of successful strategies of employee engagement, retention and efficiency.

Employee engagement vs employee experience

The common definition of Employee Engagements speaks about it as a workplace approach, ultimately leading to the optimal conditions in an organisation, in which employees are motivated, committed and happy to give their best for the company’s development and growth.

bravoSURVEYS adds a different, more personalised to each business meaning of that term. Today’s job market is highly competitive on both sides. This means that not only employers are looking for the most skillful and knowledgeable candidates, but also individuals are looking for the best employer. The power of the workforce over your business is just as significant as the one of the customers. Unsatisfied or disengaged employee can decide to walk away at any point, putting your organisation in an undesirable position. This is exactly the reason why it is essential for you as an employer to find out what do your staff value in a job and address it appropriately. bravoSURVEYS can help you realise what do your employees really care about. Most often it is not just the money.

Another way in which our survey software benefits your organisation is by assisting you in finding ways to empower the people who work for you. It is a crucial part of Employee Engagement, because a member of staff who is allowed to participate in the decision-making process to a certain extend or is given confidence about their authority in the company builds a stronger bond with the organisation and its values and goals. bravoSURVEYS provides you with the tools to treat your employees like you do with your customers. Customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction are equally vital segments of the success of your business.

Employee experience – a direct tie to employee engagement

In the recent year many review websites have emerged and become popular, due to the fact they give a platform to employees to voice their opinion about their current or previous workplace and share their experience there with other jobseekers. As much as this is great if you have fantastic employee engagement levels, it can also turn out to be terrible if you have some unhappy members of staff, whose attitudes and feelings you missed to pick up on time. Why risk your business reputation when you can give your employees the opportunity to talk about their needs and wants and likes and dislikes in the workplace? bravoSURVEYS is designed to do exactly that by distributing useful and friendly surveys to workers in a confidential and safe environment, away from the public eyes.

A positive Employee Experience is the very foundation of a high level Employee Engagement. On the other hand, negative employee experience serves as a learning tool for the company management to change certain things and make improvements on the technology, physical environment and space, and the culture of the company itself. An employer who wants to be listed among the best, would strive to provide all favourable conditions to inspire more talented professionals to join.

The power of employee experience

In order to see the outcomes of Employee Experience there are a number of activities and processes that need to be performed on daily basis from different departments in an organisation. For example, the Leadership and Management of the company have to monitor and analyse employee behaviours and actions. In addition, the HR department should adopt workplace practices, which encourage positive co-worker relationships, trust in the organisation, meaningful career progression, recognition and appraisal, empowerment, freedom of expressing one’s voice in the company, and good work-life balance.

When all these are in place, the Employee Experience will be measured by 5 major components:

  • Belonging – Does your employee feel part of the team, the department or the organisation?
  • Purpose – Does your employee understand why their work matters to the company?
  • Achievement – Does your employee feel accomplished when they have completed all of their work within deadline and in good quality?
  • Happiness – Is your employee happy to come to work every day?
  • Vigour – Does your employee feel excited, energised and full of enthusiasm at their workplace?

Positive answers to these 5 questions will bring higher level of quality work performance, discretionary effort and retention, which are the outcomes of your Employee Experience. Respectively, negative answers will lead to negative outcomes.

How to create a positive employee experience?

Times are changing and so are the priorities and values of the working professionals. More and more employees nowadays are more interested in their purpose in the workplace and how much their contribution is valued, rather than the salary figure. Of course, everyone would like a good remuneration for their time and efforts, but the opportunity for development and growth in a company, as well as an inspiring and motivating manager, who comes across as a coach instead of a dictator, are certainly job aspects that have a lot of weight in the decision of what organisation individuals want to work for. The mindset of workers is now shifting from one set of values to another:

  • My salary -> My purpose
  • My satisfaction -> My development
  • My boss -> My coach
  • My annual review -> My ongoing conversations
  • My weakness -> My strengths
  • My job -> My life

The leaders of an organisation are those who play a critical role into the Employee Experience. They create the jobs, as well as the future opportunities for their staff. An outstanding employer can identify a problem within the way their organisation treats the employees and implement changes to respond to that issue and eventually have a positive Employee Experience as a result.

Employee experience influencers

Surely investment is vital for achieving the desired results. There are 5 areas in the workplace that are major influencers of Employee Experience and every good employer should be paying special attention to all of them.

Corporate learning and development

Several new research reports, including the one done by Gallup, show that the new generation workers, and more specifically, the millennials see available training and development opportunities in the workplace as part of the benefits package.

Employees become more attached to the company when it is evident that the organisation is spending time and resources to provide training to the staff that is in relation to their interest and potential career progression. Making access to such development opportunities easy for everyone increases even more the satisfaction of the working individual and their motivation to do better for the sake of the company’s growth.

Two-way ongoing conversations

It is not only in the interest of the employee to have constant engaging conversations with the leadership about the workplace and scope of the work. In fact, this two-way regular communication benefits the employer a great deal. This way, a manager or a business owner can hear constant and current feedback from the employers and therefore react quickly if there’s an issue that needs to be addressed. It is much more effective than annual performance reviews and brings more positive results in the Employee Experience.

Technology standards

If your employees are generally young people, before the age of 50, they would have high expectations of the technology that’s put in place in the organisation and mainly in and around their desk. Most of these people are tech savvy and used to dealing with digital devices all the time. They would expect the same from the company they are working for.

Investing in the proper and up-to-date technology will not only improve your Employee Experience, but it will also increase the overall productivity. A fantastic way to save time and make optimal use of all the talent in your organisation is by introducing collaboration tools, which teams of employees use on various projects or day-to-day tasks. Cloud-based applications and storage give you a peace of mind that an important file won’t be lost if there’s a technical fault in one or more computers. Not to mention all the time you could free up for your employees by introducing automation for certain processes. They could use that time for development or brainstorming, ultimately leading to innovation in the business.

Culture, vision and employer brand

Employees want to work for organisations that share their personal core values and have a spotless reputation. For this to be achieved, there has to be clear and continuous communication between the main leadership and all staff, and transparency to show that the employer is truly acting on their company values. Employees must feel included in all processes that affect the representation of the organisation’s vision and culture.

Agile workplace

The modern world is extremely fast-paced. Everyone’s life is incredibly busy and this means a good workplace must be agile and flexible to accommodate the needs of its employees. Making your systems accessible at any time, from any device and location, and introducing self-managed learning courses as part of training and development programmes, will make your employees happier and less stress, resulting in them having a positive Employee Experience.

The solution is available

Your Employee Engagement will be highly influenced by the Employee Experience, but the great news is you can be in control of both by using bravoSURVEYS.

Thanks to the powerful features of bravoSURVEYS you can create surveys to find out and analyse the current state of your Employee Experience. The questions will be grouped into the 5 main components we listed above (belonging, purpose, achievement, happiness, vigour) to help you measure your outcomes easily.

Use our software to create outstanding experiences right from the interview to the farewell party. There are automated employee surveys for every work cycle milestone, designed to keep in touch with the moods and feelings of your employees at any stage of their stay in your organisation.

With bravoSURVEYS you can create opportunities for reflection and feedback at every employee milestone. This is the way to encourage meaningful one-on-one conversations with value to both the employee and the employer.

bravoSURVEYS helps you understand the journey. Find out why people want to join your organisation and what are their triggers for leaving. Explore and compare perspectives from different demographics and identify arising issues in need of attention.

Collecting data and analysing it to create effective strategies has never been easier with bravoSURVEYS. You can now find out how your organisation attracts, motivates, develops and retains staff. Your findings can be linked to data of employee performance and retention by departments, and by different time scale, such as from a month to a year.

When your employees are more satisfied, they decide to stay longer at your company and put more efforts to increase productivity and provide better customer service. If you put the same effort for Employee Experience as you do for Customer Experience, your organisation will enjoy a thriving and effective work environment, directly and positively affecting the growth of your business.

Øyvind's avatar
Øyvind Forsbak
CTO
As CTO and co-founder of Orient Software, Øyvind Forsbak oversees all of our organization’s technical matters. Since Orient Software's founding in 2005, Øyvind has guided the company's choices of technology to become a world class developer in .NET and modern JavaScript frameworks.
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