‍

Organizations everywhere are starting to focus on Employee Experience.
It's no secret that employee experience is important, but what does that mean for your business? We're here to help you figure it out.
Improving employee experience can seem daunting, but we're here to make it easy. We have the tools and resources you need to get started.
Continue reading to learn how to improve employee experience in your organization!

‍

There seems to be a sudden interest in Employee Experience lately. Organizations are coming up with various systems, tools, and processes to manage the employee experience.


So why the sudden interest?

‍

Is it that somehow organizations just woke up and realized that employees are actually essential to the well-being of an organization?

‍

Or is it that organizations are struggling with Revenue, Profit and Client Sat targets, and they realized that the employees level of engagement and connectedness to the organization and its Vision, Mission, and Goals is CRITICAL to achieving those targets?

‍

There is nothing like losing money to finally force action.


So, is the focus on Employee Experience genuine or a knee-jerk reaction to missing financial targets because they have tried the standard actions like focusing on Organization & Management Systems, Processes & Procedures, and Technology & Tools?

‍

Who knows. But if they are trying to improve the experience, its a win-win for everyone. The Organization, Its Customers, and the Employees.


Food for Thought: It makes you think. If the organizations are only now focusing on Employee Experience, what were they doing for decades?


Before we jump into it, let’s understand what is Employee Experience.


Many people and organizations believe that employee experience and employee experience management is the following:


  • Managing the experience of the employees from the moment they are recruited/onboarded to when they leave the organization
  • Holding hands and singing Kumbaya
  • Asking regularly how they are feeling via meetings, pulse surveys, etc
  • Creating bespoke experiences for them
  • Liking their pictures of kids, dogs, BBQs on social media and team chats
  • Creating psychologically safe environments for them to work in, based on whatever psychotherapy fad of the day is
  • Etc…

‍

For me, Employee Experience is really simple and starts with:


  • Leadership Systems: 1: Inspire & Motivate People, 2: Help People To Achieve Their Goals and Objectives, 3: Help People To Overcome Their Challenges, and 4: Steer People Through Difficult Change
  • Recruiting Phase: Ensuring you hire employees that have the skills, capabilities, and potential to execute the job they are being hired for and also grow in the organization.
  • OnBoarding Phase: Ensuring the employees go through robust training to ensure they understand their role, their clients, the industry they are in, and the organization they work for.
  • Management Disciplines: 1: Organization & Management Systems, 2: Processes & Procedures, 3: Technology & Tools, and 4: Mindsets & Behaviours
  • Management Systems:
  1. First Line Management Phase: Ensuring the FLMs are 1: Defining Roles & Responsibilities, 2: Building Processes & Procedures, 3: Providing the Technology & Tools to do their jobs, 4: Scheduling Meetings to receive and provide feedback, 5: Providing Reports & Measurements to track and trend performance, 6 - Analysing data to optimize performance, and 7: Identifying Continual Improvement opportunities.
  2. Upline Management & Governance Phase: Ensuring the senior leadership team develops and implements a clear set of rules and protocols that will ensure decisions are made efficiently and effectively across all levels of the organization.
  3. Operational Management Phase: Ensuring the organization's capacity to guarantee product uptime and availability. It guarantees that internal clients are able to conduct their job productively, as well the products and services are accessible for purchase by external clients.
  4. People Management (Employee Engagement, Enablement, and Empowerment): Ensuring s system is needed that not only strives to better understand how and why the employees are thinking and feeling a certain way but how those thoughts and feelings are translating into actions or actions. No Matter how many or innovative technology is, or how many processes have been written unless the employee's behaviour is understood and addressed, the Organization will always struggle with implementing change. And the risk will always be Inherent in day-to-day operations.

‍

‍

So what happens if you don’t have the systems in place? 


If your employees think and feel that they are:

‍

  • not appreciated,
  • respected,
  • have no development programs,
  • have no career paths,
  • aren't compensated adequately,
  • aren't trained properly,
  • aren't aware of corporate strategy,
  • aren't communicated to in regards to corporate changes,
  • aren't aware of corporate vision, mission, and goals,
  • etc...

‍

They are not going to care about the health of the organization.

‍

When this occurs, you will see an increase in failed changes, increase in sev 1 and 2 incidents, increase in problems, increase in MTTR rates, increase in downtimes, increase in attrition rates, decrease in customer satisfaction scores, decrease in revenue and profits, etc...


You will have employees making the following comments:


  • I don’t give a sh*t!
  • No matter what we do, nothing will change!
  • If we do good – it’s the same, if we do bad – it’s the same - and if we do nothing – it’s the same. So why do anything!
  • Lacking the enthusiasm to fix problems.
  • Motivation is decreasing each day.
  • Management is not caring about the employee to make them stay
  • Don’t want to leave, but not happy here
  • Etc...


And you will have employees going through the following experiences:


  • Stress.
  • Anxiety.
  • Panic Attacks.
  • Depression.
  • Feeling of Hopelessness.
  • Feeling of Isolation.
  • Runaway Thoughts.
  • Anger.
  • Rage.
  • Sadness.
  • Fear.
  • Lack of Energy.
  • Lethargic.
  • Body Aches.
  • Chest Pains.
  • Indigestion.
  • Gas.
  • Insomnia.
  • Audible Hallucinations.
  • Visual Hallucinations.
  • Headaches.
  • Eye Aches.
  • Itchiness.
  • Breathlessness.
  • Lack of Appetite.
  • Trust Issues


So if the employees think and feel the following way, what impact do you think will happen on your business results?


So how do businesses respond?


As expected, rather than focusing on the basics, they turn to AI, Data Science, Machine Learning, and anything else that is shiny.


Why do they do this?


It is far easier to replace and blame something you can touch and feel than to delve deeper to find the true root cause of issues. To stop the root cause analysis (RCA) at the technology layer and say, this hardware or this software is the root cause is far easier than spending additional time and effort in finding the true root cause.


Some companies are able to get beyond the technology layer and identify Process and Management layers as potential root causes. At this stage, they initiate transformation projects to revamp the enterprise. This involves spending millions to bring in Consultants who will guide and advise them. However, in many cases, these Consultants are university graduates or new hires that have no delivery experience and are billed out at exorbitant rates. Or as Consultants go, they will overcomplicate the work so they can stay for years.


Employee Experience is quite easy: Hire the right people. Training them properly. And Manage them effectively. 

‍

If you want to learn more about how to be an effective manager, pick up the e-book at: The Guiding Principles of Management: The 7 Essential First Line Management Systems - https://www.imadlodhi.com/product/the-guiding-principles-of-management-the-7-essential-first-line-management-systems


Subscribe To My Blog To Learn More: https://www.imadlodhi.com/subscribe