Expressed opinions Entrepreneur Contributors are their own.
For most companies, future paths are determined by the boardroom: this is where all the important programs begin. In my experience, boards are driven by people with deep wells of success and unique insights and focus on building a culture that leads to success. In other words, if you want to know what keeps corporate leaders awake at night, pay attention to what happens to the board. At the moment, the buzz word in these places across the country is “employee experience.”
Employee well-being has become a major source of concern for managers as companies begin to move to a new phase of the Covid-19 response. Leaders are beginning to feel the long-term effects of the emergency measures they have taken since the beginning of the epidemic. Keeping the door open for the next few years will require prioritizing staff experience that they did not have before. Fortunately, this pivot will create many lasting benefits.
1. Boost recruitment and retention
Employee brainstorming is one of the biggest concerns for any board or company leadership team right now. The Great Regency is building ghost towns outside of business across the country, and discontent is a major driver of this emigration. Instead of trying to hold back, ping pong tables and free snacks are being watched by companies. The company’s culture has been further destroyed by epidemic restrictions, and more people are peeking over green grass fences than ever before. From a corporate point of view, the friction that people face when it comes to changing jobs is less than ever. Moving to a new company is as easy as suddenly logging into a new zoom room.
However, not every business experiences record levels of resignation. Some industries, such as leisure and hospitality, have been particularly hit, but those who are still strong usually have well-developed employee experience plans that listen to their people attentively and make appropriate changes based on feedback. Both creating and maintaining these plans are essential for future recruitment, as those who are happy with their jobs can be valuable employers. Feedback and scores from staff experience programs provide invaluable data for marketing teams to share.
Related: Top 5 Ways Companies Can Retain Top Talent
2. Encourage them to do great things
Everyone wants to be connected to a larger purpose, and companies need to provide a mission and values that enable individuals to do so. The temptation to make the world a better place – even if it’s just a small piece of the world – is strong
At BambooHR, we embrace five pillars that inform our employees’ experience programs and our people’s goals: quality of life, growth, culture and values, benefits and compensation, and mental health. Anyone who comes to work here can see these as our guiding principles, and know how their work contributes to everyone’s success.
Of course, in the last two years, many companies (including us) have had to make difficult choices when it comes to preserving company culture. But creating a broader purpose that motivates and motivates employees will help in every aspect of business success. When boards and leaders shift to focus on employee experience and employee success, it indicates that the organization is truly committed to its values. It can be easy Tell me You want to make life better for people, then get caught up in focusing on the bottom line again. Our policies need to be more than just slogans that we roll out for all-inclusive meetings: they need to be driven in a real sense.
This means that if you, as a leader, are not happy with the culture or values of the company, or how your employees are responding / contributing, then you need to look in the mirror first. These are reflections of who you are. Helping employees both see themselves in the big picture and understand how they contribute to the company’s success should be a top priority. To that end, build and build programs around values that motivate and signal your desire to help team members succeed.
3. Give HR a big voice
The biggest challenge in creating a good culture is usually the work of rubber-meet-the-road, and even the best plans have a way of breaking down after meeting the unpredictability of real-world needs. As a corporate leader, your best strategy is to hire great HR people and sync with them frequently. This national team, with the open support of the board that continues through departmental leaders, will be able to improve the lives of employees and create programs that can move the needle on retention and recruitment.
You can help this process by investing in high-quality tools that collect feedback, such as eNPS scores and quick-response survey scores. It may be easy to think of HR’s work as a response to how people are feeling, but it is important to associate those feelings with data.
Related: The core belief that drives my HR career
Supporting talented HR leaders and giving them a big voice in the company will supercharge employee initiatives and provide a much greater chance of success. Data-centric tools will also enhance employee experience programs and enable your HR team to identify needs directly from the source.
The old self-evident that a company’s best customers are its employees is true. As companies continue to recover from epidemic efforts, reorganize cultures, and cope with great resignations, a new focus on them will help enterprises succeed in countless and long-term ways.
