In today’s competitive marketplace, employee experience is one of the most important aspects of a company. Employees are now looking for more out of their workplace than just a paycheck. To keep employees happy and maximize productivity, companies must focus on shifting their cultures from employee engagement to employee experience.
While the two concepts may seem equally important, we will break down the differences between employee engagement and employee experience and outline why it is essential for success.
What is employee engagement?
First, it is important to note that employee engagement does not mean employee happiness.
Employee engagement means someone is involved, invested, and committed to their work. Employee engagement occurs when employees feel like they are part of a team working towards the same goal. They also have positive feelings about their company’s leadership and direction moving forward.
What is employee experience?
Employee experiences go beyond employee engagement by providing employees with an exceptional workplace culture to feel comfortable and happy.
Employee experience requires a company to focus on employee retention, employee satisfaction, and overall organizational health. Improving employee experiences will improve productivity levels while reducing turnover rates. This means that the time spent hiring new team members is minimized along with associated costs of training these individuals.
What are the differences between employee engagement and employee experience?
In short, a strong employee experience leads to high employee engagement.
While they may seem similar, here are some differences between employee engagement and experience:
- Employee engagement is a mindset, while employee experience requires action from employees and leadership.
- Employee experiences involve more active participation by both management and workers alike.
- Employee engagement focuses on how involved team members are within a company and their feelings towards the organization. Employee experience takes this a step further by focusing on the employee’s journey within their company to encourage loyalty.
Why does employee experience matter?
The entire concept of employee experiences started with consumer brands, but has now moved into the business world. This is due to reports proving that happy employees are more productive employees. According to Sapling, happy employees are 20 percent more productive in the workplace.
When employees are more productive, they can provide a better product or service to retain customers and attract new ones.
Companies that focus on employee experience have been shown to outperform those companies still focusing primarily on employee engagement.
How can a business owner improve the employee experience?
For employees’ experiences to improve, they must have a strong sense of belonging and believe in the work they are performing on a day-to-day basis.
Employees must feel as though they are contributing to something more than just making money. This can be achieved through employee development, empowerment, and recognition programs that are hard-wired into the company’s culture.
Creating an employee-centric culture where employee experience is valued over employee engagement will present many advantages for businesses, such as:
- Decreasing employee turnover rates will save companies from spending money finding, hiring, or training new employees while also reducing time spent on recruiting efforts.
- Building strong relationships between management and their direct reports helps improve overall organizational health among the workforce.
- Creating an empowered team committed to their work can build confidence in employees.
- Increasing productivity levels because employees want to be there, not because they have to be there.
- Increasing revenue levels as employee retention increases due to employees feeling comfortable within their workplace.
How do you shift a culture from employee engagement to employee experience?
Shifting corporate culture is no easy task. It requires a dedicated team, employee empowerment programs, and leadership from the top down. An great way for business owners to make this shift is to implement a support automation platform that can replace repetitive employee tasks, like Capacity.
By implementing a support automation platform to replace microtasks, business owners will have more time for employee development initiatives that are important for increasing employee experiences over employee engagement.
Businesses can save time and money by automating tasks and workflows that employees would otherwise have to do themselves. This allows businesses to spend time on employee development programs that lead towards a bigger picture than just making ends meet every month.
Conclusion
The old model of focusing on employee engagement is outdated and no longer profitable.
By shifting employee culture to emphasizing employee experience over employee engagement, businesses will see a difference in company success.
A great place to start is implementing support automation platforms that can automate customer service, employee onboarding, and other menial tasks that employees perform daily. This will save companies time and money while also improving the employee experience instead of employee engagement.