What steps can organizations take to ensure positive ‘moments that matter’ throughout the employee lifecycle?
We often strive to streamline, automate and standardize processes, because it saves time and money. However, when it comes to EX, we need to ask ourselves where to direct resources to make a real difference from the employee’s perspective.
During employee onboarding, many organizations will send documents via automated emails. This is undoubtedly efficient but adding a more human touch can help to deliver a better employee experience. For example, someone in the HR team could send a personalized email that says, “You’ll shortly receive a form to complete. It should be straightforward but if you have any questions, please call me, and I’ll be happy to help.”
Small changes like reminding managers to congratulate an employee who has done something well, or a note from a leader recognising their work make a huge difference.
When it comes to EX, we need to ask ourselves where to direct resources to make a real difference from the employee’s perspective.
People and organizations change and if we aren’t asking the right questions about the things we do every day, that is a missed opportunity to improve employee experience and business performance.
Why is it important to capture feedback from employees, and how does this contribute to a better employee experience?
Using employee surveys to gather feedback when we launch something new isn’t new, but we need to apply the same thinking to things we’ve done for years. People and organizations change and if we aren’t asking the right questions about the things we do every day, that is a missed opportunity to improve employee experience and business performance.
In practice this means creating more surveys that are more granular and considering other feedback channels. Don’t just ask someone what they like and dislike. Ask what you might change, what does good look like, what would that person like to see? Those questions are a rich source of ideas because they allow organizations to tap into employee insights and get feedback on processes in the moment.
What can HR leaders do to ensure employee experience transformation programmes are successful?
Employee transformation programmes are a huge investment that is potentially wasted if you don’t secure buy-in. Programmes should involve end users from the start, not just as the programme is going live.
Employees provide useful insight into language and communications, ensuring that programmes are designed to communicate information that employees care about. Of course, technology is a huge part of the EX transformation investment, but it is the enabler of change, while people and business representatives drive the change.
Learning and development can play a vital role in adoption. Rather than providing ‘sheep dip’ style training to all employees at launch, we advise delivering small, targeted activities at the point of need – which we call “what do I need to know when I need to know it”.
Without this, the risk is that the organization ends up with learning that isn’t embedded because it isn’t delivered to people actively using the system, and anyone joining the business after that launch doesn’t get the benefit of that learning because it hasn’t been embedded.
Employees provide useful insight into language and communications, ensuring that programmes are designed to communicate information that employees care about.
Established in 1898, Mitchells & Butlers is one of the largest operators of restaurants, pubs and bars in the UK, providing a wide choice of eating and drinking-out experiences through well-known brands and delivering great service, quality and value for money to guests. The company operates more than 1,700 managed premises throughout the UK from its headquarters in Birmingham.