Sponsored by:
Produced by:
Louise Brown
HEAD OF HUMAN RESOURCES
How important is employee experience in modern business?
A business is only ever as good as its people are. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that your employee experience is on an equal footing with your customer experience. The key to understanding employee experience within your business is to collect as much data as possible from your employees. Learn what matters to them and then invest in those areas to improve their experience of working with you. As your business matures and you’re able to consistently collect new data whilst simultaneously referring back to historic data, you will start to build a picture of how long your employees typically stay with you and what you can do to try and increase their tenure. Employee experience may not always feel like a priority for young businesses, but it is worth investing time and resources into early on as the benefits that a positive employee experience will bring further down the line are well worth it.
A great first step in building an excellent employee experience is to ensure that you are honest and transparent with your employees to build trust. Employees should be able to easily identify your businesses’ value and purpose, if your business strategy resonates with them personally then they will take greater pride in their work and give you the best version of themselves personally.
A business is only ever as good as its people are. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that your employee experience is on an equal footing with your customer experience.
To create moments that matter, businesses first need to understand what those moments are from an employee’s point of view. Rigorous, regular employee listening is invaluable to this process.
What can businesses do to better understand their colleagues and create moments that matter?
To create moments that matter, businesses first need to understand what those moments are from an employee’s point of view. Rigorous, regular employee listening is invaluable to this process. Otherwise you run the risk of creating initiatives that don’t matter to your colleagues, wasting both your time and theirs. More often than not, the majority of these moments will occur within an employee’s first twelve months with your business. Buddy systems, mentors and transparent expectations around performance and responsibility are all great ways to start helping your employees feel like they really matter from day one.
An often overlooked ‘moment that matters’ is within performance management conversations. If you want to promote from within and have internal candidates fill vacant roles in your business, then this is a critical milestone to get right. All it takes is one negative experience and an employee could decide to leave your business. If somebody is in the wrong role for them currently then that’s fine, it happens in business. But it’s still important to make sure that they feel valued by your business. Good feedback gives that person the opportunity to build upon their existing skills, find an opportunity that is more suited to them and ultimately turn the performance management conversation into a positive experience.
What makes a great HR leader?
Transformation strategies and activities are obviously hugely beneficial when done correctly, but they take time. A great HR leader not only defines the transformation strategy, but they also inject continuous energy, both physical and mental, to support their colleagues whilst that transformation takes place. At the start of the transformation there should be a clear communications plan so that your colleagues are aware of the changes taking place, understand the benefits that this change will bring and most importantly feel like they are involved within the change. As the change process rolls out, invite your colleagues to experience the new systems or initiatives as early as possible and ask for their feedback - this will help to both make the change as effective as possible and make your colleagues feel valued. But make sure that the energy you bring is genuine - if the change feels like a tick box exercise and you can’t bring your best energy to it, then your colleagues will soon pick up on this and disregard the transformation process.
A great HR leader not only defines the transformation strategy, but they also inject continuous energy, both physical and mental, to support their colleagues whilst that transformation takes place.
Louise is a people leader, focused on development and continuous evolution of people to support achieving strategic goals and high performing teams. She has extensive experience across HR gained via a diverse portfolio of stakeholders and industries, consistently driving HR interventions, leading innovation, change projects across Global teams, proven excellent stakeholder management, project and customer management skills, whilst managing a global function, processes, projects and engagement through significant periods of change.