What is Employee Experience?

Employee Experience is firmly based on the customer experience known from marketing: It describes the general perception of the company from the perspective of employees. This gives an overall picture of the organization concerning the employee's career journey. As with the customer experience, perception is shaped by all interaction experiences and the associated positive or negative impressions.

For example:

Anna has just joined the company XY. She was looking forward to the first day and expected exciting presentations and exchanges with her new work colleagues.

On the first day, the speakers were lecturing with slides all day. Anna only had a few opportunities to exchange ideas with the other new employees or speakers.

Anna was relieved when the day is over. When asked in the next few days and weeks about her first-day experience, her answer was: "Well, it could have been more exciting."

Anna's picture of the company has lost some of its colors.

Continuous Evaluation of the Interactions

Employees constantly gain experience in the workplace. Points of contact refer to all interactions that they make with and within the organization. They interpret the experiences and label them as positive, neutral, or negative.

Employees have a positive interaction when their expectations are met or exceeded. The more this is the case, the more positive is their overall picture of the company. On the other hand, with many negative experiences, the entire company loses its attractiveness.

Definition of Employee Experience

Employee Experience (EX) is the sum of all perceptions and associated feelings of an employee, which are created through unique and cumulative effect of interactions with customers, managers, teams, processes, guidelines, tools and the working environment of an organization.

Source: Gartner

Employees Expect Good Workplace Experience

Employee Experience is a top priority from an HR perspective. Yet, nonly 13% of employees say that the workplace experience meets their expectations.

The more expectations employees have of companies as consumers, the more expectations they have of their company as employees. After all, employees are also consumers. They experience new, challenging technologies and service providers, which provide them with personalized, valuable, and surprising experiences. These experiences shape them so powerfully that their expectations towards the employer also increase.

56% of employees state that they expect to have the same good job experiences as consumers.

Source: Gartner

With digitization, all communication and information behaviors have changed. Employees share their experiences with their employers on designated platforms. They give the organization feedback on publicly accessible platforms. As a customer, they expect the employer to take the feedback as a valuable impetus for improvement.

Employee expectations of their employer have risen to the same extent as customer expectations. At the same time, the talents want their feedback to be taken seriously and to optimize the company.

Why Employee Experience is Important

Employees expect employers to ensure they have positive experiences. Otherwise, they can change the company and speak negatively about the employer. In the context of increased employee expectations and a dynamically evolving, highly competitive market environment, it is essential for companies to retain the right talent and to acquire new ones.

Strategic Employee Experience Management (EEM) goals are:

• Increasing employee engagement through early detection of employee dissatisfaction
• Quick reaction to address unwanted trends (quick optimizations and improvements)
• Increasing the performance of employees and teams
• Retaining talents and attracting new ones
• Reducing employee fluctuation
• Increasing positive reviews and recommendation rate (employer branding)

Key Takeaway

Employee Experience is not just a variable. It involves strategy to manage the factors that positively influence the Employee Experience. This in turn has a positive effect on the motivation, productivity and commitment of the employees.