5 Methods for Improving Employee Experience and Engagement

When a company’s success or failure hinges on the output of its workforce, it’s no wonder businesses are looking at improving employee experience and engagement. Happier employees who feel valued are more productive. Plus, positive attitudes are contagious and help to retain current talent and attract new professionals for open roles. How can your organization reap these benefits?

Implement Continuous Onboarding

The 30-60-90 onboarding plan is a common one, and for good reason; many companies do this well, and it’s a great start for a new employee. However, it’s still just the start. The best onboarding is the kind that is continuous, from first to last day. It’s an experience that should never stop but evolve with the employee as they grow. They should constantly be learning new things, improving their relationship with you, and asking questions throughout their entire career. Companies who have adopted this mentality through continuous onboarding have enjoyed increased employee retention, better business results, and even a decrease in safety incidents. At a time when only 27% of companies effectively re-board employees after they change roles internally, it’s clear that continuous onboarding is essential.

Conduct Balanced Performance Reviews

The idea of performance reviews is nothing new, with 91% of organizations conducting formal ones, but it’s a tool that’s evolving as the number of companies conducting frequent informal reviews is increasing rapidly. Communication is vital to a healthy employee experience. Taking a balanced approach through formal and informal reviews allows your HR department and managers to really dig in and uncover any concerns an employee has before they grow further and sour engagement. When employees feel heard and both give and receive valuable feedback that can improve their daily work, everybody wins.

Prioritize Work-Life Balance

Employee burnout is a very real concern for companies, especially in fields like IT where the success of an entire organization is contingent on a piece of technology working appropriately or being created on time. Tech pros desire to telecommute so badly that 63% of them would take a pay cut for such a benefit, underscoring the importance of work-life balance in its relation to the employee experience. Other than offering remote working options, allowing employees to shift their working hours and to take the vacation days they are allotted (or grant them additional ones) are rapid workplace morale boosters.

Encourage Volunteering

There’s a strong but simple sentiment in today’s workforce: people want to positively contribute to the world. Your employees desire to give back to their community and work toward a meaningful cause. Promoting a culture of philanthropy creates an environment conducive to a positive employee experience in this vein. Many companies hold food or toy drives around Christmas, but those that provide the best opportunities for giving back go one step further. Consider granting employees time off specifically for volunteering at the nonprofit of their choice. Even if it’s just one day every other quarter, a Volunteer Time Off Policy (in addition to regular PTO) will go a long way in keeping employees happy and feeling engaged with their surroundings.

Support Professional and Personal Growth

Professional fulfillment is naturally important to any employee. In fact, a lack of career growth opportunities is the top reason professionals leave a company. Where do your employees want to be in five years? What about when they’re near retirement? How can you help them get to those checkpoints? Employees want career pathing and conversations that answer those questions, but that’s not all.

It’s hard to separate professional growth from personal growth, and that’s why talking to employees about their life goals or personal ambitions is an instant way to improve employee experience and engagement. For example, if multiple employees tell you about hobbies they’ve always wanted to pursue but never have time for, like photography, tennis, or gardening, that’s an opportunity. Think about offering reimbursement for community classes or even holding occasional “hobby days” where everybody gets professional instruction in a certain hobby or skill over an extended lunch or half day.

5 Methods for Improving Employee Experience and Engagement

Everybody wants to keep their employees happy, but not everybody is doing something about it. Taking initiative to refocus and improve employee experience and engagement is necessary for those wishing to maintain a healthy and productive workforce for the long term. After all, take care of your employees and they will take care of you.