Focus strategy on the things that matter most to your employees.

Employee experience can be defined as the sum total experience an employee has at an organisation. This is a culmination of their interaction with an organisation across every possible touchpoint.

Whereas HR historically comprises formal aspects such as recruitment, talent development, L&D, leadership, succession planning, reward & remuneration, OD, workplace health and safety, employee relations, performance management, and exiting employees; employee experience management better encompasses the focus on how employees perceive all these elements across their full life cycle with the company. The overall result of an employee’s experience defines the beliefs they hold and demonstrate towards that business - positive or negative.

The employee experience journey begins at the consideration stage of a potential employee who applies for a job. It moves through the steps of interviews and either successfully getting the job or not. If successful, the employee lifecycle continues through to the onboarding process and their integration as a part of the organisation. This employee experience integration has many key drivers, including your professional development during your time at the company, the way you're remunerated, the culture, how leaders act, and the way people act towards each other. Towards the end of an employee’s lifecycle, employee experience plays a role in offboarding, as well as how, as a former employee, you’re treated and involved.

Employee experience encapsulates more understanding and optimisation of how an employee actually experiences the different stages of their employment lifecycle.

But perhaps one view of it is HR management is about implementing those things. It's a governance view. In comparison, employee experiences more the understanding and optimisation of how an employee actually experiences those things.

Key drivers (which are also known as business drivers) are the decisive factors that affect the success of a business. In the context of employee experience, the key drivers can include company culture, meaningful and purposeful work, connection to people around us, a feeling of psychological safety, personal and professional growth, work-life balance, and autonomy. Such key drivers of employee experience are based on the perceptions and beliefs developed by employees across every stage of the employee lifecycle, including the consideration, application, and interview process for a role, the offer and onboarding process, leadership, culture, professional development and all other elements of actually working at a company, as well as how the departure process is managed and all communication post-employment.

Essentially, these key drivers of employee experience are the cumulative experience an employee has across every touch point they come into contact with and, subsequently, the long-term perceptions or beliefs they hold about that company as a result.

There are a multitude of long-term benefits when you improve and ultimately develop an industry-leading employee experience. Not only will your company attract the right people, but it will retain them in the long run too. With that comes the obvious cost savings associated with lower turnover. But it is highly likely that employees will grow and improve performance over time, there will be lower absenteeism and presenteeism, and employees will be better motivated, connected and aligned - in short, everyone will both collectively and individually perform at their best.

With this in mind, it’s perhaps no surprise that we see companies with an employee experience strategy and subsequent long-term exceptional employee experience outperform their industry competitors in growth and profitability.

Exceptional employee experience has been found to build a more motivated, aligned, and connected workforce. When you consider that this workforce is responsible for every element of the company’s customer experience - whether that be directly in retail, customer service, or service provision environment or indirectly in the development of customer-facing tech, digital touch-points or strategic decision-making - then it seems obvious that these touchpoints, and therefore the customer experience overall will benefit as a result.

Furthermore, if you connect great customer experience results - in the form of feedback, awards, growth etc. - back to the day-to-day actions of your employees, that will instil greater levels of meaning and motivation and contribute to an overall more powerful employee experience, and an even better customer experience…and so on and so forth. A virtuous cycle!