You don’t need us to remind you that there is a bit of a shakeup happening over employee retention currently, you’ve likely experienced it yourself and if not, you’ve certainly heard of the sudden exodus of workers. They’re reconsidering previous perceptions of the employer/employee relationship, and the result has been a bit of a reckoning for employers who have not put much effort into the employee experience.

In our blog Employee Engagement versus Employee Experience, we discussed how these terms differ from one another. Although both deal in relationship-building with employees, put simply experience is the input of effort an employee receives from the company, while engagement is the output of effort from the employee back into their workplace. In this blog, we’re covering the key areas HR can take a lead in improving experience, leading to significant improvement in engagement.

Giving HR the experience reins

The first step in improving the employee experience is identifying problems areas. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Employers shouldn’t waste time on improving processes that both work and are not of concern to employees. Effort should be focused on what isn’t working. Requesting feedback (anonymous is always smart) is a great place to start in revealing weak points. But here are some common problem areas:

1. A lot of employees have reported dissatisfaction with their onboarding experience. Big surprise. But not a difficult fix. Most onboarding just kind of ‘happens’ out of necessity, but what occurs when HR designs the process is a much more efficient system and, happier employees! Give it a makeover.
2. Another unsurprising fault zone is technology, with many a frustrated employee just trying to do their job with tech they either don’t understand or that doesn’t make sense for their tasks. Here HR can work with the tech department in order to organize trainings or conduct an internal study on the tech tools that employees need to do their jobs well.
3. Bad customer experience. And by customer, we mean employee. We’ve heard it said that employees should be treated with as much care as customers, and we couldn’t agree more. You want your employees to stay just as much as your customers to return so why wouldn’t you identify the things that make them want to stick around?
4. Not gathering feedback. We can piggyback off #3 here, as feedback is an important component to customer experience. Make yourself/management team available for frequent feedback opportunities and take the intel seriously. It’s likely more frustrating for an employee to offer insight upon invite and have it ignored than to never receive the invitation at all.
5. No team-building or one-on-one. It really is critical to the employee experience that workers have the chance to engage with one another and their managers. It builds a trusting, collaborative environment that does wonders in maintaining a positive and innovative company culture. The (should be) goal of every business!

Your HR department is a lot more than a dot the i and cross the t team, it’s capable of leading the company in exciting new directions. Are you ready to dive in? Eos HR can help! We make sure small business employers have the resources they need to lead a productive and positive workplace. Schedule a free consultation today to learn more.