Your employee experience is how people feel.
How they feel when making mistakes. How they feel when speaking up and presenting a ‘crazy’ idea. How they feel when f*cking up and when they shoot the moon. How they feel on a Sunday evening before starting a week of work. How they feel while on leave.
It’s also how they feel when joining your business or team. And how they feel when leaving it. It’s often overlooked, but your offboarding journey is just as important as your onboarding. If you’re struggling to attract the right talent, start looking at the experience your current employees are having (feeling). Improve that and the rest will flow from there.
What’s in the box?
So many companies have great packaging. The popping colours, the quirky copywriting and inviting imagery. The inspiring values, connected purpose and awesome coffee machine. They say all the right things on the outside, but it’s what’s on the inside that really counts. How do they execute that purpose? How do they truly live their values? How do their systems and processes support these?
All too often the contents don’t match the packaging. There are ‘open doors’ that are actually glass. So new talent join, excited about their new journey of discovery and growth, only to find they’ve been woefully misled. And they leave. Sooner than you thought they would. And the cost to you is bigger than you think. It’s beyond the cost/time of recruitment, onboarding and training. It’s the brand and reputation damage that is caused. There are plenty of statistics around how many people someone will share their good experiences with, and how they will share a negative experience with double that amount (63% of statistics are made up, so I didn’t quote an actual number;)
So you can have an incredible employee value proposition, but if the day-to-day experience doesn’t match, then it’s all for naught. The good news is that it’s in your control. You can design their experience and you can make it amazing.
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” – Sir Richard Branson
Do your employees feel included? Do they feel heard and appreciated? If so, how do you know?
A strong indicator can be silence. If your most passionate people start getting quiet, that’s your biggest red flag. Start having open, transparent, and honest conversations with them. Find out how they feel.