
Launching a Great Employee Experience in your Organization: The E-Factor Plan
Est. Read Time: 3 min.
This post is the second in our E-Factor series, where we explore hot topics in Employee Experience. To read more about the E-Factor, click here.
The beginnings of employee experience (EX) can be traced back to the customer experience. Think about how you like to be treated as a customer. What about a great customer experience do you just love?
For me, I love when an organization treats me like an individual and not just another sale. I love when an organization is transparent and open about the sales process. I love when an organization makes it super easy for me to be a customer. I love when an organization immediately takes care of a problem I have, and in the process shows incredible authenticity that makes me feel like they care about me as a customer.
- Personalization
- Transparency
- Simple
- Responsive
- Authentic
If you were going to give your employees this same type of experience, do you think you could pull this off today?
I know most organizations couldn't! Doing this would force HR to move from reactive to proactive, but it also forces our leadership to first understand that we need to make a change. A huge change!The very first step to increasing your E-Factor is your executives need to agree that a great employee experience is critical to the success and growth of your organization. If you don't gain this buy-in, any work you put into your E-Factor will go nowhere.
A funny thing about employee experience is you can't fake it. Your employees live it every day. You live it every day. Faking employee experience will actually do more harm than good, so if that's your plan, just keep doing nothing. You'll be farther ahead!
Your executives will buy in. No, really, they will!
Your executives actually want to be successful. They also want their HR leaders to help lead the way. Part of that leadership is that HR comes to executives with plans and actions for how to increase the level of productivity of our workforce. The single greatest way to do that is through increasing your E-Factor!
The HR problem we have in launching a great EX program is that we simply don't have the capacity to make it happen, and most executives want to see some results before fully funding big projects. The fastest way to increase your HR capacity is to start using your technology to its fullest.
My first step to increasing the E-Factor starts with doing an analysis of administrative work my team is doing that our technology should be doing, but for some reason, we just haven't utilized it.
Utilizing HR self-service to its fullest will certainly increase your team’s capacity, and if your technology has the capability but you're not using it, you need to work with your vendor to fully implement. If you don't have HR self-service, you need to find a vendor to help you with this, immediately!
Once you open up capacity, now you're in a position to increase your E-Factor! Upcoming posts will lay out steps, plans, ideas, and examples of great employee experiences. Your talent acquisition team is working overtime to make sure your candidates have a great experience. It's time HR starts working overtime to ensure your employee experience is world-class!
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Yes, You Can Measure Employee Experience. Here’s How.
Companies want to offer their customers an excellent experience. Part of doing that is offering employees an excellent experience. There are two reasons for this. In many industries, job candidates are also customers. An example is the person who loves dining at a restaurant and decides to apply for a bartender job there. The last thing organizations want to happen is to lose both a candidate and a customer at the same time. The second reason is that employees are responsible for delivering the customer experience. The way they do that is by having their own excellent experience.
Does Your Organization Have an Employee Service Philosophy?
Most organizations have customer service philosophies. Examples include “Put yourself in your customers’ shoes” and “Put your customers’ needs first.” A customer service philosophy is defined as a group of shared principles that guide every customer interaction. Often, they are linked to the organizational mission, vision, and values. Customer service philosophies include references to honesty, respect, empathy, and making customers a priority. In thinking about external customer service philosophies, it raises a question. Shouldn’t organizations also have an employee (aka internal customer) service philosophy?
How 2020 Upended the Employee Experience Model As We Knew It
In a 2019 survey, Deloitte found that 84% of business and HR leaders viewed improving the employee experience (EX) as important—and 28% considered it urgent. In the pre-pandemic world, with low unemployment and rising turnover rates, providing a positive EX was an essential talent attraction and retention tool. Then COVID-19 hit.
About Tim Sackett
I’m a 20 year HR/Recruiting Talent Pro with a Master’s in HR and SPHR certification, currently residing in Lansing, MI. Currently the President at HRU Technical Resources – a $40M IT and Engineering contract staffing firm and RPO. Prior to joining HRU, I was the Director of Employment at Sparrow Health System, Regional HR and Staffing Director with Applebee’s Intl., Retail Health Recruiting Manager and Regional HR Mgr. with ShopKo Stores and Pamida respectively. I’ve split my career half between recruiting and half between HR generalist roles – also split half between the HR vendor community and Corporate America – So, I think I get it from both sides of the desk.