Chapter 9 The employee experience trend

With the concepts of diversity, multi cultural backgrounds, different family make ups, and a renewed sense of planet causes, the way we now see the world, is also a reflection of the way we experience our workplace.

In modern day recruitment, it’s critical that human resources plans for success in vital efforts such as talent acquisition, engagement, and retention by acknowledging the importance of each employee’s experience.

Artificial Intelligence is one area where organisations are boosting functionality to improve employee engagement and experience. From online and instant candidate matching to instant chatlines and online focus groups, AI is useful but cannot be a substitute for HR practices, which includes plenty of transparency and communication about the hiring process.

Employee Self-Service is derived from the concept that people prefer to do things by themselves. We go to the bank drive through ATM, we order our lifestyle needs online and wait for the box to arrive, and we take courses all via the Internet. It only makes sense that in the year ahead, this independent way of doing things will continue with workplace applications that enable more employee self-service tasks. There is already a push for more self-service employee tools in all HR arenas. From strategic onboarding and employee benefits enrollment, to training and offboarding efforts – employees are given more control over their career outcomes.

Which brings us to strategic onboarding – A huge part of each employee’s experience happens in the first 90 days of employment. There will be a shift to a greater onboarding plan, ensuring this sparks employee engagement and experience from day 1, through thorough and clearly communicated goals, and aims to increase productivity and ultimately employee retention, the end goal.

Talent shortages combined with new generation workers who are dazzled by smart branding, and thereby easily influenced and recruited away from current employers, are stimulating an improved employer branding. This takes place through the function of marketing, but in essence is a spillover to all functions, providing consistent messages, and newly found ways and platforms to reach new talent. This naturally encompasses website sand social media, but also event marketing and B2B sales efforts.

Organisations are also experiencing the need for increased transparency. New recruits are easily swayed by online reviews – positive referrals, testimonials and reviews are today’s gauge blended with your own research and perception of the firm. Large companies, overseas, are even investing in recruitment marketing to strengthen company & brand perception, as a strategy to win better recruits.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – another organisational effort to align corporate goals to individual causes and concerns, generating a feel good factor amongst those that choose to participate as well enabling a cleaner environment and a corporate conscious, and other sustainable corporate goals – including but not limited to acceptance of diversity, equal rights, fair trade, labour practices etc. We are moving even more into an age of people analytics – real-time data applications that measure success as it happens. For example, employee engagement and performance tools and climate surveys, that allow employees to rate their daily activities, their boss, and even their moods!

Training for retention is another way to improve employee experience – not only are core staff offered ongoing professional development but retention strategies are implemented to retain top performing employees. Such investment demonstrates a genuine interest in the personal development of a persons skills not just for company purposes alone (talent acquisition and development corporate goals).

These factors towards building and improving the employee experience are already deeply entrenched in the culture of many leading organizations. As they set the bar high for others, it’s expected that others will follow in order to remain competitive in the recruitment scene.

Does your company use any of the above tactics to improve employee experience? How will your company respond to these trends?