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Improving Employee Experience (EX) is finally starting to be viewed as one of the most strategic things a company can do to drive value. A day will come when the phrase will be used with the same reverence as Customer Experience (CX). Till then, Employee Experience experts remain patient and plow their way until everyone gets there.
The objective of a meaningful Employee Experience goes well beyond making employees happy. The fact is EX contributes to greater top-line and bottom-line revenue per year than in those organizations which don’t consider EX as powerful. There is a countless number of papers and research out there trying to demonstrate the impact of EX on performance, productivity, employee engagement, the correlation to Customer Experience, in other words, the ROI of EX.
However, as simple as it may seem to take the Employee Experience to the next level, there is a method to it which comprises of two key and necessary elements. The real success lies in having a purpose and then following a structured framework that will systematically help to deliver results.
And this is where companies tend to fail.
Companies will be successful in cracking the EX secret when first they have a vision of what they are trying to achieve, and second, have a clear structure which, when they follow, will get them there.
Starting with the underlying principle that EX must align with business in order to produce the right results, the vision of your EX has to be anchored in employee advocacy and delivering it must be through a consistent, integrated and structured framework to understand and manage the journey. Only then you will consistently drive better results, including greater value for employees and customers and, ultimately, shareholders. In this 4 parts series of posts, we delve into these two key requirements to start improving your employee experience. The first 3 parts will dive into the vision – Employee Advocacy – its definition in part 1 (below), why it is important and its advantages in Part 2, and Part 3 where we explore best practices how to institutionalize it. In the last part of the series, I describe the second element to improve your employee experience – the structured framework that will help you deliver on your vision successfully.
Employee Advocacy is getting things right for the employee by giving priority to what’s best for them versus focusing on what’s best for the company, and the purpose is to create engaged employees who will, in turn, serve as ambassadors on behalf of the company. They do that by sharing their positive experiences with the company with their friends and family on social media, as is most popular today. That means, when you go the extra mile for your employees, you delight them so much that you can leverage them to get the word out there about your products, services, and most importantly is show that you are more of a human brand. Employee Advocacy is a company’s reward for delivering a top-notch employee experience.
From the frontliners to CEO, many companies are now tapping their employee as key marketing asset and as a valuable brand spokesperson and secret digital PR weapon to boost the brand reach through employee’s word of mouth and personal social channels. You’ve probably seen bits of this in action on social media. You’re scrolling through your LinkedIn feed when you stumble onto your friend’s post about how she was welcomed by her manager and team on her first day of a new job in a new company she joined recently and how awesome her onboarding experience was.
Employee Advocacy is the promotion of the company by its employees, internally and outside the organization, who:
thus, increasing reach and credibility of the brand and creating an incredible boost to employee engagement and a ‘proud to belong’ and an ownership mindset internally.
In the next post, I will talk about why Employee Advocacy is important and its advantages to employees, companies, and customers. Save this post and follow the thread for the full story.
