Introduction to Employee Experience Management

Delivering a distinguished employee experience is a prerequisite for delivering a distinguished customer experience. The employee is the one who creates that experience, and because they are at the frontline, they are the ones who appear on stage in front of the customer. The customer knows little of the details unfolding behind the scenes. So what does employee experience mean, and how can a distinguished employee experience be created?

Employee experience, by definition, refers to the sum of accumulated interactions between the employee and the company they work for — starting from the very first moments when they spot a job ad on a website or on social media, moving through the pre-employment interview and their experience when they start work, then the interactions that occur during their working days, and ending with the resignation experience and whether communication continues after the resignation.

Throughout this journey, the employee passes through many processes, people, and digital systems. These interaction points are either attractors that help them continue with the organization, or sources of repulsion that turn their job into a nightmare from which they can’t wake up — until they resign, believing that resignation is the only escape.

From this definition, it’s clear that without a dedicated function within the organization studying, analyzing, improving, and managing these interactions, they will not improve on their own. Some companies have individuals and sometimes units handling a limited subset of these interactions to ensure the best employee experience throughout their tenure.

In this article, I’ll discuss some of the main themes any organization should focus on to deliver a distinguished employee experience, and how the customer experience team in any company can — through the tools and mechanisms at its disposal — contribute to improving the internal customer (the employee) experience and modeling and planning their journeys within the organization before joining, during their tenure, and after resignation, in collaboration with HR.

It’s worth noting that the methods and methodologies used in analyzing, studying, and designing the employee experience are the same as those used in customer experience management — only the focus shifts to the employee.

Starting with the Job Ad and the Application Mechanism

The location of the ad, the completeness of its content, the smoothness or complexity of the application mechanism, and the initial impression of the company’s digital presence — its website and social media accounts. Even if recruitment is done through a third party, is the task assigned to a professional recruitment firm with established standards and methodical procedures for interviewing and communicating with candidates? Then the way candidates are responded to, whether rejected or accepted — all these initial steps may seem unimportant, but they create a powerful first impression and lead to attracting many talented candidates, or repelling them from the start.

A Recruitment Methodology Aimed at the Best Talent

Behavior and ethics should be at the top of the priorities of this methodology, in line with the well-known HR rule that behavior and habits are hard to change, while skills and experience are easy to learn. Once the employee is selected, they should be introduced as quickly as possible to the company’s values, professional code of conduct, and the processes and policies related to the work they’ll be doing.

It’s important to flag that all of the above must be enforced in the organization from top to bottom of the hierarchy, otherwise no new employee will take it seriously. Speaking of hiring the right person, we have to consider that the company may have hired the wrong person and placed them in the wrong role — possibly in a managerial or leadership position. This is where reverse evaluation comes in, which I’ll discuss in a later section. Having rotten apples in a basket of good ones will spoil them sooner or later. If you want to provide a distinguished employee experience, you need to surround them with distinguished, positive people. The ship sails on, and if one of its passengers contracts a disease, either they are quarantined until a doctor is found, or they are thrown overboard so they don’t infect the others.

The Onboarding Process

This is the stage describing the milestones an employee passes through in their first days at work, how they are oriented, and how they are equipped with the tools needed to start their job. This stage may also include a training period to prepare the employee and introduce them to the company’s departments and facilities. Has the organization analyzed the interactions at this stage, or is it chaos in which the employee lives a period of confusion until they find their way by accident or by asking?

As shown in the cover image, some companies devote tremendous effort to building an unforgettable first impression in the minds of new employees. I’m talking about the first day at work — will you arrive at the office to find your desk ready, equipped with a computer or laptop, a phone with a dedicated extension, and, on top of all that, printed business cards, an activated access card, and sometimes medical insurance cards for you and your family and a parking access card — all on day one? Yes, some companies in the Kingdom (without naming names) have succeeded at this, while at others you might spend more than two weeks without getting half of what was mentioned. The cost is enormous and unimaginable: the employee has started work but hasn’t produced anything because the required tools haven’t been provided due to sterile bureaucratic processes.

Technology

Does the employee have to go through paper processes and approvals to request a letter or a leave day from their company, or is there an electronic portal that allows them to request anything from their desk? Those interested in delivering an outstanding customer experience must analyze all interaction points and identify which processes can be automated and made digital instead of paper-based — this will save the company money in the long run and protect employees’ time so it can be spent on more important things.

Career Path

What would a taxi driver say if you got in and told him you don’t know where you’re going? That’s the case for organizations that don’t provide their employees with a clear career path plan. Providing a distinguished employee experience means providing a clear career path that acts like a tour guide in the world of work — and it’s essential. Even career paths resemble a map and can be analyzed and adjusted to ensure they’re realistic and actually traversable. This is linked to the organization’s overall strategy and the ability to translate it down so all employees become part of achieving it.

Analyzing Frontline KPIs

The CX team can analyze the KPIs tied to frontline employees. Believe it or not, some of them have a negative impact on the customer experience — and therefore on the employee’s emotions, when they know they are ignoring a customer or not giving them their due because of a particular KPI. For example, the service-duration KPI: some employees rush through serving the customer and cut corners as much as possible, sometimes avoiding giving the customer proper service because they have a KPI requiring them to complete services quickly in order to serve a larger number of customers. This negatively affects service level and quality. The burden is on the organization: is leadership’s worldview centered on delighting customers with the service, or on being the fastest service provider among competitors?

Process Analysis

Analyzing business processes leads to discovering business rules and policies that negatively impact the employee’s daily tasks. This may relate to working hours, overtime policy, and — most importantly for this section — the authority delegated to each employee based on their level. Much research indicates that an employee who is given sufficient authority and freedom of decision feels greater satisfaction and engagement than one working in an environment where decision-making is centralized and the authority granted to the employee is limited.

Analyzing the Incentive System

There’s a misconception about incentives — that their impact is universally positive. That isn’t true. Sometimes the impact is negative, and sometimes it varies by employee. Financial inducements are not motivating to every employee. Since incentives are tied to targets that must be hit, those targets should also be reviewed in terms of whether they’re achievable, how they affect other aspects of the customer experience, and how they affect employee behavior.

A Reward Policy Instead of a Punishment Policy

Unfortunately, some companies use punishment as a ghost that haunts employees in their daily work. The employee already carries enough pressure related to the nature of their job — and then we pile the boogeyman of punishments on top of them, loading them with what they cannot bear. Companies that recognize the harm of this policy focus instead on reward, treat mistakes as opportunities to learn rather than opportunities to assign blame, and use punishment as a last resort rather than a first one. Instead of “those safe from punishment misbehave” gaining currency, another saying takes its place: “those secure in reward improve their conduct.”

Workplace Environment Assessment

It’s also important to analyze the work environment, benchmark against local and global companies, and review global best practices related to work environments — which detail in tedious depth how to design a comfortable environment that helps raise productivity. These practices cover floor space, the quality of chairs, lighting brightness levels, air-conditioning, and rest and relaxation areas. Some may think these are cosmetic, but they have a significant psychological effect on employee productivity. When the employee feels their organization cares about them, they in turn give care back to their organization, and their level of loyalty and dedication at work rises. Many companies no longer care about competing in “best workplace” contests. Instead, they provide so many services and benefits to their employees that the employees themselves, out of gratitude, talk to those around them about that unparalleled level of care.

Open-Door Policy — In Word and Deed

Many frontline employees’ voices never reach senior leadership, either because of a communication policy that bars employees from going above their direct manager, or because no channel exists in the first place. Remember to provide an open communication channel for frontline employees to convey their voice without needing any direct manager’s approval of the content. Let this channel welcome any opinion or suggestion that helps simplify the service for the customer, or simplifies administrative complexity and eases work on employees, or even shares their stories about delighting customers and creating a distinguished experience for them. Let this channel be supported with some incentives and prizes to motivate people to participate. And let it be available across several media — a mobile app, a hotline, a website — so the employee finds it easy to participate when, where, and how they want.

Beware of opening such a channel only nominally: if employees get excited at first and later find no use comes of it, you’ve written the channel’s death sentence with your own hands. I once worked at a company that provided its employees with an internal discussion forum to talk about any topic they wanted, and that forum was distinguished as a channel for hearing the employee’s voice. Listening to the employee’s voice is the start of managing their expectations — beginning with knowing them and ending with meeting them as much as possible.

Organizational Culture

When we talk about changes that must start at the top, organizational culture is one of them. If the culture doesn’t reinforce and support cooperation and teamwork, and if silos and small groups are spreading — working for themselves instead of the organization — then a smooth employee experience can never be guaranteed. Instead of everyone being occupied with achieving the organization’s strategy and goals, they get busy with side conversations and rumor-mongering and achieving their personal aims at the organization’s expense. Shaping the cultural landscape can be done by using research that helps reach the employee’s voice — which I’ll detail more in the next section.

Employee Satisfaction / Engagement Research

This research is concerned with listening to the employee’s voice and relies on surveys aimed at evaluating many aspects of work to confirm that what the employee receives in terms of benefits and services is satisfactory. It also evaluates the work environment and satisfaction with internal services provided by some departments. The door is left open for additional suggestions and comments. Like any other tool, this research becomes useless if its results aren’t acted on and the employee sees no impact from their participation. Not doing it is better than doing it with no intent to act on the results.

I have a small booklet on this topic published online — because the research touching the employee’s voice is varied, and all of it is important. Some of it evaluates internal departments, some evaluates the benefits granted to employees. For example: is the idea simply to provide medical insurance, and from any insurance company? Here the employee’s role is to speak about the level of insurance and the network coverage.

While we’re on research, it’s important to flag the practice of reverse evaluation — employees evaluating their direct manager. Just as the employee is annually evaluated by their direct manager, few companies think of doing it the other way around: having the employee evaluate the direct manager. I don’t mean an evaluation tied to annual increases or promotions, but an evaluation of managerial and leadership attributes — to give the manager an opportunity to improve in the weak areas surfaced by the evaluation.

Involve the Employee in Customer Experience Design

Consider the employee a key stakeholder in shaping new customer experiences and putting a roadmap in place to achieve them. You don’t want your customers’ happiness to come at the cost of your employees’ misery. Their involvement can surface details of the suffering any decision can cause, and helps gather many suggestions to make adjustments that benefit both parties (employee and customer). That’s why their involvement is critical.

Keep employees fully informed of what’s happening around them. What’s pushing customers to rate them poorly? It’s acceptable to share customer feedback results at the individual employee level. This will help the employee monitor themselves with greater awareness, and distinguish when and how they can wow customers and when they have caused dissatisfaction. When you have indicators of your top performers’ performance, you can leverage them to provide advice and guidance to employees struggling to improve, or have them train new employees before they begin interacting with customers. Systems called Closed-Loop Feedback / Feedback Management systems collect customer reviews and service-level ratings from multiple sources, route them automatically to the relevant parties, and can attribute results to each employee individually if given the data needed.

The Standardization Trap

Standardization is good — its main aim is to unify the way service is delivered and how interactions are handled. As important as it is, going too far is dangerous and has destructive backlash. Don’t force employees to be like robots. Remember, if you force everyone to literally stick to those guidelines, you make them act in ways unlike themselves. Employees must be allowed to be themselves so they don’t feel imprisoned during their eight working hours — they must be given sufficient room of freedom.

The End of the Relationship

It’s naïve to think an employee’s resignation is the end of the relationship. In reality, the employee and the company can cross paths again professionally — the employee may return to work at the same organization, or may serve the same organization while working for a third party providing services to it. Even at this milestone, an unforgettable experience can be designed for employees. I still remember the company that demanded I hand over my medical insurance cards on the first day of my resignation — what feelings would I carry toward them after that act, which by the way is against the law? On the other hand, there are companies that care about exit procedures and make the easiest mechanisms available for the employee to clear obligations and collect their dues. Some even have a dedicated team whose job is to meet resigning employees before their last day to discuss the actual reasons for resignation — not the diplomatic reasons given to management upon resignation — and benefit from the outputs of those interviews to make changes ensuring a better employee experience.

When employees start describing the HR department as the lawyer who will help and rescue them from any problem they face, it means that department has succeeded in providing a distinguished employee experience. Ask any employee in Arab companies about HR, and you will rarely hear positive answers.

Closing

In some countries, attention to this management discipline reaches the level of regulatory or legislative bodies — the Ministry of Labor, for example — and these bodies study the way the employee experience is delivered from a broader perspective by enacting laws and regulations that companies are obligated to apply, lest they be in violation and face penalties. This is necessary: while some companies care about employees and treat them as important capital, other companies are the opposite — exploiting their weakness and need as if they were slaves. That’s why countries that care about their reputation and the reputation of their investment environment ensure minimum requirements that all companies must comply with.

I’ll close with a saying I liked while reading about this area:

If you want your employees to provide service with a smile, you must give them something to smile about.

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