One of the most common mistakes in business is solely focusing on the part of the business that directly feeds your revenue: your customers. If you don’t dedicate attention to your employee experience, though, it will eventually cost you revenue. In fact, it might be costing you already without your knowledge.
That’s why it’s so vital to prioritize the employee experience at your business. Our guide is designed to explain what makes your employee experience so vital, and how you can start improving it today.
Reasons to Prioritize the Employee Experience
Your employee experience has more of an impact on your business than you may realize. Having unhappy employees can cause a domino effect with many potential consequences, but there are a few particularly vital reasons to prioritize your employee experience.
1. Protecting Retention in a Competitive Employee Market
It’s no secret that the employee market today is highly competitive in most industries. Whether you realize it or not, your employees are likely getting messages in their inboxes from recruiters on a frequent basis, and eventually, they may get an offer that’s more attractive than what you currently provide. In this market, be aware that you’re actively competing with unseen challengers, so you need to put your best foot forward to keep your best employees.
If you think you’ll be able to replace lost employees easily, think again. People talk and word will spread that your competitors provide a better employee experience, and you may have a hard time hiring great talent for years.
2. Minimizing Attrition Costs
Want to boost your bottom line? Cut down on attrition costs – the costs that come from losing employees. There are numerous studies on attrition and how much it costs businesses, reaching conclusions that range from 34% to 200% of each lost employee’s annual salary. Attrition can cost thousands of dollars for each position that turns over, and the best way to minimize it is to improve the employee experience.
3. Maintaining a Competitive Image in Your Market
Did you know a poor employee experience can even cost you revenue? Particularly for agencies, if a business has high employee attrition rates, it makes the business look less attractive to clients and can push them into the arms of competitors.
This is primarily true if your service relies largely on the talent of your team. For instance, a marketing firm relies on the skills of its strategists, designers, writers, and so on to produce results for its clients. If competitors see that your firm has low employee retention, they may worry that the quality of the service they receive will not be reliable if the team members are constantly changing.
Top Ways to Improve the Employee Experience
Strengthening your bottom line relies on enhancing the employee experience, but how? It’s an ongoing process, but you can begin with these key steps.
1. Find Out Where Your Company Stands
Before you can get directions on where you want to be, you need to know where you are now. Begin your journey towards a better employee experience by asking, “What is the employee experience now?”
An advanced employee experience survey will give you all the answers you need. GroupSolver
allows you to construct an employee survey, aided by AI technology and data analysis, to gather key insights. This tool can easily analyze open-ended (not only multiple-choice) questions so employees can give their authentic, complete answers. You’ll be able to get a clear picture of the strong and weak points in your employee experience so you can develop a roadmap for improvement.
2. Start with Direct Feedback
There’s no need to guess what improvements will be most appreciated by your employees – just ask! As part of your employee experience survey, ask employees for their suggestions. While constructing your roadmap for improvement, start with the most common of those suggestions and work your way down.
3. Create a System to Give Employees a Voice
One of the most instrumental ways to strengthen your employee experience is to give employees a voice. To make sure this happens, you need an established system in place that gives employees a direct line to decision-makers. This could involve forming employee resource groups or ERGs, hosting meetings consistently, and so on.
4. Offer Enhanced Flexibility
A little flexibility in your work environment goes a long way toward enhancing the employee experience, and in many cases, it doesn’t cost you a penny. Changes like allowing work-from-home days, loosening the dress code, and instituting flexible hours can help employees strike a better work-life balance and make them feel more valued in the workplace.
Beginning Your Journey Toward a Better Employee Experience
If your employee experience is less than stellar, it could be costing you money or edging you closer to an employee exodus without your knowledge. Now is the time to start enhancing the employee experience at your business, and it starts with a well-conducted staff survey.
With its advanced capabilities and open-ended answer analysis, GroupSolver allows you to get to the heart of the matter and understand your employee experience on a new level. Learn more about GroupSolver
today and how our innovative survey tool can help you gain clear insights into lowering attrition and attracting top talent in the future.
