Blog Insights
Strengthening the Employee Experience (EX) through Customer Experience (CX)
The past three years have taught us that positive employee experience (EX) is a strategic area for organizations to drive value, contributing to employee engagement and growth, increased productivity, and ultimately increased revenues for businesses. While its importance is widely recognized, a disconnect between aspiration and actuality remains. This can become a problem when employees expect interactions with the organization on par with the customer experience (CX) they are getting elsewhere.
Why CX is so relevant to your EX strategy
Keeping top CX priorities in mind can help you effectively focus your EX efforts. The desire for convenience, personalization, transparency, incorporation of employee feedback, faster response times, and compassion can be translated into a better employee experience.
Convenience
This can mean many different things for different employees, just as it does for the customer, but it may include offering flexible work hours; supporting a bring-your-own-device policy; providing concierge services and office perks; and prioritizing quality of work over the quantity of hours logged. Finding ways to help employees achieve a happy work-life balance by offering conveniences can encourage morale and reduce turnover.
Personalization
As an employer, you need to consider the needs of your broader workforce. Yet, taking stock of different segments (i.e. remote vs. non-remote workers) and individual needs, and seeking to communicate on a more personalized level can positively impact employee well-being and work effectiveness. Segmentation and personalization are key to offering the employee experience needed to support people in the way that best suits them. Engaging all employees in dialogue and reaching out to connect and empathize will reap dividends.
Transparency
Involving employees in change efforts and communicating transparently can improve engagement, especially among remote workers. Further, if everyone’s voice is heard and respected, it can help cultivate a culture of inclusion and collaboration. This also extends to transparency around career growth opportunities for both current and potential employees.
Case in point: the My DOI Career platform
Forum One and subcontractor Polydelta partnered with the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to design and develop the My DOI Career tool to provide prospective employees a glimpse of the many job opportunities and paths their careers could take and to let current DOI employees know how they can find another job within the Department and how their skillsets may transfer to other opportunities. The award-winning resource was created in order to address retention challenges, connect employees to development and growth opportunities within the Department, and recruit the next generation of DOI employees.
How to weave CX into your EX
Here are three quick and easy ways to start weaving CX into how you approach EX.
Incorporate employee feedback
Just as customers expect to see some results from their feedback, employees want to know their input matters at work. If you survey employees about culture or a new policy or procedure, close the loop by reporting on feedback findings and integrating that into the change effort. This helps to demonstrate appreciation, encourage collaboration, help people feel heard, and boost employee satisfaction.
Improve your response time
Replying to customer emails promptly can provide a competitive advantage. The same is true of employee communications. They are just as likely to feel anxious, disrespected, and underappreciated if their contact with company leaders is left unattended for too long. For staff to have a positive experience, you’ll want to automate away messages when you’re out of the office, proactively address emails you can’t respond to fully immediately, delegate to others the messages you can’t immediately address, and establish times of the day when you will consistently log in and review and respond to emails.
Show compassion
For the past three years, leaders have been shouldering a big emotional burden in helping teams navigate the effects of the pandemic. The empathy this requires is important to good leadership, but it can also lead to burnout. Compassionate leadership helps create space within an organization to make individuals and groups feel genuinely cared for.
While there are financial incentives to all of these approaches, the most important ROI may be less tangible. It could mean a stronger sense of corporate culture and an enhanced brand purpose for your organization.