What is the
employee experience?

Discover everything you need to know about the employee experience. From strategy to the tools used, optimize your employees' experience for optimal engagement.

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In recent years, the concept of employee experience has gained popularity among human resources and management professionals. And for good reason, providing a positive experience to employees is a remarkable lever for developing their engagement at work, boosting their productivity, strengthening their sense of belonging, improving employer branding, attracting talents, and ultimately increasing the overall performance of the organization.

So, what lies behind this promising tool? What are the key elements of a good employee experience? And how can you optimize the experience for your employees? In this article, Mozzaik365 explores these questions. Enjoy reading!

Employee Experience: Definition and Challenges

According to the Employee Experience Barometer conducted by the media Parlons Rh, in 2023, 66% of companies report having implemented a policy to improve employee experience. Many managers and HR professionals are therefore familiar with this concept and understand its importance.

How to Define Employee Experience?

Employee experience (referred to as "EX" in English) is a concept inspired by customer experience. It refers to the set of emotions and feelings that an employee experiences throughout their journey within a company, from onboarding to offboarding. In other words, employee experience relates to how an employee experiences their work on a daily basis and during major milestones in their career.

Improving employee experience, therefore, involves strengthening the overall satisfaction of employees with their job and employer by influencing factors such as work organization, management, technological environment, social climate, and physical environment. It's an ambitious yet necessary program.

Why is it Necessary to Improve Employee Experience?

Improving employee experience is important for several reasons. Indeed, providing a better employee experience to your staff allows you to:

Retain and foster employee loyalty since, logically, employees who are fulfilled in their work and love their company are less likely to leave.

Attract the best talents. Employees who are satisfied with their jobs are more likely to recommend their company to potential candidates and become ambassadors of the employer brand, especially on social networks and platforms like Glassdoor.

Attract more clients. Happy and proud employees are more likely to convey a positive image of the company and its products or services. This is known as employee advocacy.

Increase individual and collective productivity as employees who feel good at work are less absent, more engaged, more creative, and find it easier to collaborate.

Boost customer satisfaction since employees who have a positive experience at work are more available for their clients and provide them with better products and services.

Ultimately, the implementation of a policy to improve employee experience has a positive impact on the overall performance of the organization. A study published in 2022 in the Harvard Business Review concludes that there is a significant correlation between the quality of employee experience and company revenues:

"The results were striking. Not only were we able to establish a clear link between employees and revenues, but the impact was substantial. In fact, if an average store could move from the bottom quartile to the top quartile in each of the employee experience indicators we studied, it would increase its revenue by more than 50% and its profits by almost as much."

Key Elements of Employee Experience

Employee experience is a concept as important as it is complex. The factors influencing the quality of employee experience are numerous. Here are the most prominent:

Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is a key component of employee experience. According to a survey conducted in 2023 by the recruitment firm Robert Half, it is even the primary reason employees choose to stay in their current jobs. In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, many employees have reevaluated the role of work in their lives. For it to be satisfying, work must allow for rest and leave enough room for other aspects of life, including family and leisure.

To enhance the experience of their employees, companies must take measures to protect work-life balance. In this regard, they can offer their employees social benefits such as:

Paid sabbatical leave, following the example of Orange, Accenture, or Mazars;
Extended second-parent leave, as seen at Shine;
Or simply access to sports or well-being courses.

Employee expectations also revolve around a more flexible work organization. According to a study published in 2023 by the audit and consulting firm KPMG, 33% of employees expect their company to prioritize the reorganization of work methods. In detail, workers express a particular interest in:

The 4-day workweek without a reduction in workload or salary, a measure desired by 43% of respondents;
Remote work, which, for 68% of respondents, has a positive impact on their work-life balance.

👉 To delve deeper, discover the 15 advantages of hybrid work

Salary and Social Benefits

In a context marked by inflation, salary remains the primary concern for employees and significantly influences the quality of the employee experience. According to the survey conducted by KPMG in 2023, 64% of employees believe that their quality of life at work would improve if their salary increased. As a logical consequence, the study published by Robert Half demonstrates that a salary increase is the primary reason employees consider changing companies, cited by 55% of respondents. Faced with the general rise in prices, salary and social benefits (employee savings and retirement plans, meal vouchers, gift certificates, sustainable mobility packages, etc.) are powerful levers to improve the employee experience.

Management

Management is one of the factors that has the strongest impact on the quality of the employee experience. According to the survey conducted by Robert Half, 40% of employees remain loyal to their company because they appreciate their supervisor and team. Conversely, 17% want to leave their job because they are in disagreement or conflict with their direct manager or team. To improve the employee experience, it is important to encourage compassionate management practices.

Concretely, to enable their teams to feel good in their roles and within the company, managers should:

Set clear and challenging goals;
Assign a reasonable workload to each team member;
Allow a margin of autonomy to employees, especially in defining their work methods and organizing their tasks;
Grant the right to make mistakes to encourage innovation and facilitate communication in case of difficulties;
Listen to employees and provide regular feedback;
Express recognition to employees when they achieve outstanding performance, but also when they make daily efforts or simply by greeting them in the morning.

Values and Company Culture

Feeling in harmony with the values, mission, and vision of one's company is necessary for a positive employee experience. The survey conducted by Robert Half in 2023 reveals that 24% of employees want to leave their company because they are searching for meaning at work and aspire to find a job more in line with their values and desires. In a similar vein, 17% of respondents want to change positions because the company culture does not align with their aspirations, 10% because their employer does not take enough actions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and another 10% because their organization is too passive in the face of the "energy crisis."

Creating a strong company culture with unifying values by involving employees in the process can be a good way to improve the employee experience by avoiding ethical conflicts. But that's not all. To increase employee satisfaction and retain talent, the implementation of ambitious Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and DEI policies co-constructed with employees is also essential. In 2023, according to the KPMG study on employee experience, only 52% of employees claim to be in agreement with their company's CSR policy. There is, therefore, significant room for improvement.

🤩 To delve deeper, discover what a digital company culture is: Establishing a Digital Culture

Career Development Opportunities

The ability to acquire new skills and advance within one's company is crucial for a positive employee experience. Most employees aspire to learn new skills, take on more responsibilities, and receive promotions. According to the study conducted by Robert Half, the desire to advance in one's career and take on more responsibilities, the lack of internal advancement prospects, and the feeling of boredom in one's position are among the top 5 reasons employees want to change companies (just after salary and work-life balance).

To improve the employee experience and retain employees, it is essential to provide employees with the means to train, develop their skills, and progress within the company. Tools such as Microsoft Viva Learning can help you create customized training paths and support your employees in their skill development. Additionally, your Digital Workplace can be a valuable ally in promoting internal job opportunities and facilitating internal mobility.

📢 To delve deeper, discover everything about Viva Learning: Viva Learning - The Future of Corporate Learning with Microsoft

Physical and Technological Work Environment

Finally, the material working conditions naturally have a significant impact on the employee experience. To provide a positive experience to employees, the employer must ensure a safe and comfortable working environment. They must also provide efficient production tools that allow employees to carry out their tasks without wasting time while preserving their physical and mental well-being.

Digital tools are not exempt from these imperatives, especially in the context of the digital transformation of companies and the rise of hybrid work. Technology should facilitate internal collaboration and individual productivity, whether on-site, in remote work, or in offices. In the age of information overload and the increasing prevalence of burnout, it is essential to offer a good digital experience to employees. The Mozzaik365 Digital Workplace addresses this challenge. This SharePoint extension allows you to create comprehensive, design-friendly, and functional intranets accessible from a computer or mobile device.

🤔 To delve deeper, discover the unprecedented features of Mozzaik365

Turn your intranet into a Digital Workplace

Free guide

Highlights of the Employee Experience

The employee experience is lived day by day, but it crystallizes and is redefined during key stages of the employee journey:

The Hiring Process

The employee experience begins during the hiring process. Recruitment is a critical step that requires careful attention. From this first contact, employees form an idea of the company, interpersonal relationships, and working conditions that await them. This initial impression can either create a desire to join the organization with enthusiasm or, conversely, demotivate the future employee, even prompting them to flee.

It is, therefore, necessary to enhance the candidate experience by:

Publishing an honest and clear job advertisement;
Implementing a transparent hiring procedure;
Limiting the number of recruitment process stages;
Providing reasonable response times.

The Onboarding Process

The onboarding process also plays a crucial role in the quality of the employee experience. This stage of the employee life cycle is crucial as it aims to provide the new employee with the means to thrive within the organization and be productive. Welcoming new hires is a particularly critical moment. According to a study conducted in 2014 by the consulting firm Deloitte, 22% of turnover occurs within 45 days of a new employee's arrival in the company.

To avoid resignations and premature departures, it is important to onboard your new employees well. Various solutions can be considered to improve the employee experience during onboarding, such as:

Organizing a pre-onboarding to stay in touch with the new employee and reduce their stress (welcome email, transmission of practical information, sending a "starter pack," etc.);
Implementing a personalized digital onboarding dashboard to help the newcomer easily access all the information (schedule, task list, follow-up training, contacts, etc.) they need to quickly adapt without stress.

Talent Development and Retention

The employee experience must, of course, be nurtured throughout the employee's life cycle within the organization. An employee who has "explored" their job and sees no prospects for advancement may feel frustrated, undervalued, and want to leave the company. To optimize the employee experience, it is therefore essential to facilitate employees' skill development and promote internal recruitment.

The Offboarding Journey

Offboarding is also a key step in terms of the employee experience. Why? Former employees are privileged carriers of the employer brand and have a significant impact on the organization's attractiveness. Moreover, former employees can eventually represent an interesting pool of recruits. Faced with a labor shortage, more and more companies are open to hiring so-called "boomerang" employees.

To care for the offboarding of your employees, it will involve:

Planning one or more meetings with the manager to discuss the reasons and conditions of departure;
Implementing a questionnaire to understand and cross-reference the reasons for resignation and collect improvement ideas;
Organizing a farewell "party";
Staying in touch with former employees, for example, through a newsletter or an Alumni group on LinkedIn;
Sending a questionnaire to assess and optimize the offboarding process itself.

Measuring and Improving Employee Experience

Knowing the key components of employee experience (EX) and the stages of the employee journey that require special attention is not enough to implement an employee experience improvement policy. To take action and boost your team's satisfaction, it is essential to identify and implement measures that meet the specific aspirations of your staff.

Responsibility for Employee Experience Improvement Policies

Employee experience improvement policies are generally the responsibility of the Human Resources Department. According to the Employee Experience Barometer 2022 published by Parlons RH, the HR department is responsible for the "employee experience" project in 66% of the surveyed companies. In some organizations, this initiative is taken on by the General Management (17% of respondents), a dedicated manager (12%), or another actor (6%).

The 2023 Barometer reveals the importance of managers in the design and implementation of actions aimed at improving employee experience. According to this study, 48% of companies that have implemented an employee experience improvement policy involve supervisors in its implementation but not in its development, which remains the responsibility of HR. However, 42% of organizations involve managers in both the design and implementation of their "employee experience" projects.

Coworkers working and talking with their laptop open

Tools and Methods to Evaluate Employee Experience

The first step to initiate an employee experience improvement process is to conduct an audit. Several tools and methods can help you determine the current satisfaction level of your employees and identify the priority levers to quickly have a positive impact on employee experience:

Managers are essential relays for conveying the expectations of employees but also their own needs as supervisors (let's not forget the manager's experience!). According to the Parlons RH Barometer, in 2023, 66% of companies that have implemented an employee experience improvement policy consider managers as their main channel for listening to employees. This valuable source of information should nevertheless be complemented to obtain a more comprehensive and sometimes more neutral view of employees' aspirations.

Internal surveys and polls are effective ways to assess employee sentiment and identify areas for improvement. Annual surveys are useful for providing a comprehensive overview of the employee experience within your organization. It's also important to conduct regular surveys on specific topics to identify pain points and take quick actions. Additionally, consider implementing specific questionnaires at each key stage of the employee life cycle (onboarding, promotion, offboarding, etc.). Regardless of the format, be sure to include open-ended questions in your surveys and questionnaires. These open-ended questions will allow you to gather essential opinions, ideas, and verbatims to better understand your team's needs. In 2023, according to the Parlons RH Barometer, only 41% of companies have a digital solution to collect "employees' expectations, difficulties, and proposals." However, applications like Microsoft Viva Glint are designed to address this issue.

Several key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used to gain an overall understanding of the quality of the employee experience within your organization. The retention rate is, of course, a meaningful measurement tool for employee experience. If teams resign quickly or in large numbers, actions are necessary. More specific KPIs, such as eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score), are also very useful. Similar to the Net Promoter Score for measuring customer satisfaction, eNPS assesses employees' satisfaction with their employer. The principle is to ask employees to rate the likelihood that they would recommend their company to a friend. Cross-referencing the responses provides an overall score reflecting employees' overall satisfaction with their employer. Tools such as the feedback collection platform Supermood make it easy to measure eNPS.

Identification and Implementation of Concrete and Targeted Actions

Cross-referencing the results obtained through various measurement tools should allow you to assess the overall satisfaction level of your employees. Additionally, the collected verbatims will help you identify specific pain points and concrete actions to improve your staff's experience. Benchmarking against employee experience improvement policies implemented by employers in your sector will also be very useful in identifying proven practices.

Therefore, focus primarily on actions that have the most impact on the quality of the employee experience within your organization. Conducting tests can be useful to verify the relevance of actions before their large-scale deployment. Finally, evaluate the impact of your efforts on employee experience to determine if they are bearing fruit and optimize them accordingly.

An Example of Successful Employee Experience Transformation

Welcome To The Jungle, an online media and recruitment platform, provides a good example of a successful employee experience (EX) transformation. Over the past few years, WTTJ has enhanced its employees' experience through an innovative measure: the 4-day workweek. The goal of this new work organization adopted four years ago was to improve the work-life balance.

As explained by the organization's CEO, Jérémy Clédat, in an article published on WTTJ, this transformation stemmed from his own initiative. Before its implementation, this system was submitted to the vote of employees, 90% of whom said they were in favor of it. A trial phase was then organized, during which the effects on quality of work life and overall performance were observed. Now institutionalized, the 4-day workweek is a strong employer brand argument: 76% of WTTJ's 300 employees state that they would consider the 4-day workweek as a criterion if they were looking for a new job.

Mozzaik365 Solutions to Improve Employee Experience

Improving employee experience does not necessarily require organizational changes as drastic as those implemented by WTTJ. Depending on the challenges in your organization and the needs expressed by your employees, various measures can be considered.

Many workers see their employee experience deteriorate due to outdated and difficult-to-use digital tools. Offering a 100% designed, functional, and secure Digital Workplace (DW) to your employees can be an effective measure to provide them with a better experience in their daily work and during key stages of their journey within your company.

Mozzaik365 offers two solutions designed to enhance employees' digital experience:

Digital Workplace Mozzaik365: This SharePoint extension enables the creation of attractive and functional collaborative intranets that increase individual productivity, streamline internal collaboration, boost internal communication, facilitate knowledge sharing, strengthen company culture, enhance employees' sense of belonging, and ultimately improve the daily employee experience.
MODA by Mozzaik365: This technology is an extension of Microsoft Teams. It allows for the easy creation of custom dashboards within Microsoft Teams to simplify the lives of employees. All the resources employees need to stay informed, organize, communicate, or collaborate are centralized on a single page in Teams. This tool is ideal for successful onboarding of new employees (Onboarding Dashboard) and facilitating the progress of your most complex projects (Project Dashboard).

What is Employee Experience: Key Takeaways

Employee experience is a cornerstone of any company, referring to overall employee satisfaction with their job and employer. Improving employee experience is crucial as it influences talent attraction and retention, productivity, and even customer satisfaction. In 2023, 66% of companies have implemented policies to enhance this experience.

The quality of employee experience depends on various factors such as work-life balance, salary management, corporate culture, career development prospects, and the physical and digital work environment. Critical phases, like onboarding, require special attention.

To identify improvement strategies, an internal audit is necessary. It is vital to identify measures with the most significant impact. In the context of digital transformation, adopting digital tools that facilitate work and provide solutions dedicated to employee well-being can be relevant. The Mozzaik365 Digital Workplace and MODA by Mozzaik365 are examples of such solutions.

FAQ

What is the employee experience?

What is a good employee experience?

1. A precise understanding of company information (values, roles, etc.).
2. Alignment of vision between the company and the employee.
3. Horizontal communication to encourage participation from each employee.
4. A smooth and comprehensive work environment to enhance productivity.

How to define the employee experience?

The employee experience encompasses an individual's perceptions from their arrival to their departure from the company. It integrates the digital aspect (available tools) and the traditional aspect (general atmosphere, growth opportunities, alignment of vision).

Learn more

What are the 4 pillars of the employee experience?

1. Listening to the needs of employees.

2. Implementing smooth and innovative tools.

3. Creating horizontal communication where everyone can be heard.

4. Providing opportunities for growth.