What is employee experience? Download Ciphr's report to find out

In order to move the dial on ‘moments that matter’, we need to start by understanding employee experience. Too often, organisations focus exclusively on engagement without taking the full employee experience into account. By understanding and measuring employee experience, we can create a better work environment for everyone. Here are some key points from Ciphr’s new white paper, Employee experience: moving the dial on moments that matter, which is available to download now.  

What is employee experience?  

Employee experience is the journey an employee has with a company from the time they’re recruited to when they leave. It’s everything that happens to them during their time at the organisation, including their interactions with co-workers, managers, and leadership.  

Research from McKinsey shows that people who report having a positive employee experience have 16 times the engagement level of employees who have a negative experience, and are eight times more likely to want to stay with their employer. It’s clear that feeling a connection to an employer is everything.  

Employee experience matters to organisations because it helps to improve employee engagement, motivation, and productivity. Improving employee experience can be a key driver of organisational success. So how do you create a positive employee experience? It starts with understanding what your employees want and need. 

What do employees want?  

To create a positive employee experience, you need to understand what your employees want. Do they want more flexible hours? Remote work options? Or better benefits? Once you know what they want, you can start to put systems in place to make it happen.  

It’s also important to keep in mind that employees’ wants will change over time. For instance, millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) are said to place a high importance on work/life balance and are more likely to job-hop than previous generations. As such, you need to regularly check in with your employees to see what their needs are.   

‘Moments that matter’ are certain touchpoints across the employee lifecycle that have an impact on someone’s engagement or likelihood of leaving. They are points during an individual’s working day, year or career that shape their view of an organisation and their role within it. Understanding and responding to what is going on across these elements of work life, in connection with those moments that matter, is how organisations can begin to build a great employee experience.  

When discussing employee experience, analyst company Gartner has described them as the ‘moments that matter’ – the points during an individual’s working day, year or career that shape their view of an organisation and their role within it. 

Some examples of these moments might be: 

• Seeing a job advertisement for your company
• Applying for a role via a careers portal or LinkedIn 
• How seamless the onboarding process is 
• Whether a manager is available to answer a question 
• What happens if your digital tools don’t work 
• How HR deals with a complaint
• Whether suggestions are acted upon 
• Applying for promotion 
• Being offered training support towards a new career goal 
• Attending an exit interview 
• Being part of an alumni network for employees 

The shift to hybrid working 

As organisations around the world continue to grapple with the ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic, many are reassessing their workplace policies and procedures. For some, this has meant a shift to remote work; for others, it has meant a return to the office with strict social distancing guidelines in place. And for many organisations, the answer lies somewhere in between—a hybrid model of working that combines both remote and on-site work. With employees working from different locations and at different hours, how can employers measure employee experience?  

If your company uses HR software such as Ciphr HR, there’s a good chance it already collects data on employee satisfaction and engagement. This data can be used to measure employee experience in a hybrid working environment. Simply compare pre-pandemic data with post-pandemic data to see if there has been a change in employee satisfaction levels. 

How to move the dial on moments that matter 

We’ve commissioned a new report to define employee experience in today’s labour market, how it differs from employee engagement, how you can measure it, and the role of digital tools in making it better. Our white paper, Employee experience: moving the dial on moments that matter, discusses: 

• How to gauge the experiences of your employees  
• The role of technology in building employee experience  
• Effective employee experience interventions  

Over the course of this white paper, we define employee experience in today’s labour market, how it differs from employee engagement, how you can measure it, and the role of digital tools in making it better. What we won’t tell you, however, is how technology can fix a negative experience or create a positive experience from scratch – it can only ever be an enabler. 

Download your free copy now. 

We’ve also recorded a webinar in celebration of the report where we share:  

• How to define ‘employee experience’: what are the moments that matter? 
• Measuring your employees’ experience at work 
• Technology’s impact on the employee experience 
• How Ciphr Connect can help you focus on EX 

Watch a recording of the webinar here.