If you’re not investing in an employee experience program, chances are it’s hurting your business. While studies show that up to 80 percent of leaders recognize the importance of such programs, it’s estimated that only about 22 percent of them rate their firm’s employee experience as “excellent.”
Yet, it’s estimated that businesses are investing an average of $2,420 per employee in improving the overall experience, yet only a small fraction are saying the efforts are fully paying off. It should be the goal of any firm to ensure that any investment in employee experience more than pays off. In this piece, we’ll cover why a good employee experience program is so important – not just in attracting and retaining talent, but also as it pertains to the overall success of the business. Read on to learn more:
Image by peoplecreations on Freepik
What’s an Employee Experience Program?
The goal of any for-profit business shouldn’t just be hitting financial goals and increasing revenue year after year, but having the best employees in place in order to ensure that these goals are able to be met. It’s easier said than done. In times of economic growth, people often have choices about where they want to work. And when they are able to choose their employer, it’s only natural for people to look beyond salary and at various other value-added benefits that an employer may be able to offer – benefits such as company reputation, how leadership is perceived, relationships with superiors, the role of technology and innovation in the workplace and more. That’s where it can pay – literally – to have a robust employee experience program in place.
Just think of an employee experience program as everything beyond a position’s salary and benefits, but the intangibles when it comes to the workplace. And while a robust employee experience program can help attract top talent, its importance is arguably just as significant – if not even more significant – in retaining people.
Benefits of Robust Employee Experience Programs
In addition to attracting and retaining talent, there are a number of other benefits associated with a robust employee experience program. These include:
- More satisfied employees
- Reduced turnover
- Productivity gains
- Improved quality of products or services
- Cost savings
But perhaps the biggest benefit of an employee experience program has to do with how a firm’s Human Resources department anticipates and reacts to a changing work environment. Good employee experience programs adapt and evolve over time by regularly surveying the workforce and getting feedback from the people who are impacted most. By analyzing this feedback and interpreting the results, any changes can be anticipated and then made to ensure morale remains high.
Employee Experience Programs and Profitability: What You Need to Know
As we said in the beginning, if you’re not investing in an employee experience program, it’s likely to cost you.
Consider this: It’s estimated that employers spend up to 33 percent of a worker’s total salary to replace just one employee – and that’s a low estimate. Other surveys have reported that the cost can add up to anywhere from 75 percent to 200 percent of an employee’s salary. Any efforts to curb employee turnover are certainly going to result in cost savings.
Yet, as we noted earlier, there are also productivity gains that stem from a robust employee experience program. In fact, in a study on employee experience programs, Harvard Business Review (HBR) found a direct correlation between the programs and company revenue. Specifically, HBR discovered how metrics like employee longevity, skill level and more impact financials based on performance. In some cases, profits increase by up to 150 percent if a business can move from the bottom quartile to the top quartile in terms of investment in employee experience. We shouldn’t need to tell you how significant that is – and it doesn’t necessarily have to consist of making the jump from the bottom to the top all at once. Even incremental improvements in various identified metrics can help give way to big gains.
It’s important to note that building a good employee experience program doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in increments over time. And if your Human Resources department doesn’t have the capacity or the experience to handle this type of task internally, know that there are others that do. By working with employee experience consultants, you can help put your company on the path to improved employee satisfaction and increased profits. Employee experience experts will take the time to understand your business and its goals and then develop a robust plan to meet them. They’ll also develop a plan to regularly check in with employees to ensure any efforts are still being met.
In today’s business climate, your firm can’t afford to not invest in an effective employee experience program.
Leave A Comment