Introducing the Employee Experience Lifecycle
Why does employee experience matter?
We’ve all experienced great customer service at some point. And we’ve all experienced poor customer service. At the end of each of these experiences, how do you feel? If we’re talking about a brand or retail store, does the experience impact your desire to shop with them again?
Experience matters. A lot.
If you’re a manager or in HR, who are your customers? They’re your employees and job candidates, right? And how is the overall experience for them? It matters, because providing a great candidate experience gets you better hires, and providing a great employee experience keeps people engaged and boosts retention (so you don’t have to go out recruiting and hiring again so soon).
I’ve spent most of my career developing people practices as a corporate HR leader. As we looked at the root of candidate and employee experience, we realized that while each company is unique, the employee experience—and HR’s role in supporting those experiences—has commonalities across all organizations.
At Bright Talent, we use the term “employee experience” to describe the arc of a person’s journey with a company. It starts with candidate experience and involves all the communications and interactions that take place between your company and every individual who works for you. It involves processes, certainly, but it’s a lot more than that. Employee experience is rooted in human connection. At its best, it is the result of a well-crafted ecosystem of processes and people that work synergistically to create opportunity for every employee. It fosters not only career growth, but also feelings of alignment, belonging and commitment to the work and the company. And, ultimately, when it’s done well, employee experience drives productivity, revenues and employee retention.
To help our clients better understand this interconnected ecosystem, we have developed the Employee Experience Lifecycle model to visualize the candidate and employee journey from two perspectives: the employee and the company.
Above the line is the employee journey
We’re recruited, then hired and on boarded, then engaged and developed. Hopefully we’re retained. Then, when we’re ready for the next step in our careers, we move to exit.
Throughout this process we are giving and taking in a symbiotic relationship… with co-workers, managers and likeminded people at work who are on this lifecycle journey with us.
We invest our energy and time into producing work for the company and in return we’re rewarded with compensation and development, friendships and successes. In the best of times, we’re growing together, and in challenging times we’re learning to navigate to the next growth period. All the while, we’re creating shared opportunities and experiences — until we’re ready to take our skills and expertise to another organization.
Below the line is the company’s ecosystem developed to support the employee experience.
As we look at this a little more closely, think of the employee experience as the result of the company ecosystem working together.
Workforce planning is the starting point…who are we hiring? We source and recruit, then interview and select, on board and integrate into our organization. Along the way we set expectations and compensate with total rewards, we provide opportunities for personal and professional development and foster a sense of belonging. We care for our employees and help them build their resilience. We also set boundaries and put processes in place to handle difficult matters that inevitably come up. And, when it’s time, we offer a dignified exit, whether it be voluntary or involuntary.
This ecosystem provides direction for how you communicate with your employees. It establishes your employment value proposition and culture. And all of this translates to your employment brand – how your company is viewed by candidates, employees and former employees who have the opportunity to cast light, or shade, on your reputation based on those experiences.
Let’s look at an example from the candidate/hiring side… If you ghosted candidates in the past – that is, your company didn’t respond, or responded poorly, to job inquiries or applications during periods when you had far more candidates than job openings — you can expect this to reflect on your employment brand. People remember how they were treated, and when it’s an employee’s market, they’ll “shop around” before they even consider applying with you again. And it could very well result in those potential candidates ghosting you. I wrote about this timely issue in my HR.com article: Are Candidates Ghosting You?
When we look at the Lifecycle in terms of the new hire, the experiences of those first weeks of onboarding and months on the job can set the tone for the employee’s entire experience at the company. It helps them decide if this is a company they might want to work for long-term or if it’s a tolerable landing pad as they continue to look for a better position. If an employee doesn’t feel committed early on, it’s a lot harder to win that commitment later.
Of course, much of an employee’s experience at your company depends on their job, their skills and qualifications, their growth path, etc. The Lifecycle looks at how well you are supporting them as they engage with their team and their work. Going through the Lifecycle you’ll want to ask questions like:
Have your company and your managers set appropriate expectations?
Are you creating a learning culture with a growth mindset?
Are you making sure employees are feeling rewarded for their work (these can be extrinsic rewards like pay and bonuses, but they also include intrinsic rewards: how valued and appreciated an employee feels has a direct impact on their productivity and their desire to remain with your company.
In our other articles in this series, we’ll be exploring the Employee Experience Lifecycle in a bit more depth, looking at the three main areas: Attraction, Engagement and Retention.
If you’d like to learn more about how we help HR leaders and their teams, please give us a call or shoot over an email. We can help you with the right expert to solve your current challenges on an interim, outsource, or project basis.
We look forward to hearing from you!