Name: #ReadySetGov: Accelerate your Governance in Microsoft 365
Start: 2022-05-17T11:00:00-04:00
End: 2022-05-19T12:00:00-04:00
Location: Virtual

Promo Video - Solving Tomorrow, Today | The Future of Employee...

Solve for tomorrow's #hybridwork & #remotework challenges by looking at today's #EmployeeExperience and Digital Workplace! Need help? Join us on Thursday at 1:00 PM ET for 3 sessions, each tackling a key area of EX with industry leading experts.

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5 Reasons You Should Enhance the Employee Experience (And 3...

It's no use being sour that hybrid and remote work have stepped into the limelight. After realizing the comfort level that comes with remote work life, employees have put their foot down. While many found and continue to find satisfaction working remotely, a recent report from Buffer stated that 24% of people feel lonely & 17% of people have difficulties collaborating and communicating when working remotely - both signs of struggling employee experience (EX).

Despite the previously stated data from Buffer, employees seem pretty torn on whether they prefer remote or hybrid work. In a separate report from Microsoft, the numbers show that 57% of remote employees want to switch to hybrid, while 51% of hybrid workers want to switch to remote.

Whether your organization is moving toward one or the other, your greatest asset will be a positive employee experience.

This blog aims to reason with the doubters and inform those thirsty for firm numbers on why they should prioritize EX, and how our upcoming event can help guide your efforts.

Solving Tomorrow, Today The Future of Employee Experience Virtual Event — REGISTER

5 Reasons You Should Enhance the Employee Experience Yesterday

While every organization can have various reasons to prioritize EX, here are five shared reasons we think stand out for many organizations.

Our five reasons are:

Priorities Have Shifted
Wasted Time & Money
Better Workplace Relationships Lead To Better Employees
Maximize Employee Performance
The Great Resignation

Here are a few facts to provide some perspective on the five reasons.

Priorities Have Shifted

52% of people in North America are more likely to choose their health and wellbeing after the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/2toLead/status/1519031312501334016

Don't Waste Time & Money

People spend about 1 hour a day searching for or recreating information.

https://twitter.com/2toLead/status/1519393693291233284

Better Workplace Relationships Equal Happier & More Productive Employees

Strong workplace relationships improve overall employee wellbeing, productivity, and retention by roughly 20%!

https://twitter.com/2toLead/status/1521165870680190976

Maximize Employee Performance

50% of surveyed employees with thriving relationships were more productive at work year-over-year, compared to 36% of employees with struggling relationships.

However, only 27% of companies have created new hybrid meeting etiquette to ensure engaged employees that feel included. Better inclusion and engagement combined with wellbeing are essential to improve employee satisfaction.

https://twitter.com/2toLead/status/1520043978313420802

The Great Resignation

CNBC reported that "44% of employees are "job seekers," according to Willis Towers Watson's 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey. Of them, 33% are active job hunters who looked for new work in the fourth quarter of 2021, and 11% planned to look in the first quarter of 2022."

Next Steps to Enhancing Employee Experience

Need help translating the different stages of the employee experience into strong employee communication, collaboration, and management that's adapted for the new norm? Please register for our virtual event happening this Thursday.

The rest of this blog is to help you determine precisely why you should be there.

3 Ways Our EX Event Helps

We could list several reasons to attend our event, but we'd like to respect your time and focus on the following three.

1 - Awards Winners & Award Givers

Hear from industry leading experts! Our event has three guest speakers we are thrilled to have join us.

All speakers at Solving Tomorrow, Today | The Future of Employee Experience

Suzie Robinson (@SuzieRobinson42) and James Robertson (@James_steptwo) are behind various top-tier awards and reports on the digital workplace and employee experience at their respective companies, StepTwo & ClearBox Consulting, leveraged by organizations globally.

We also have two incredible Microsoft MVPs, our CTO, Richard Harbridge, and Visual SP CEO and Founder, Asif Rehmani (@asifrehmani). Asif's company has been helping managers improve the EX with their application for years

2 – Focusing On Key Areas Of EX

Our virtual event is divided into three sessions:

Session 1 is a roundtable discussion on employee communication.
Session 2 is deep dive into employee collaboration.
Session 3 will have a back and forth discussion about employee management.

Whatever area you need to understand better, we're sure to cover it in one of the three sessions. However, we highly recommend watching all three for the complete picture.

3 - Q&A At the End of Each Session

Have you ever wanted to ask leading industry experts a particular question you don't feel ever gets answered? Each session has a block of time dedicated to Q&A, so get your questions ready!

Join Us For Solving Tomorrow, Today | The Future Of Employee Experience

https://youtu.be/XB5BZ5zcMXg

We hope to see you at the event! Register here.

UNLOCK THE POWER OF EX

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Episode 8 | M365 Digital Workplace Updates with Kanwal Khipple

Our CEO and Microsoft MVP, Kanwal Khipple, is back for Episode 8 of M365 Digital Workplace Updates! Take a look at all the amazing Microsoft 365 Digital Workplace Updates that have been released since our last update.

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Amplify Digital Employee Experience by Focusing On People

The Digital Employee Experience is all about going above and beyond to treat your employees like people, not numbers, and leveraging technology to help amplify and facilitate that objective. Since hybrid or fully remote workplaces emphasize the digital environment and de-emphasize the physical environment, there's never been a more important time to invest in digital employee experiences.

Maybe you think looking at the Employee Experience as a people-first experience is intuitively obvious. Or maybe it’s the first time you’re taking a step back from the important distractions that come with managing and maintaining these processes and solutions, to realize and look at the human element. Regardless, helping the humans behind the machines is at the core of a great employee experience and doing right by that is crucial in today’s extremely competitive job market.

Luckily, companies are waking up to the importance of improving employee experience (EX). Why have company alarms started ringing? The people, of course!

52% of people in North America are now more likely to choose their health and wellbeing overwork after the pandemic. Before this, organizations have had to ramp up on a trend that was already gaining momentum pre-pandemic.

Employee Experience Stats - Priorities have shifted

In this blog, we will look at the employee experience through the lens of the people and how Microsoft has reacted to the change and can help.

However, if you’re also looking for insight into where EX is headed and how to keep up effectively, join us for our virtual event with 4 internationally recognized expert-led sessions on employee communication, collaboration, and management.

A Look at the Bigger Picture

It can be easy to focus on strategy but that sometimes accidentally leads to tactics that don’t leave you focusing on the employees you're supposed to enable. And if we look at the image below, we see that there are several points to consider.

We dive deep into modern Employee Experience in our recent blog “What Is Employee Experience & Why It Matters?” which looks at a lot more than what it is, in addition to answering the question.

At the end of that blog, and in our dedicated blog on the Stage of Employee Experience, we map out the path employees take along their journey at an organization.

Improving Employee Experience by understanding the 8 stages

Make sure to put yourself in the shoes of your employees across all of the 8 various stages of the Employee Experience.

Here are some questions for your internal EX think tank:

Does your company match what you are saying to attract new talent?
Does the recruit feel welcome, or do they get left to their own devices?
Did you take the time to ensure they understand your organization's goals and structure?
Are your managers actively engaging with employees in a way that doesn’t feel programmatic, on top of your regular meetings?
Are you setting employee expectations? And if so, do they find them reasonable?
Is the employee given the opportunity to grow in their role and inside your organization?
Do they feel like they are departing from a great experience?
Are you actively looking to understand their reasons for departure?
Have you created a brand ambassador that will always recommend your company?

Those were just some quick questions we hope will help get you started on your path to more unique questions, people in your organization might be experiencing.

We promise that all this work is worth it! Having people at the forefront of your Employee Experience plans is not only beneficial for your employees but for the organization itself. Research from Microsoft’s Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work proves that there are clear benefits to thriving relations within and outside your direct team.

Employee Experience Stats - the impact of strong workplace relationships.

Employee Experience Stats - the impact of strong workplace relationships 2

Strong relationships lead to a more optimistic and happier workforce. Now, it’s up to your organization to deliver. Here to help you do that is Microsoft Viva. But first a couple of short paragraphs on why this matters to Microsoft.

Microsoft Helps Put the People Experience First

Back in 2017, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, released his book titled, “Hit Refresh.” In his book, he discussed increasing synergy between the different departments and solutions at Microsoft. In addition, and among many other things, he discussed his aspirations to improve the future of digital business communication and collaboration.

Last year, on February 4th, after accomplishing many of his goals, Satya took another step forward toward his long-term aspirations. On that day, he said,

"Today, we want to talk about what this means and how we are ensuring every organization will have the technology required to support their employees and to help them thrive in this new era of flexible work."
Satya Nadella @satyanadella

This statement was part of the Microsoft Viva announcement. The new, growing suite of applications is dedicated to improving the future of the employee experience through a more robust digital workplace.

Microsoft Viva Targets the People Behind the Experience

Microsoft offers several ways for employers to increase collaboration across the organization. There are several components to an improved employee experience.

Here are a few are examples:

More learning opportunities
Meaningful work
Employee recognition
Improved communication
Diversity and inclusion
Supportive leadership teams
Growth opportunities

Microsoft Viva is a comprehensive employee experience platform that helps employers improve several of the above points.

The following are the four Viva applications:

Viva Learning
Viva Insights
Viva Topics
Viva Connections

Discover more about each feature application.

Viva Learning

Viva Learning combines learning opportunities into everyday workflows. It allows employers to include learning and development throughout established processes.

It also allows for personalized recommendations. This means employees get a more customized experience and opportunities are based on career path goals, A personal touch can really elevate the employee experience, so try to find the best ways to leverage them.

Viva Learning also allows employers to use content from other sources. You can centralize your entire learning and development process in one hub. This leads to more efficiency and a more organizated digital workplace.

Viva Insights

Viva Insights is focused on promoting productivity and well-being. It uses data-driven insights to make recommendations directly on the platform.

This feature also gives managers and employees a look into personal metrics. Employees can learn better and more effective ways of working with the recommendations. This capability also allows managers to improve the company culture.

It gives insights about teams that provide valuable guidance in decisions.

Viva Topics

Viva Topics is fundamentally a knowledge base for employees, but can do so much with that information. This application organizes content and expertise across the entire company. It makes finding the answer to a question or getting help a fast and easy process.

Viva Topics uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify, sort, and organize content. The employee experience would benefit greatly from this information source.

Viva Connections

Viva Connections promotes transparent communications across the organization. It consolidates news, topics, and conversations into existing technology. Open communications empower, inspire, and engage employees.

Viva Connections is especially beneficial for hybrid or remote work environments. Employees can feel disconnected from team members in a remote setting. By enabling an easy communication platform, the employee experience levels up.

Benefits of Using Microsoft Viva as an Employee Experience Platform

An employee experience platform can connect teams virtually. This is a great solution for companies with hybrid or remote working models. This type of platform integrates many tools and activities.

Viva streamlines employee engagement and processes. The platform offers many features and benefits for employees. Those include:

Enhanced communication
More productivity
Transparent insights
Employee feedback
Goal tracking
Recognize team members
Mindfulness Breaks
Meetings and reminders
Do not disturb

Learn more about each feature below.

Enhanced Communication

Streamlined communications with employees improved the digital employee experience. As discussed above, Microsoft Viva makes communicating with team members easy.

More Productivity

Viva offers actionable and personalized insights. It uses data about how employees work and recommends ways to do it better. This leads to more efficiency and productivity among team members.

Transparent Insights

Employees can see insight into where how they perform. And what areas need improvement. This is especially important when combined with goal tracking.

Employee Feedback

Employee experience platforms enable businesses to gain feedback from employees. This not only helps businesses create a better experience but also increases satisfaction. Stop trying to guess what employees need or want and go directly to the source with this feature.

Goal Tracking

An organization can align its goals and vision with this platform. The insights feature allows companies an inside look at how employees perform. And the relation with overarching goals.

Recognize Team Members

Viva allows others to send praise about other employees. This option is through communication channels or can be sent in a private message. Sending regular praise and recognition will make employees feel more valued and appreciated.

Mindfulness Breaks

Microsoft Viva has mindfulness features. There is an animated breathing break. This allows employees to take a brief moment to reset and refocus.

Viva also has a partnership with Headspace. Headspace offers guided meditations. When people apply mindfulness techniques, the experience will be more memorable.

Meetings and Reminders

Microsoft Viva enables in-app scheduling and reminders. Having lots of different applications or systems to use can impact the experience. Employees can get overwhelmed. Companies can make employee functions streamlined and more efficient with one comprehensive platform.

Do Not Disturb

Viva has a feature for employees to set their status as do not disturb. This will allow them to focus without any distractions. This can be beneficial when there are many emails and chats to respond to throughout the day.

Take the Reins on the Future of Employee Experience

We would love to see you at our upcoming event dedicated to the Future of Employee Experience. Join us for 3 expert-led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future-proof your organization.

REGISTER TODAY

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Improve Employee Experience By Understanding The 8 Stages

Most methodologies frame the cycle needing to represent 7 stages of recruitment, onboarding, engagement, performance, development, and departure. While all are important, two areas many orgs underestimate how much they can influence are the pre-recruitment and post-departure phases of an employee's journey.

We see it as an 8-stage journey based on the importance of those additional or extended stages.

The 8 Stages of the Employee Experience

Focusing on the employee experience can feel like a daunting task when reviewing the many different stages. This blog will help you understand how the different stages impact employee-related business outcomes and how to gain competitive advantages if actioned.

However, suppose you aren't too familiar with employee experience as a concept. In that case, we strongly suggest you read our blog that answers, "What is the employee experience, and why does it matter?"

Still with us? Excellent! Let's dive in.

The following are the 8 stages we will be reviewing. Understanding and improving these stages can lead to a positive employee experience, from beginning to post-departure.

Pre-recruitment or attract
Recruitment or hiring
Onboarding
Engagement
Performance
Development
Departure
Post-Departure or Alumni

Step 1 | Pre-recruitment or attract

This stage in the employee experience is often underestimated, or not enough time and effort is spent. If EX is tackled well, there will be significant benefits to the pre-recruitment or attracting step in an employee's journey. Still, if we forget to engage here, it can lead to missing out on some of the best talents the industry has to offer.

For many companies, when you think of your brand, you think of how it relates to attracting more customers or increasing customer loyalty. In this same way, we need to consider how our brand, purpose, and culture should attract more employees and increase employee loyalty. Workplaces today are highly transparent, especially as it relates to what the employee experience is like within your organization. Internal employee experiences can significantly impact your organization's external reputation and the signals for what your organization stands for make highly valuable talent interested.

Step 2 | Recruitment or hiring

In the recruitment step, the second employee experience stage, it is essential to have an excellent EX that aligns with your cultural environment.

Every hiring process should be clear, engaging, and fair for the new hire. As a result, we need to ensure that the employee experience is supported by transparency, streamlined processes, high manager and peer engagement, and uses objective evaluations that help predict fair expectations and optimal performance and balance out manager bias.

Step 3 | Onboarding

If a train is stopped, it is very easy to get on. However, jumping on a moving train can prove, well, difficult. The same scenario, minus the bumps and bruises, can be applied to organizations. Very few employees typically agree that their organization does a great job of onboarding and the reason is because moving trains are hard to board. Of course, there are ways to improve this but the following number shouldn't surprise you.

Only 12 percent of employees strongly agree that their organizations do a great job onboarding new employees.
Gallup

Successful onboarding employee experiences need to start before the first day of employment. At the same time, onboarding shouldn't end in the first week either. Every onboarding process should engage the employee and shouldn't be focused on one-way communication.

This engaged onboarding should be evident in the employee experience, whether it be helping employees socialize with their team, understanding how the organization functions, or learning its purpose and where their team and contributions fit in.

Step 4 | Engagement

Engagement is how we sustain a vital connection between the employee and their workplace. Employee engagement is about more than making sure employees are satisfied with where they work. Instead, it's about ensuring they have the right conditions to give their best each day, are committed to the organization's goals and values and are motivated to contribute to its success.

This is based on a two-way commitment between the organization and the employee and can often be measured based on employee experience.

When supporting this step of the employee experience, it is important not to emphasize perks over relationships. A manager who is engaged in coaching, keeping the organization accountable, and focusing on the individual's potential and growth all matter far more than workplace perks or programs will.

So, our employee experience investments here have to foster the right outcomes as there are big mistakes companies can make here. The manipulation of an employees' commitments or emotions should be avoided at all costs, as it can lead to employees becoming cynical or disillusioned, leading to poor business performance.

Take a look at this video on how employee engagement has evolved and staying connected in a hybrid world to make sure your approach this stage responsibly.

https://youtu.be/7nnvdDXxFPw

Step 5 | Performance

This is about more than just an annual performance evaluation. Performance evaluation is a core part of the employee experience. It is optimal when done more regularly (at least quarterly), combined and based on informal feedback (for a complete picture), and includes significant praise and recognition. This should be driven by peers and managers.

It should be reflective of individual achievement and a comprehensive review that incorporates impact on others, the impact others have had on them, whether that be team collaboration, organizational impact, or a measure of customer and partner value.

Step 6 | Development

It is easy to think of this step of employee experience being represented by the training offered by an organization. However, improving outcomes in this step of the employee experience require us to think of development more comprehensively.

Employees need to be engaged (a parallel step mentioned earlier), and they need to be able to see a path of growth in the organization. That growth might include job title changes, pay raises, new skills, doing less of what they don't like, working with new people, having more autonomy, and/or more support.

This is often heavily supported through ongoing coaching conversations and led by peers, managers, and business leaders. These ongoing coaching opportunities may take the form of short discussions measured in minutes to deeper and more structured feedback from peers, managers, or self-reviews.

Make sure your on top of corporate communication by understanding how its changed, in our video below.

https://youtu.be/AfwqcaTJXMY

Step 7 | Departure

This stage can be one of the most impactful events in the employee experience. More so, arguably, than any other for the employee. The departure is a great opportunity to have an exiting employee help us understand what the employee experience has been like, how it could be improved, and their perceptions of the organization.

Every exit program always works to meet the needs of an employee being heard, their feedback being actioned, being appreciated for the work they have done, and being seen for the potential they possess. The last item of potential importance, as it leads to a stronger post departure or alumni stage, is ensuring that even if it didn't feel like it was the right fit for either side, the engagement ends on the right foot.

This process can potentially lead to better chances of re-recruitment or positively supporting future recruitment efforts.

Step 8 | Post Departure or Alumni

Each departed employee should be seen as a brand ambassador. They either bolster, harm, or are neutral to your organization's reputation.

Investing in a departed employee's experience is a great way to increase the long term likelihood of them returning or helping positively influence your recruitment efforts to find top talents that align with your organization's culture, purpose, and brand.

As your cultural environment, technology environment, or the physical work environment changes, finding ways to inform these alumni can be extremely valuable. An employee may depart due to one or more of those environments not meeting their needs.

Improve & Understand the Employee Experience with Help From The Experts

Now that you understand the 8 stages of employee experience and its importance, we’re here to help guide you to a better experience. We can help improve employee satisfaction by showcasing solutions for today’s and tomorrow’s employee experience in a series of webinars that have been building to our half-day event.

Webinars On Solving Today’s Employee Experience Challenges

Solving Tomorrow, Today: The Future of Employee Experience (Virtual Event)

3 expert led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future proof your organization.

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

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Don't Make These 3 Microsoft 365 Management Mistakes

Last week we explored 5 mistakes to avoid with Christian Buckley, and today, our very own Richard Harbridge is tackling another 3 #Microsoft365Management mistakes he's encountered frequently.

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Avoid These 5 Microsoft 365 Management Mistakes with 10X...

Microsoft RD and 10X MVP, Christian Buckley, spends most of his time as the Brand Alliance Director for AvePoint. Today, and in our upcoming webinar (link below), he joins us to review 5 Microsoft 365 management mistakes he often sees.

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A Look At The Top 3 Questions

While we intend to take a deeper look at these particular questions and more in an upcoming webinar, we thought it would be interesting to share a few of the incorrect responses or assumptions we see, and highlight why answering questions like these the right way matters.

https://youtu.be/nMllQXuGY8M

Watch Richard and fellow MVP, Christian Buckley in our on-demand webinar.

1. How do organizations keep pace with Microsoft?

One mistake we see organizations make is assuming there can be a 'primary manager' or admin for Microsoft 365. It's important to remember that Microsoft 365 is a suite of apps and services designed and evolving to meet ever-changing business needs. The work and domain expertise involved in managing employee experiences, collaboration, communication, process automation, work management, business insights/analytics, knowledge management, digital learning, and productivity is more significant than anyone can ever manage alone.

Having an office 365 admin is necessary but insufficient if there aren't support systems, specialists, vendors, and stakeholders engaged and involved. Since the scale and breadth of Microsoft 365 is so large each application or service has its own set of governance and management considerations. While you can pattern across these apps and services such as how you plan on tackling the provisioning of digital spaces such as SharePoint sites, Microsoft Teams and Yammer communities even that becomes more complicated as Microsoft release Shared Channels and Microsoft Loop this year.

2. How do organizations keep up with industry and organization change?

Every organization changes over time. Sometimes in significant ways, such as when mergers and acquisitions occur, and sometimes in subtle ways as customers, partners, or employees tackle problems better and more efficiently. The biggest challenge to Microsoft 365 is when we don't adapt our digital workplace implementations, the configuration of our apps and services, or change user behaviors to proactively or effectively meet the changing demands in time.

A simple example of this could be an organization with legacy technology investments holding up organizational agility and delaying the transformation to a better experience in Microsoft 365. Instead of migrating and optimizing content simultaneously (leading to significantly longer migration project durations and more risk of scope creep), it is often more cost-effective and vital to migrate as soon as possible and optimize in Microsoft 365 itself.

Better Office 365 management tools, easier ways to restructure and optimize content, richer content insights, and content automation capabilities available in Microsoft 365 accelerate the work and costs involved in improving how people work with content. By migrating first and optimizing second, we can ensure ROI is achieved faster by enabling these modern experiences for more people and more work scenarios sooner.

3. How should organizations best approach multi-cloud and multi-tenant challenges?

This one may be surprising to some, but it shouldn't be. Today more than 90% of enterprise customers have a multi-cloud strategy. But those same customers are challenged with protecting data and providing integrated experiences across clouds and platforms.

An easy mistake to avoid is assuming that Microsoft 365 isn't designed to support multi-cloud enterprise organizations. There are pathways to better multi-cloud and multi-tenant experiences for customers with significant Microsoft 365 investments across logical and differentiated business lines.

There are plenty of investments on the front-end with a wide array of connectors and connections, including Microsoft Search connectors, Microsoft Teams connectors, Power Automate connectors, and Microsoft Viva (in connections dashboards and feeds or learning and insights) to name a few.

These investments aren't limited to end-user or employee experiences. These investments include complimentary ones on the 'back end' in Azure such as Azure Arc for multi-cloud infrastructure to ones that enable you to remain in compliance with Microsoft 365 data connectors that can import third-party data to ensure that your organization's non-Microsoft data complies with the regulations standards that affect your organization.

A Thorough Look At The Biggest Microsoft 365 Management Mistakes

There is so much to know and understand related to Microsoft 365 administration, but exploring the answers to questions is always valuable and can provide new perspectives.

Take a look at what Microsoft RD + MVP and Brand Alliance Director at AvePoint, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), had to briefly say about Microsoft 365 management, before our webinar.

https://youtu.be/wf8w4_Mhlho

Watch Richard and fellow MVP, Christian Buckley in our on-demand webinar.

Do you want to see Richard (@rharbridge) and Christian in an information filled webinar on Microsoft 365 Management? Watch our on-demand webinar.

AVOID THE BIGGEST MISTAKES

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What Is The Employee Experience & Why It Matters

92% of employers have identified that enhancing the employee experience is an important priority and plan to improve employee experiences within the next three years. So, with so many organizations prioritizing EX, it is essential to understand what is employee experience, why it matters, and how it impacts an organization.

In this blog, we will help you understand:

What Is Employee Experience?
Key Aspects or Environments of a Great Employee Experience
Why Is Digital Employee Experience So Important?
Benefits of a Good Employee Experience
How To Measure the Success of Employee Experience Initiatives
8 Stages of the Employee Experience

If you're looking for examples around the employee experience, watch our recent webinars or register for our upcoming webinar and virtual half-day event.

What Is Employee Experience?

Employee experience relates to the impact a workplace has on an employee. The experience is made up of every touchpoint and interaction an employee has in an organization. This can range from human interactions to how a system works.

Employee experience encompasses several aspects. Some include:

How an employee feels
Employee perception
Employee well-being
Impact of the organization on an employee's life

Employees have more expectations of employers than ever before. An employee wants to be engaged and feel like their job makes an impact and that an organization values them. They also desire career progression and development opportunities.

The employee experience is more important than ever for employers to consider. Today, employers are competing for employees more than ever before, and employees are rethinking what they should expect from their employers.

Luckily, companies are waking up and prioritizing the employee experience more than ever.

"… we're seeing a "great EX awakening" — one that has 92% of organizations prioritizing EX enhancements over the next three years. This figure is up from 52% prior to the pandemic."
- 2021 Employee Experience Survey Highlights - WTW (wtwco.com)

Key Aspects or Environments of a Great Employee Experience

So, how do you create a great employee experience? What steps are needed to adjust operations to incorporate an employee experience strategy? In his book "The Employee Experience Advantage," Jacob Morgan has led the way with great explanations for how these interwoven and reinforcing environments might be broken down, so let's use that as our foundation.

The three environments that impact every employee experience from The Employee Experience Advantage. — "The Employee Experience Advantage," Jacob Morgan

Businesses should focus on three main areas or environments that impact employee experience:

Cultural
Technological
Physical

When we approach employee experience, it's important to consider what we can change and influence. At the end of the day, an organization is responsible for improving the work environment so that employees can have the best experience. These environments are interwoven and all-important, but with the continued shift towards hybrid work, the importance of a physical workplace environment has decreased, and the importance of cultural and technological advantage has become more evident.

Cultural

Company culture is how connected teams feel within an organization. Culture also represents how employees feel about the company and how customers perceive a business. A great, positive culture can create a great reputation for a business.

Culture is grounded in shared values, visible in day-to-day practices, exemplified by words of leaders and managers, and actuated in the organization's processes and structure - the "vibe" of the workplace.

Companies should create a culture around making employees feel valued and appreciated, which will go a long way in developing a better employee experience. Employers should align the organizational vision and experience strategy with cultural values. Doing this the right way can impact motivation, performance, and satisfaction.

The problem with the cultural environment is that many see it as largely intangible, and thereby while it can influence employee experience, it can be harder to action.

Technology Or Digital

Technology and tools make work easier in most industries. It's just a fact. So, companies should think of how digital enhancements will impact their employees and improve the employee experience.

Technological environments that impact the employee experience include technologies like hardware and software, but it also sometimes includes technologies represented as methodologies such as Agile.

Technological or digital advancements will streamline operations and make employees more efficient. Leveraging technology will also improve productivity. Employees can worry less about mundane tasks and more about the important, revenue-generating duties.

Tackling the technology or digital employee experience can be done by thinking about it as a set of complementary digital experiences working together. Each requires effective software, services, and systems to improve the employee experience.

When we consider the technological environment, we break this down into three key categories of digital employee experience:

Employee Communication Experiences – The digital experiences employees have when interfacing with organizational communication, such as Intranets or how they access, navigate, search, discover, and find the knowledge or content they need.
Employee Collaboration Experiences – The digital experiences employees have when interfacing with teams, groups, and communities within (and without) the organization. This also includes how employees connect, network, and work together.
Employee Management Experiences – The digital experiences employers, managers, leaders, and employees use to manage themselves, their teams, their groups or their communities. This is one of the biggest areas undergoing considerable acceleration on the digital side today.

The three environments that impact every employee experience with our focus area callout. — "The Employee Experience Advantage," Jacob Morgan

As a brief example, consider how the hybrid work experience is multi-faceted with communication, collaboration and management, all having different digital tools and ways they impact or enhance culture and the physical environment.

The modern intelligent Intranet may be a great example of a critical communications experience for hybrid employees to get what they need to be effective remotely while feeling engaged and connected.
Collaboration may be greater in volume, velocity, and variety and require better experiences that make meetings more effective and help with the collaboration leading up to and after the meetings.
Lastly, employee management may require new experiences that help employees manage their work-life balance. Managers understand where they may be losing touch, or organizations where they can pro-actively nudge and improve outcomes, all with digital tools that use our work data to inform us on how we can improve.

Physical

Historically, the office environment was where organizations had the greatest degree of control. Now, for many organizations, that has now changed as work environments do not have to be in an office any longer. The COVID-19 pandemic proved many companies could easily move to a remote or hybrid model and employers and employees took note.

When companies allow employees more flexibility in working, a greater experience is created. If working at an office is a must, employers should make sure the environment is positive and allows for efficiency. Transitions into hotelling and collaborative spaces that provide an experience that complements a hybrid or remote workforce are especially important today.

Employees take note of employers who also work to improve employee home working environments or physical environments they work in. From ergonomic consulting to perk/purchase programs to provide employees the hardware, furniture, or assets they need even when working remotely, employees have their eyes open.

Why Is Digital Employee Experience So Important?

We elaborated on the digital employee experience the most above because today, it is where the most significant and accessible change is made possible. Cultural environments are as important as ever, and the emphasis on physical environments has transitioned towards greater emphasis on digital environments.

What's more, the marketplace has accelerated offerings and capabilities in this space tremendously over the past few years.

A great employee experience in a digital environment is empowering. Employees with positive experiences are more likely to stay loyal to a company. When an organization uses a remote or hybrid model of work, having an effective digital employee experience platform is a must if you expect engaged employees.

Remote work can leave employees feeling disconnected if not done correctly. Businesses can mitigate this with a digital workplace focused on culture and collaboration.

Employees want meaningful work with a purpose. And the impact of employee experience can make or break an organization. Those will bad experiences have higher turnover and less productivity.

Benefits Of A Good Employee Experience

A great employee experience benefits not only workers but also the organization. Engaged and satisfied employees are more productive and happier to be at work.

Key benefits include:

Increased performance
Higher engagement
Lower absentee rates
Greater employee satisfaction
Higher quality work

You can learn more about each of these benefits below.

Increased Performance

Satisfied and happy employees tend to be more productive. And higher productivity leads to better performance. Employees are a key aspect of a successful organization, so creating a positive experience for them is vital.

Higher Engagement

When employees have the systems and tools to make their jobs easier, they will have higher engagement ratings. When employees are engaged, performance will increase and improve.

Lower Absentee Rates

Absenteeism rates are higher when an employee really dislikes a work environment or culture. Companies can mitigate this problem by focusing the entire culture on a great employee experience.

Greater Employee Satisfaction

Engaged and happy employees are satisfied. Satisfaction increases when workers don't have to struggle to do their jobs due to ineffective systems. And when the culture focuses on them as individuals, satisfaction increases.

Higher Quality Work

When you add all of this together, you get higher-quality work. When employees are happy with their jobs, the quality of their work increases alongside their happiness.

How To Measure the Success of Employee Experience Initiatives

Employers should consider a few different aspects of an employee's experience. To get a clear picture, companies have to look at all activities. When assessing the success of a business's initiatives, consider the following:

Well-being
Connection
Focus
Empowerment
Growth opportunities
Purpose

Are employees impacted positively in all these areas? Do they understand their purpose within the organization? That's the first step to driving success across the other areas.

Basic Trends For A Positive Employee Experience

Leaders should have a strong strategy and employee experience management practices. There are several ways to strengthen employee experience across an organization. Those include:

Being empathetic
Flexible working options
Employee feedback
Better culture
More learning opportunities
Offer a sense of belonging

Discover the impact on employee experience for each of these components below.

Being Empathetic

A little empathy can go a long way with employees. Consider the employee experience from an employee's perspective. A lot of employees leave organizations due to management teams without empathy.

So, be authentic. Think of employees as human beings with lives outside of work. And add a personal touch when communicating with workers.

Flexible Working Options

As discussed above, workers want flexibility. If possible, add this to your working model. Remote options make employees happier and more productive.

Employee Feedback

Before deciding on how to improve the employee experience, ask employees what they'd like to see changed. Going straight to the source before making changes will save time and money. And experiences will improve because you'll be resolving specific concerns.

Better Culture

Also discussed above, a better culture focused on valuing employees is an important step. Small changes to the company culture can go a long way in improving employee experiences.

More Learning Opportunities

Employees want to grow and advance in their careers. Offering more learning opportunities enables employees to strengthen their skills. This leads to a better experience.

Allow management teams to discuss career paths and give employees the time and resources needed to meet their goals is a must.

A Sense of Belonging

Employees want to understand their purpose in the organization. And feel like they belong. Creating a culture focused on value and collaboration will help employees feel a sense of belonging.

Identifying the 8 Stages of the Employee Experience

There are several ways to improve employee experience with a few simple tweaks to existing processes. When considering how to best approach employee experience, it is important to look at the entire employee experience cycle.

Most methodologies frame the cycle needing to represent seven stages of recruitment, onboarding, engagement, performance, development, and departure. Two areas many orgs underestimate how much influence they have on are the pre-recruitment and post-departure phases of an employee's journey.

We see it as an 8-stage journey based on the importance of those additional or extended stages.

The 8 stages of an employee lifecycle include:

Pre-recruitment or attract
Recruitment or hiring
Onboarding
Engagement
Performance
Development
Departure
Post Departure or Alumni

Keep a lookout for our blogs dedicated to tips on improving the employee experience based on each stage of the journey and another dedicated to the employee experience framework.

Improve & Understand the Employee Experience with Help From The Experts

Now that you understand digital employee experience and its importance, we're here to help guide you to a better experience. We can help you navigate to better EX by showcasing solutions for today's and tomorrow's employee experience in our webinar series that has been building to our half-day event.

Webinars On Solving Today's Employee Experience Challenges

Solving Tomorrow, Today: The Future of Employee Experience (Virtual Event)

3 expert led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future proof your organization.

REGISTER TO OUR VIRTUAL EVENT

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