The upheaval caused by COVID-19 and a year spent shifting operations to function remotely has led to many challenges for businesses. The logistics of managing an online-only or predominantly virtual team, for example, are overwhelming even on the best of days.
Unfortunately, some of the first elements to fall by the wayside in the turmoil impact the employee experience. The overall employee journey is vital to the satisfaction and engagement of workforces across industries, and adapting the experience to suit the “new normal” sweeping through the business world is critical to long-term corporate health.
Let’s look at some tips to shape the employee journey even during uncertain times.
Look to Your Customer Experience for Guidance
Many businesses invest quite a bit of time and effort into their customer experience guidelines. This often includes carefully crafting an experience conducive to customer satisfaction at every touchpoint along the buying process. Employees, however, rarely receive the same consideration. Not only does this discourage your workforce, but it can also have a direct impact upon your customers’ experience as they interact with your staff.
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To develop a thoughtful and effective employee experience, look to customer journey maps for inspiration. Understand what works and how it can be applied to your workforce. Identify touch points, your message and communication across them and try to alleviate pain points in workflow the same way you would obstacles in a buyer’s journey.
Embrace Flexibility
Not all employees thrive under the same circumstances. Rewards and ongoing learning opportunities might work for one individual, but actively impede another’s professional development. Creating an employee journey with plenty of supervisor observation built in is an important step that offers truly customized experiences that play to a worker’s strength.
The same can be said of schedules, particularly after many teams spent the majority of 2020 working from home. Consider embracing flexible schedules as part of everyday office policy. Recognizing the different needs of human beings will go a long way toward improving the employee experience and engagement, thus fueling a more productive and motivated journey for the employees involved.
Create a Branded Customer Journey
If your employees embody certain values when interacting with your customers, they should receive that courtesy in turn from the organization. This is along the same lines as following your customer experience guidelines when creating an employee journey plan. While customers should undoubtedly be treated with respect, the workforce that is responsible for building and maintaining customer relationships, be it via direct contact or through quality work, deserve just as much attention.
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Use corporate values and your brand story to craft the employee journey and create something that relies upon the same values you show to customers. This will lend additional to credibility to your employer brand overall company identity and values that are seen both internally and externally.
Build a Future-Proof Plan
It is not enough to simply continue with your current employee journey design. The world has changed and businesses must react accordingly in order to retain talent among growing competition for remote workers. Take an offensive approach with technology integration and remote offices in your new employee journey plan to avoid facing an outdated design later on.
The employee journey is an often-ignored element of worker satisfaction, but it can impact how your employees feel about their work and, in turn, how they interact with customers. Taking smart steps today to create a modern employee experience will save corporations much frustration in the future.
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