UK 
United States
How much thought have you given to your organisation’s employee experience of late? When was the last time you put yourselves into the shoes of your people and considered what their day-to-day experience of work is like?
Prior to the pandemic, when on-site and office work was at its peak, it was much easier to keep a finger on the pulse of the employee experience. Leadership and people teams could get a read on how employees were feeling, along with the level of collaboration and communication taking place. As a lot of companies continue to allow their staff to work from home at least partially, how can we remain in touch with how they feel and what their experiences are working in remote and hybrid environments?
The Great Resignation is a clear example of what happens when we fail to look at the employee experience from all angles. Employees looking for a new job from 2020 onwards wanted a better work-life balance, more recognition and appreciation, and better communication from their employers. And they were proactive about going out and getting it, creating a challenging environment for a lot of businesses.
Symptoms Of The Employee Experience Crisis
The first step to addressing the employee experience crisis is to understand the symptoms of it. While many employees actively want to continue working remotely in some capacity, without the right support in place they can find themselves struggling to remain engaged, motivated and productive.
Symptoms of a poor employee experience can include:
Isolation and loneliness
High turnover
Digital burnout
Siloed working practices
Work/life imbalance
Solving The Employee Experience Crisis
Make Time For Human Connection
Enabling employees to work from anywhere with the right technology can be incredibly freeing. For many it can cut down on the need for long commutes, allowing employees to spend more quality time with family and friends among other things. But it is a double edged sword, especially when working practices don’t allow your people to connect on a human level with their colleagues.
Making time for these serendipitous moments in both digital and face to face environments is hugely important to fostering positive relationships between teams and colleagues. It is crucial for employee experience and engagement to create a workplace culture that fosters a sense of belonging, with special consideration for employees working remotely or in hybrid roles.
Choose The Right Technology
While technology facilitates many solutions, this does not mean your people require all of the technology all of the time. Over the last few years screentime has shot up for most people across the board, therefore it’s important to be mindful of how digital fatigue and overload can affect employees.
Being intentional about the types of technology your business uses, and in what capacity, is really important to helping your team accomplish their day to day tasks without overwhelming them. Consider what problem the technology needs to solve and how it might affect employee experience before investing blindly in a hundred and one different platforms and systems.
Be Inclusive
If your office operates on a hybrid level, addressing unconscious bias against remote employees can ensure your business remains inclusive. Managers in particular should receive training on how to lead remote and hybrid teams to help them adjust to the change and better support their people when working from anywhere.
It’s also important to remember that being physically present in an office is not a key performance indicator. Instead, use output and results data to evaluate performance and keep in mind that sometimes, even unintentionally, on-site workers might be preferred over their remote counterparts simply because of their visibility.
Champion Flexibility
Improving the employee experience in hybrid working environments all comes down to flexibility. Putting the right support in place for your people will help them improve their emotional, mental and physical health, especially when they feel empowered to strike a work-life balance that suits them.
Many workplaces have bought in hybrid working routines that mandate employees be in the office so many times a week. While this might provide an illusion of flexibility, it perhaps doesn’t go far enough to give employees a real choice over where, when and how they want to work.
Further to this, safeguarding the right to disconnect can help stave off burnout and encourage employees to switch off during their spare time.
Solving The Employee Experience Crisis
The world of work has changed, and we can’t go back. Despite workforces trying to move back to 'old ways of working,' what matters to employees has also changed. Now they want flexibility, more opportunities for remote work and better support for their mental, physical, emotional and financial wellbeing.
With that in mind, creating hybrid employee experiences that allow your people to be flexible in their approach to work in a way that’s centered around their needs, is crucial for retaining and attracting talent, improving employee engagement, and boosting productivity.
Download our new eBook for actionable tips and tricks on how your company can deal with the employee experience crisis here:
