Employee experience is paramount in the era of the employee

Khadim Batti emphasises why employee experience is so important.

By and large, it is accepted that customer experience now ranks alongside the price and the product as the biggest factors that influence a consumer purchase decision.

But experience, as an intangible requirement, isn’t limited just to consumer lifecycles. Specifically when it comes to millennials, experience is a requirement that has pervaded other aspects of their life, most commonly when they are at their places of work.

The need for an always improving customer experience is fuelled by ever rising customer expectations. Customer expectations themselves are rising at a frenetic pace because consumers realize that they hold sway in the age of the customer and amidst heavy competition. 

But, what’s that got to do with employees? Let’s join the dots.

The need for an always improving customer experience is fuelled by ever rising customer expectations. 

The era of the employee

This surely is the age of the customer but it might as well be the era of the employee. Organisations are increasingly discovering that finding talent with the right fit is harder than ever to scout. Even when they do find the right talent, the candidate already has other offers in hand and is spoilt for choice.

Low supply means higher demand and consequently higher price. That’s how the talent market is right now. And this competition is only going to heat up as we step into the future.

Which is why directing more efforts into retaining existing talent makes much more sense than hiring new employees all the time. Like customer success teams are now focusing on retaining customers, organisations need to form employee success teams to optimise talent retention.

This is the era of the employee because, just like customers, employees have the power to demand and expect. Interestingly, what customers and employees demand and expect is strikingly similar.

Customer expectations are largely similar to employee expectations

The overarching impact of the customer expectation and experience-driven B2C market is that people’s behaviour as consumers is highly influencing their lives as employees. At the end of the day, they are the same people. 

So, what are customer expectations? Broadly:

  1. They want a solid customer experience.
  2. They expect to be provided with a great product and excellent customer service.
  3. They expect to be valued and appreciated by the organisation they deal with.
  4. They want a product with a low price too.

That’s similar to what employees have come to expect from their employers. Spoilt for choice, how would a candidate choose an organisation? He or she would choose the company that would provide:

  1. The best work profile and scope for growth.
  2. The best work environment and facilities.
  3. The best scope for learning and development.
  4. Of course, money matters too.

Candidates can get a fair idea about all of this from Glassdoor. No matter how many different criteria a candidate has, what he or she is looking for is the company with the best employee experience. The employee experience encompasses all these expectations that employees have.  

It is no coincidence that a 2016 study on employee engagement found that companies which do customer experience well have 1.5 times more engaged employees. It goes without saying that engaged employees are having a good experience.

This piece will be concluded next week.

 

About the author

Khadim Batti is the co-founder and CEO of Whatfix, an SaaS-based performance support platform.

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