Let’s suppose one of your employees appeared on the game show Family Feud. Host Steve Harvey prompts one of your people with this:
“Name something your employer does to make you feel valued, other than a paycheck.”
What would he or she say?
How do you know?
Are you sure?
Culture counts
First things first: your culture matters – maybe more than you already think. Your culture strongly influences the employee experience of every person in your workforce.
Did you know that 25% of employees will leave a job for a different culture? Or that 60% value culture over salary? If you don’t have a culture that makes your employees feel valued, you could be losing key players, even if you’re doing everything else right.
But again, how do you know?
Survey says …
The most straightforward way to learn whether your employees feel valued is, naturally, to ask them. But ineffective surveys can be a time suck, and if you’re using paper or email surveys, or even outdated HCM tech, you know exactly what I mean.
Your employees should be able to easily and quickly complete survey questions – ideally in a self-service tool with which they already are familiar. (Identify more best practices in this white paper on employee surveys.)
Ask away
Anonymously survey your workforce on their employee experience to see if they hold the same view of it that leadership does. Consider including an exit survey as part of your offboarding process to identify cultural issues that might be prompting high turnover – and use this in addition to an exit interview, not instead of one. Even better, ask them these questions before they leave through stay surveys.
Ask employees what specifically motivates them. What helps them do their best work? Do they have suggestions for improvements? While you may not be able to implement all of their suggestions, make sure they know you’ve heard their requests – and address them whenever possible, to bolster that two-way communication you’re building.
The employee experience
Ultimately, you can use those survey results as a pulse check on the current employee experience to identify areas for improvement and provide valuable feedback and analysis to your company’s leadership team.
Let’s take it back to Steve Harvey: You’d likely see technology, workspace and culture up on that Family Feud board, as those are significant drivers of the employee experience.
However, it’s not really about Ping-Pong tables and nap pods; it’s about the bottom line. Research has shown that when companies invest in a dynamic employee experience, they can see four times higher profits and 40% lower turnover.
Learn more about the employee experience, and why it matters, in our free infographic.