How a Great Employee Experience Drives Business Performance Growth

As part of Solutions Review’s Premium Content Series—a collection of contributed articles written by industry experts in enterprise software categories—Jesse Liszka, the Senior Communications Specialist at Paylocity, explains how an employee experience can drive business performance growth.

Companies seldom consider employee experience vital when drafting strategies to drive business value. Instead, they tend to focus more on the customer-facing aspects. Admittedly, customer experience is a proven factor in a business’s growth. But employee experience is equally crucial to get the best results. The benefits of a great employee experience go beyond merely having a pleasant workspace.

There are numerous reasons why employee experience matters. For example, a Gallup study showed that work units with higher employee engagement had 21 percent higher profit. An engaged workforce comes from an excellent working experience. Here, we’ll examine how employee experience drives business performance and its impact on growth.

What is Employee Experience All About? 

Employee experience is a broad concept sharing several similarities with customer experience. But simply swapping “Customer” for “Employee” in the customer experience definition won’t fully explain what employee experience is all about. 

Generally, people think employee experience is only about concepts about workers and the execution of their responsibilities in the workplace. While true, the idea extends further to include everything an individual encounters when working for you.

Employee experience includes staff lifecycle, workplace, and identity management. It also involves integrating the organizational culture, engaging employees in what truly matters, and appreciating your staff’s efforts. Primarily, you should consider employee experience encompassing the worker’s role, job relationships, interactions, remunerations, communications, and job satisfaction.

Take care not to mistake employee engagement for employee experience. While both terms fundamentally point to the same concept, they aren’t the same. Employee experience is the total of the worker’s encounters, exposures, performance, and accrued knowledge throughout their work within a company. Conversely, employee engagement is an immediate or ongoing part of employee experience. It refers to the worker’s current perception of the company.

How Employee Experience Drives Business Performance

In today’s competitive business landscape, a shift has occurred toward understanding the importance of creating a positive employee experience. 

That’s why several companies invest in initiatives that enhance their workforce’s well-being, engagement, and satisfaction, such as implementing the best virtual assistant solutions. A virtual assistant improves employee experience by streamlining workflows, enhancing productivity, and fostering a seamless working environment. For instance, legal industry trends show investment in virtual legal assistants to facilitate a seamless working experience. 

Below are some ways employee experience directly impacts business performance and why it matters to organizations.

Better Experience Leads to Higher Productivity

Psychologists have studied employee attitudes for years to understand what motivates them and improve their job satisfaction. Initially, the widespread belief was that employees would do better if you paid them more. But, while the remuneration scale is a crucial element in the overall employee experience, it only contributes a part of it, while other factors make up what’s left. Nowadays, it’s not only about the paycheck; employees also desire other incentives. 

Therefore, it’s not enough to simply crank up your payroll processing and employee remuneration to improve their experience. Instead, look for other ways to motivate employees to take more interest in their jobs. For example, many want to work in an environment that prioritizes their mental and physical well-being. In other cases, the employees may want to work with friendly superiors and colleagues. Plus, some people simply want to work at their dream jobs.

Each of those factors contributes to the average employee’s experience and performance. The better the total, the happier they’ll be to do their jobs. And the more satisfied employees are when performing their roles, the better their outputs will be.

Good Employee Experience Creates an Attractive Workspace for Talent

It’s now commonplace for job seekers to consider potential work environments while picking employers. It’s no longer about the bigger paycheck; many now ask questions like: “Is the workplace toxic? What’s the boss like when they’re angry? What’s the cultural diversity in the workplace like?” And they may reject the job depending on the answers they get.

As the employer, you can’t satisfactorily answer these questions. Instead, it’ll fall to current employees based on their experiences. If they relay their bad experiences to potential employees, that may likely scare them off. The work environment setting is a crucial factor that contributes to the overall employee experience. That’s why more organizations are investing in employing remote staff. Potential employees may also demand remote or hybrid work considerations and will be more willing to join your company with such conditions available.

Creating a positive employee experience can also extend beyond the physical workspace. Embracing social media platforms like Instagram can effectively grow your home business and enhance the employee experience. Engaging with your employees and showcasing the company culture through captivating visuals and stories on Instagram can attract talented individuals who resonate with your brand and values.

Disengaged Employees Will Cost You More Money

Building an engaged workforce through a positive employee experience is vital to save costs. That’s because uninterested employees will take more money from you than they’ll make for your business. At a basic level, they’ll simply be earning pay from you without giving you the best value in return. Or the lack of a great working experience can lead to operational mistakes or workplace accidents that cost money to fix.

It’s challenging to drive business value with below-par employee performance. Plus, you may spend business funds to implement measures to bolster customer relationship management when all you need is a more engaged workforce.

Unhappy or Disgruntled Employees Lead to Higher Turnover 

Nobody wants to keep doing a job they aren’t happy with. It’s often frustrating, depressing, and unfulfilling. It’s often why people quit their jobs. Typically, unhappy employees take more sick leaves in a year and skip work as often as possible. Worse, they’re likelier to leave when they get a better opportunity.

Organizations can proactively identify and address issues that affect employee satisfaction and engagement by prioritizing employee experience and utilizing tools like employee feedback surveys and sentiment analysis. These insights help track employees to collect information about their sentiments and enable companies to implement targeted strategies to improve their experience, ultimately reducing turnover rates and retaining top talent.

The Gallup report cited earlier also showed that a positive employee experience resulted in 41 percent lower absenteeism and 59 percent less turnover. That means ensuring your employees feel good about their jobs increases their commitment.

Everybody Wins with Good Employee Experience

A great employee experience has numerous benefits to it. Happier, more satisfied employees will show more commitment, work better, and be more productive. That’ll improve the quality of goods or services they provide for customers. That’s how employee experience influences the customer experience.

Again, good experience means employees are happy, which makes them more productive and able to satisfy your customers better. That leads to increased productivity which will make you and your bottom line happier. Everybody wins!