The business value of employee experience

In 2015, Airbnb sparked a trend among C-suite leaders when it appointed its first ever Chief Employee Experience (EX) Officer. Since then, other companies have named their own EX leaders, re-evaluating the employee journey as an area of growth.

Today, more than eight in 10 HR leaders (83%) see EX as crucial to their business, according to a study by Future Workplace and Beyond.com. These organizations are reportedly investing in:

• Training (56%)
• Improving workspaces (51%)
• Employee rewards (47%)

For businesses working to enhance the employee journey, the ROI has been phenomenal. ‘Experience’-focused companies make more than four times the average profit and more than twice the average revenue of businesses that don’t invest in EX, the Harvard Business Review reported.

But investing in EX not only impacts the bottom line – it also solidifies the employer brand. The HBR report found experiential companies are also among the world’s top employers. They are often cited:

• 11.5 times on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work
• 28 times on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies
• 2.1 times on Forbes’ World’s Most Innovative Companies

For many companies in, investing in employee experience starts with employee recognition software. You can read our review of GroupGreeting for an example of one such tool.

How to redesign the employee experience
Ceridian, an HCM software company consistently recognised for its EX initiatives, shared some insights on how to design a positive employee culture. The company’s secret is to transform EX into an exceptional customer experience (CX).

“Employees now expect their workplace experience to be comparable to their experience as consumers,” Ceridian said.

Good EX is good CX – and it “goes far beyond the Instagrammable, short-term perks like bean bag chairs, foosball tables, or bags of potato chips in the office,” the company said.

Organizations should focus on real benefits, from introducing HR virtual assistants and mobile HCM platforms to offering on-demand pay.

HR service delivery, Ceridian noted, should be “intuitive, integrated, instantaneous, personalized, perceptive, and mobile”.