7 Simple HR Additions to Improve Employee Experience

HR is where you win and lose employee loyalty and engagement. People want to work for organizations that take their experience seriously and respond to their needs as employees.

HR has grown in importance over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to play an important role in company growth moving forward. To leverage all a human resources department has to offer, below are 7 simple HR additions you can make that will improve employee experience today.

1. Easy Payment

By this point, most companies are already using easy payment methods like direct debit to make sure employees are paid on time and with little to no hassle. You should be able to deposit your employees' pay directly to their bank accounts without any intermediaries and associated fees.

Companies that are still handing out physical cheques are way behind the times, and you are obligating your employee to make a special trip to the bank to cash it. Direct debit is also nice because it can be set up to happen automatically, which means neither payroll nor the employee has to worry about it.

2. Make Use of Journey Mapping

An employee journey map depicts the numerous stages that an employee goes through during their employment with a company. It allows you to identify pain points and important moments when employee input and action are required to bridge the gap between the existing and intended states. In short, a journey map allows companies and employees to manage career trajectories in ways that make sense for both parties. 

Employee journey maps that work the best always start with clearly defined outcomes and strong communication and joint planning with the company. Even if you do annual employee engagement surveys, each employee is at a different stage in their career, and it's tough to know how personal experiences affect key employee experience outcomes such as engagement and motivation. Set up a journey map on the employee's first day and maintain it throughout the tenure of their employment. This way, there will always be something to work towards

3. Standardized Onboarding

Many businesses lack a new employee orientation programme, let alone a good standardized onboarding experience, despite the fact that it is vital to employee success. According to the Harvard Business Review, 33% of new hires look for a new job during their first six months of employment, which can be attributed in part to the quality of the onboarding experience.

The answer to this problem is to create a measurable programme with defined objectives that are tailored to specific employees. Your sales reps should have a different onboarding experience than customer service reps while still maintaining a degree of standardization focused on providing an introduction to company culture, key people, etcetera

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4. Actually, Use Employee Feedback

Many companies use employee engagement and feedback surveys to figure out where their employees are at, but not all of them act on the information. At the end of the day, a lot of these procedures are just lip service. Employees may experience a loss of trust as a result of this. 

Employees are more inclined to express their thoughts and interact if they believe they are being heard, but they may refrain from providing feedback if they believe they will not be heard. Following a survey, employees should be informed about the action plan being developed, and a person, or perhaps even committee, assigned to implementing the changes.

5. Take Benefits Surveys

Many employees would prefer additional perks to a raise, demonstrating the importance of delivering relevant employee benefits in your talent retention and recruiting efforts. Employee benefit surveys can help you figure out which benefits your employees value the most.

They seek to understand the value placed on certain perks, how they compare to those offered by other employers, and any future benefits that employees would want to see. PTO, health insurance, parental leave, retirement, stock options, free lunches, and other benefits are examples. These simple conversations could mean the difference between losing and retaining a high performer.

6. Use Stay Interviews

Exit interviews are beneficial, but they do not help you retain an employee who is ready to depart. Stay interviews are one-on-one meetings between a manager and an employee that allow businesses to understand what matters to their employees and anticipate retention concerns. They should be an open forum for employees to express themselves and gain insight into their experiences.

The goal is to uncover their reasons for sticking with the company and then working toward goals that keep them motivated by analyzing what works and what doesn't. This method also improves internal talent pipelines and provides valuable insight into areas where the organization can improve.

7. Don't Forget About Manager Training

Personal relationships, particularly those between employees and their supervisors, are one of the most important aspects of employee experience. When managers don't know how to encourage or interact with their employees, employees feel less connected to the company and its objectives, which is not only bad for productivity but could lead to the employee looking for another job. Managers should be instructed in essential skills such as time management, diplomacy, delegation, goal setting, and delivering feedback and praise.

Conclusion

Improving employee experience starts in your human resources department. This is where employees are first introduced to company culture, it is where employee experience is monitored, managed, and fostered, and HR professionals exert an outsized influence on how an employee perceives his or her employer.

Building a great HR team and processes takes some groundwork, but once it is up and running, you should have a finely tuned employee satisfaction-generating machine that is attentive to employee needs and goes out of its way to ensure employee retention.

Author Bio: This article is written by our marketing team at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!