7 Employee Experience Challenges to Solve

Challenge 1: Choosing the right enterprise technology

New technology can deliver significant business benefits. But what if employees reject the new tools or feel the additional work a new process requires outweighs the potential benefit? Employee rejection of new technology can result in wasted money and negatively impact morale.

To avoid this, companies must implement technology that actually helps their employees do their jobs, engage with each other and their work, be productive, and effectively collaborate. Such tools must be user-friendly and easy to adopt and deliver an obvious productivity benefit. The technology must also be capable of integrating with other internal systems; this saves employees the pain of navigating multiple disconnected platforms and gives managers a complete view of workforce productivity.

To achieve these goals, managers need to capture employee needs, and decision makers need to consider their input alongside business requirements. Surveys can help gather information about the tools employees need to get their work done and gauge what they expect from the tools they currently use. The right human capital management (HCM) platform can support an organization’s data collection activities while offering a host of other benefits that can positively impact the employee experience. For example, the City of Memphis uses a cloud-based HCM platform to consolidate all employee data in one system. This makes it easier for their HR team to analyze employee needs and trends and also deploy surveys to gauge employee opinion. The system also gives HR leadership a centralized way to promote training opportunities and adjust compensation and benefits. Since the implementation of the system, the City of Memphis has reported a 14% increase in employee engagement.

Finally, prioritizing tools that help employees connect and communicate can help workers see the immediate benefit of new technology. Technology for communication can include group chat tools, video conferencing platforms, and cloud-based file sharing and editing tools. Taking an employee-centric approach to new technology can improve communication, collaboration, and morale among teams while also helping ensure organizations see a strong return on their technology investments.

Challenge 2: Creating an employee experience for remote and hybrid workers

Employees want to feel valued and heard. This can be more challenging for remote and hybrid workers who, understandably, may feel less connected and more isolated compared with onsite staff.

Beyond the lack of in-person interaction with colleagues, data shows that remote workers feel they are less likely to get promoted. After surveying more than 2,000 US adults, the American Staffing Association found that 56% of onsite, hybrid, and remote staff believe employees who work exclusively in the office have a competitive advantage over their fully remote colleagues when it comes to receiving raises and promotions.

To support remote and hybrid workers who feel disconnected from the opportunities their onsite peers enjoy, it’s critical to promote open and regular communication with leadership. The right technology can help leaders connect with their workforce and build the trust employees need to feel engaged in a remote or hybrid work setting.

Managers also have an important role to play. They must keep direct lines of communication open with their team members using tools such as email and video and web conferencing platforms. They should also communicate their availability to their staff and promote the use of instant messaging technology as a means of quick and easy connection. Regular contact can help build more trust between staff and management and reduce the potential for miscommunication. Managers should also make a habit of recognizing the efforts and accomplishments of remote workers, keeping staff updated on shifting initiatives, and promoting the frequent exchange of feedback among employees.

Managers can also create time for their team members to connect with each other and offer emotional support to help their employees feel less isolated. Opportunities for social interaction during work hours can help team members feel a stronger sense of belonging. These informal interactions and conversations about nonwork topics can take place during the first few minutes of a team call, during an informal team hangout, or at a virtual office party. Managers can also ask employees questions about any stress or concerns they are experiencing and empathize with their struggles. These conversations can reveal important insights that can help improve the employee experience.

Challenge 3: Personalizing employee journeys and development

The employee journey within an organization will be different for everyone. One-size-fits-all employee experiences leave people feeling unheard and undervalued, which can lower productivity and employee retention. Understanding your employees’ journeys from recruitment to retirement (and helping them develop and advance along the way) lets you give them the support they need to stay productive and achieve their goals.

To gain valuable insights into each employee’s lifecycle and the best ways to promote their development at every stage, companies need technologies that can track every employee touchpoint and connect employee data to a central repository. Advanced HR platforms let employees create personal work profiles that explain their skills and competencies. Having this full view of each employee allows employers to deliver personalized guidance and an optimized employee journey that promotes development, advancement, and retention.

Collecting and responding to employee feedback is also key to an employer’s ability to support their team members throughout their individual journeys. While it’s important to capture all the points of contact employees have with their employers, some specific touchpoints can offer HR departments valuable feedback that can influence the personalization of employee journeys. These include

• The onboarding process: Onboarding not only kicks off a new hire’s employment, but it gives employees a lasting impression of their new company. The process should make it easy for every employee to get up and running swiftly; this includes helping them complete tasks such as activating their work accounts, signing and submitting the necessary paperwork, and setting up their workstation quickly and efficiently. Getting feedback from employees on their onboarding experience can help organizations continue to fine-tune the process and ensure they have the right support in place (from both humans and technology) to make an outstanding first impression.
• Training to help employees meet the needs of today’s work: HR leaders and managers must identify what new skills their company requires and put training plans in place to fill those gaps. There should always be opportunities for employees to give feedback on the training courses they attend.
• Employee evaluations: By expanding employee evaluations to include opportunities for employees to give feedback on the company and its managers, organizations can gather insights into what motivates, engages, and retains workers—and identify areas in which they need to improve. Also, self-evaluations by employees can help their managers identify what their individual goals are for skills development and career progression within the company so they can provide better, more targeted support

Workers should be given the right platforms to share their feedback on these touchpoints—whether via surveys, conversations with their managers, or other channels—and develop an employee journey that fits their needs.

Challenge 4: Improving employee satisfaction

Competition for labor remains fierce—and employee perks aren’t enough to deliver true job satisfaction. Employees and prospects are more likely to join (and stay with) organizations that...

• Engage them in satisfying work
• Promote work-life balance
• Provide a clear path for career growth
• Recognize professional achievements
• Respond to their individual professional needs

Managers are uniquely positioned to improve employee satisfaction. To help managers cultivate relationships with their employees, organizations need to give them better visibility into the current levels of employee satisfaction.

They can accomplish this by implementing the right tools and policies. Employee engagement surveys can offer managers a baseline measurement of engagement and insight into what their staff like and dislike about their work. Surveys can also capture worker satisfaction levels in different areas, such as management expectations, relationships with colleagues, and career progression. Employee engagement software often offers tools to set up surveys that can track employee satisfaction levels regularly, analyze their feedback, and help determine what employees truly want from their workplace.

The HR department can also create an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) process to periodically ask employees how likely they are to recommend their employer to others. The responses are on a scale of 0 to 10, so the results are simple to measure and can give leaders a clear point-in-time assessment of employee loyalty, engagement, and satisfaction. And because eNPS surveys typically ask only one simple question, they’re an efficient and effective way to measure employee satisfaction regularly and track trends over time.

Challenge 5: Increasing employee productivity

An exceptional employee experience ensures that workers enjoy their jobs, their managers, their colleagues, and the company they work for. This encourages staff to be engaged and invested in their work, which can increase productivity. Management is held accountable for employee productivity, and the impact of employee engagement on productivity shouldn’t be overlooked—analysis from Harvard Business Review in 2021 found that employees who are happy and satisfied at work were, on average, 31% more productive.

But employee productivity is also a function of the tools an employer provides. Employers should provide communication and project management tools that help employees make the most of their time. These tools should be easy to use and access so employees can quickly and fully adopt them and start using them in their work. Video conferencing tools that are accessible on both computers and mobile devices can make it easier for remote employees to meet and collaborate in real time. Applications for instant messaging between employees can also encourage rapid communication and increase productivity. Cloud-based storage and file sharing tools can increase productivity by reducing barriers to access shared documents and promoting collaboration.

The productivity of your workforce can be challenging to measure since employees work on different tasks and productivity levels during the periods of time being measured can be influenced by other factors, such as holiday season or tax season. But focusing on a few key metrics, such as whether targets are met for each task, the quantity of work produced per hour, day, or month, and the amount of revenue produced, will help you assess the productivity of your workforce.

Challenge 6: Measuring the success of your employee experience strategy

Measuring the impact of your employee experience strategy is essential to understanding its effectiveness. Measurement policies may vary from company to company, but key performance indicators (KPIs) are consistently used to monitor the progress of employee experience strategies and improve their effectiveness over time.

The best time to set your employee experience KPIs is before launching an initiative—it’s essential to establish baseline KPIs in order to measure progress over time. That means gathering data on existing performance, engagement, and satisfaction levels to set an accurate baseline. Then you must determine how frequently you’ll gather new data moving forward and the technology you’ll need to track progress toward established employee experience goals and their associated metrics.

When determining a long-term goal, it can be helpful to create interim goals to target along the way. For example, a five-year growth target can include specific milestones to meet each year. It can also be beneficial to remain flexible on these goals as new KPIs are gathered and calculated. Adjusting metrics goals or even creating additional baseline points as a company grows and changes can also be valuable.

Some common KPIs include the employee Net Promoter Score, the number of internal job referrals received, the retention rate, and the rate of employee absenteeism. Organizations can measure these KPIs through a human resources management system, which can store information and insights on metrics related to employee retention rates, performance, development, and more. More-detailed surveys than the eNPS can help obtain important information about employee satisfaction. Additionally, focus groups can be valuable tools, offering a safe space for workers to share their feedback and ask questions.

Without measuring your impact, you can invest a lot of time and effort in areas that don’t help your business improve. Being able to measure important employee experience KPIs—such as employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention—can help determine the best strategies for your company.

Challenge 7: Embracing new technologies

Human resources teams, often unfairly, have a reputation for being slow to adapt to change. Employees who feel that HR processes and systems are dated or unresponsive can undermine HR leaders who are genuinely trying to improve the employee experience. So how can HR departments change this perception?

There are many new tools and approaches that can help HR professionals better manage their organizations. Chatbots, for example, can help employees get answers to key HR questions quickly, preventing frustration and promoting compliance with HR policies and practices. Advanced analytics can help HR professionals identify trends, develop new strategies, and even solve problems before they become big enough to impact your business.

In the future, applying artificial intelligence to data from employee engagement surveys will be instrumental in helping HR leaders understand their employees’ needs and concerns. Insights derived from surveys will help HR personnel identify unsatisfied employees, analyze trends, identify engagement drivers, and devise effective strategies that will ensure a better employee experience.