Employee Engagement + Employee Experience = Employee Factor Success

Employee success factor is the key element needed for every business to succeed.

I’m not aware of any business that can run 100% without humans nor do I want to envision such a business.

Every company depends on its people to produce, distribute, manage, execute and lead their organizations profitably.

A company that is not profitable won’t last long, as employees are the critical piece of the foundation for success. It seems that every few years the world creates a new term to shake up management and make things better.

I recently have been seeing companies talking about employee experience (EX) as a replacement for employee engagement (EE). While I value the need for change, these two concepts are not interchangeable but, in fact, they are dependent on each other to provide the right company environment for employees to succeed.

I define employee experience as the work environment and the culture a company has. It is about the office (or home space), technology, devices, benefits, perks, colleagues, rewards, and opportunities for career and personal growth.

It is about who the people are and how they show up to work, every day. It is what makes a job a positive, rewarding experience or it is what causes a person to leave a company for a better opportunity.

A company’s culture is as unique as the people who work at the organization. Because no two people are alike, no two company cultures can be alike.

In addition to EX, you must have a proactive, positive employee engagement (EE) program to help your employees be valuable contributing members of your organization.

Employee engagement is what drives your organization forward by having caring, committed, and engaged employees. We humans tend to place a higher value on things we own versus things we do not.

For example, when you own your own home or car you usually commit to taking great care of your belongings to get the most life and value from them.

When you are renting you don’t have a long-term investment and it is always someone else’s responsibility. It is the same with a person’s career, they own their work, their livelihood, and their growth and you need them to “own” their contributions, experience, and expertise in order to give their all while working for your company.

The more value and ownership someone places on their work, the better the outcome, the more productive and the happier they are.

A key to having engaged employees is helping them understand and find alignment with your company’s vision, mission, and strategic goals. Knowing how an employee contributes to an outcome and giving them ownership of as much of the process as possible is key to having engaged, productive, and caring employees and outcomes.

It is incredibly expensive to hire and onboard a new employee and managing your employee turnover costs is one of the best ways to improve your company’s profitability, so EE should be high on everyone’s list of employee programs.

How do you make the most of your EX and EE programs? The creation and recognition of the value of corporate communications have been in place for decades. However, it has only really been in the last decade or so that the importance of internal communications has gotten the recognition and support that is critical.

I think of communications as the “glue” that holds an organization together. It is the most strategic ingredient of successful EX and EE programs.

A good comms strategy has a strong bridge between the internal and the external programs. Your employees need to know what is happening with customers, the marketplace, their industry, etc. and your customers need to know about the company (vision, mission, values, etc.) and the people that make your products and services available to them.

You can’t have a strong and effective EE or EX program without a dynamic and effective comms program. Your comms program(s) need to be informative, engaging, inspiring, helpful, supportive, and timely.

In addition, internal comms programs need to provide information and support for products/services, policies and procedures, benefits, opportunities, rewards, and career growth.

External comms programs need to inform, educate and engage customers with your company, your products/services, and your people. People do business with people they know and trust and so building relationship with and between employees and customers is critical to a company’s success.

My recommended equation for your company’s successful and profitable growth is to remember the equation: EE + EX = EF

In other words, employee engagement + employee experience = employee factor success, which leads to your overall company’s long-term success and profitability.