How Internal Communication Can Shape the Employee Experience

More than ever before, organizations today are focusing on Employee Experience—not only to hold on to their best people and attract new talent—but because of its proven impact on the Customer Experience.

As the Great Resignation rages on, employers realize the impact of employee experience on the company’s overall success.

The  Willis Tower Watson survey of 2021 revealed that 90% of companies worldwide are prioritizing employee experience. However, many organizations are unaware of how to meet the needs of their employees when it comes to workplace experience.

So, What is Employee Experience and why does it matter so much?

(Note, we explored this in a very popular webinar with Victoria White, CEO of Dewpoint Communications, which you can watch here)

Gallup defines employee experience as an employee’s journey with the company they work for. It encompasses every interaction throughout the employment cycle, as well as experiences related to the employee’s well-being, role, leaders, and workspace. It begins the minute the employee reads your job posting and continues until they depart from your company.

According to a survey from the Josh Bersin Company, several positive outcomes can be realized by paying attention to EX and implementing the proper strategies. These include:

• Increased productivity and satisfaction levels among employees
• A higher likelihood for companies to hit their financial targets
• Increased motivation and engagement
• Improved customer experience
• Increased employee retention
• Higher chance of innovating efficiently

Employee & Customer Experience Go Hand-in-Hand

The reality is that employees determine the success or failure of your company. Not only do they represent your overall brand image, but they also help determine your brand’s reputation. And there is no longer any doubt that the employee experience directly shapes the customer experience, for better or for worse.

Therefore, organizations must consistently encourage a positive employee experience to enhance the overall customer experience. If you lose them, you’re losing a good investment.

Gone are those days of command-control employee experience, where employees did what the employer required because they received a monthly salary. Today, employers who do not consistently provide a positive EX usually have high turnover rates.

Why Do Companies Find It Challenging to Deliver a Positive Employee Experience?

Although many companies are interested in delivering a positive EX, most find it challenging to deliver. Some of the reasons behind this include the following:

• Burnout
• Context switching
• Disengaged employees
• Hybrid work

Fortunately, all these challenges can be effectively overcome with the help of a consistent and compelling employee experience strategy, as Victoria Dew outlined in our webinar.

Employee communication plays a critical role in delivering positive EX. Good employee comms help make EX tangible in employees' minds and hearts. It breathes life into the employee experience.

Since the pandemic, many organizations have included several measures to achieve work-life balance among employees. They have also included more strategies to become more compassionate to employee needs and protect employees' well-being and health.

But what if these policies are not communicated effectively to the employees? The result: a negative employee experience.

This is because the policy fails to create change in the workplace, and employees remain feeling unseen and unheard. However, if the policies are effectively communicated and employees comprehend the policy’s effects, it will likely help employees feel more fulfilled at work.

Many organizations fail to prioritize employee communications, despite increasing policies that encourage a positive EX. By effectively implementing good employee communication strategies, internal communications teams can assist organizations in various ways.

These include providing meaning and context for changes, pushing behavior changes and attitudes at the workplace, fostering belonging and inclusion, and winning employees' hearts and minds.

Leveraging Your Comms Toolbox

Corporations continuously search for new methods to recruit top personnel, promote growth, and differentiate themselves from the competition. One of the easiest ways to attain these results is to use existing resources and tactics they are acquainted with to concentrate on employee experience.

Below are three essential ways you can improve employee experience with tools already in your company’s toolbox.

1. Minimize Friction

By minimizing friction in communication with workers, your team will likely be more aligned, engaged, and productive—regardless of where or how they work. Employees who are satisfied with their jobs are more likely to share their expertise with their co-workers. Rather than seeing other co-workers as competitors, they are more willing to collaborate.

2. Enhance Personalization

In the corporate world, the one-size-fits-all strategy has never worked. Given the diversified workspace in many organizations in this modern day and age, different employees have different needs and wants, and they may be more responsive to one form of communication over the other.

Therefore, companies need to find varied communication channels to communicate effectively with each employee.

3. Implementing a Storytelling Communication Strategy

People love listening to stories, and your employees are no exception. Companies can embrace the power of storytelling to increase engagement and boost communication levels.

Strategic storytelling requires creating captivating storylines and leveraging them to catch employee interest and develop empathy while connecting and engaging your workforce. It may make a message more memorable, magnify it, and even appeal to the emotions of your employees.

It’s clear that putting the focus on EX can help any company improve its bottom line. It boosts staff productivity, employee engagement, and the experience of customers. Improving your employee comms can help create the experience that employees today expect, but it requires the right communications tools. Luckily, we have those tools.

FWI | Poppulo can assist your company in enhancing organizational and operational communications by cutting through communication noise and the common overload of information to create the consumer-grade working experience that your employees need and demand.