How to Measure Employee Experience
What is it, and why does it matter?
You Cannot Change What You Do Not Measure
You cannot change what you do not measure – this phrase sums up so much about how Uncharted Way approaches employee experience. We see this philosophy in all other aspects of running a company. Revenue, ad spend, capital and growth all have KPIs. Why should managing employee experience and the culture of your organization be any different?
By properly measuring employee experience in face-to-face interviews, surveys, and data-driven key performance indicators, you can start to understand company culture, with the goal of improving how the people you work with perceive your organization. This can have a direct effect on employee retention, productivity, and revenue.
What is Employee Experience?
Employee experience is the intersection of your organization’s culture and your employee’s perception of their journey through all the touchpoints within your organization.
Employee experience represents all of the interactions an employee has within your organization as it relates to the company culture and their perception of how they connect with the company personally, as well as, with other employees.
This can include everything: from the first moment they see the job listing and start the application process to the exit interview and references you give on the way out – and all the tasks, reviews, HR presentations, and company outings in between.
Why Employee Experience Matters
Employee experience matters because it is how your workforce experiences your company culture. This isn’t just the values that you say matter – it’s the actual perception of your organization.
Now more than ever, your company’s culture can be the difference between keeping top talent at your organization and stagnating in constant employee turnover. At the time of writing, the job market is fierce for employers – it’s getting harder and harder to attract and retain the people who can really make a difference to your workforce.
Who is responsible for Employee Experience?
Everyone in the company has a stake in how employees experience workplace culture, but the responsibility usually rests on leaders and human resources.
Can you articulate your company’s culture? No matter if you have thought about this concept or not, your company has a culture – and if you can’t define it, you can’t hope to change it for the better. Even if you can define it, the people you work with may have an entirely different perception.
Measuring Employee Experience, Satisfaction, and Engagement Levels
Employee experience is no longer a nebulous cloud that we can only feel. The joys, struggles, and challenges that your employees are facing can (and should) be measured.
There are three main ways that a company can measure employee experience: face-to-face interviews, surveys, and data-driven metrics.
Face-to-face Interviews
Face-to-face interviews or, more appropriately in today’s world, Zoom-to-Zoom interviews, are a valuable method of measuring employee experience. These aren’t just exit interviews and monthly reviews. Face-to-face interviews can include focus groups, huddles, informal conversations, and more. The key to these types of meetings is listening to understand.
Humans are complex creatures. Great thinkers can, and have, spent years trying to understand why we often say one thing and mean another. As a professional who measures employee experience, it is your job to try and understand what people mean when they give feedback. Think about the three different “levels” of listening. Listen to what an employee is saying, how they are saying it, and what they really want to say. The goal of listening is not to give an answer or explain your side of the story – it is to understand.
Surveys
Surveys are a great way of getting a lot of information about how employees are experiencing your company and are often the first place that leaders and human resource professionals go. Pulse surveys, exit surveys, and surveys about specific topics can give insight into how the people in your organization really feel – especially when they have the added comfort of anonymity. But you must know how to design them.
Asking the wrong questions can do more harm than good. While you want to give employees the opportunity to express any and all concerns, an open-ended survey without any qualifiers or specificity can give you an inaccurate picture. Instead, ask specific and non-judgmental questions that can be measured. For example:
On a scale of one to ten with one representing unfulfilled and 10 representing very fulfilled, how fulfilled are you in your current position? What experiences have you had that have helped inform the number you selected?
Notice how precise the question above is. It allows you to quantify, qualify, and explain, while still giving the employee room to give thoughts and feedback. There is a science to survey creation that is often overlooked – the way in which questions are asked and the specific wording in the question can significantly influence how people answer. Think carefully about survey design, and consult an expert if you are unsure.
Data-Driven Employee Experience
We live in a world of data – there’s no reason why analyzing company culture should be different to any other aspect of running a company. A data-driven approach can be incredibly valuable when trying to learn more about the employee experience at your organization – and this can go hand in hand with surveys and face-to-face interviews.
By using data to measure employee experience, you are stripping out biases that you have from comments, interviews, and other text-based feedback that is being used. Think back to the surveys that you use – is there a way in which you can qualify, quantify, and track the answers?
Even beyond survey data, there are other metrics that can give you insight into employee experience. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as turnover, vacation days used, sick days used, and productivity can give you a look under the hood of your company culture. What is the data saying? Knowing how to interpret data can be your secret weapon in measuring your employee experience.
These KPIs will vary from organization to organization – one company might have a higher emphasis on employee development, and another may place value on employee appreciation. The important thing is that the KPIs are designed to inform you of what is important to YOUR organization. Data about things you don’t care about is a waste of time. Make sure that the KPIs you are using are carefully constructed and relevant to the needs and interests of your employees.
Don’t Write Off Employee Experience
Hopefully by now you understand the need for properly measuring employee experience. The old world of reading through exit interview notes and sending out company-wide emails are over. To have any hope of keeping the talent you have and attracting more as your organization grows, you have to have a grasp on your company culture. Measure. Analyze. And Change for the better.
Uncharted Way can help with measuring and improving the employee experience at your organization. We have a three-step process that puts an emphasis on data and actionable strategies to help you create the company culture that works for you and your bottom line. Schedule a 15-minute introductory call today.
Meridith Marshall is the CEO and Founder of Uncharted Way and has seen firsthand how people and organizations can navigate the most difficult of circumstances with clarity and openness to improve employee experience and culture in their workplace. She is an industry-recognized expert in using a data-driven approach, and is an Interaction Associates trained facilitator and certified Co-Active coach.