What is it that makes us visit a restaurant time and again – is it the food, ambience, or, the service that carries an indelible mark? In reality, there is no single influence that trumps the others. Like great restaurants serving their customers, great workplaces provide a wholesome experience for their employees, and, determine their stickiness to the organisation.

Organisations generally limit employee experience to engagement activities. However, there is a larger picture to it, and, it starts right from the interview process and extends beyond the employee’s exit from your organisation. The number of programmes and practices, interactions with managers and peers, automation in the work environment, compensation and benefits, etc. are all part of the employee experience.

Get to know your employees: First things first, get to know your employees. You should keep your ears open at all times, and, listen to what employees say. And, instead of having conversations only once every year, put yourself in the employees’ shoes, and try to understand how they see things, what their expectations are etc. You should work along with managers and team leads to design a great experience. At the same time, encourage every employee to take the effort to know each other and create an experience of warmth.

Gather valuable insights: Understanding your employees, their value systems, needs, likes, dislikes etc. can be used to design programmes and policies that resonate with them. Such data is available from multiple sources – everyday conversations, structured one-on-one meetings with managers, interactions with peers and subordinates, online/offline feedback mechanisms that even goes outside the organisation such as social media. Additionally, a brainstorming session with different stakeholders – the employees, managers, HR, CXOs, etc. – goes a long way in measuring their motivational levels.

Bringing in design thinking: Bringing in design thinking and having meaningful conversations will enable you to comprehend the employee pulse and thus create a seamless experience. It yields better results than the HR team working on it separately. E.g. the various team outbounds, quarterly celebrations etc. are designed on the basis of inputs gathered from conversations that the HR team has with the employees. Furthermore, gathering feedback from the recipients on their experience helps in improving the programme during the next instance.

Personalisation: A generalized and a templated approach to employee experience does not work anymore. HR teams nowadays realize that the needs of every employee differ and addressing their specific needs yields a better experience for all. And, this is where personalisation helps. Creating personas based on similar personality traits and customized experiences that resonate well with their individual characters function as an added impetus.

The right communication: It is also important to note that employee experience is a result of perception. Get the communication right by focusing more on the employees and what matters to them. It leads to employees remembering, recalling, and sharing concise information with others, which eventually leads to a good brand name for the company for attracting talent.

Employee experience has significant bearing on attracting and retaining talent. Amidst the war for talent, an effective strategy for employee experience helps build a healthy pipeline for hiring via employee referrals. It also helps convert employee mindset from the "need to come to work" to "want to come to work.