Employee experience is next in line to transform business

Every ten years or so the business world undergoes a major evolution. While most of the changes so far are the result of new technology and customer needs and expectations changing as a result, we are on the cusp of a new transformation that is not driven by technology but by people.

Employees to be exact.

But let’s back up a moment to understand exactly how we got here.

In the 1990s personal computers started to become more commonplace. In 1996 only 21.7 per cent of New Zealand households had a computer, while only 1 in 5 Kiwis had heard of the Internet. By 2000, 47 per cent of Kiwis had access to the Internet via work, home or school. In that short period, business processes transformed as they became computerised. In the 2000s, business evolved its infrastructure as the world wide web took off to the tones of a 54k dial-up; customer relationship management came into being as brands opened their online presence to reach new customers. In the 2010s, business shifted again, turning towards digital expansion—for example, Amazon transformed from an online book retailer to an online “everything” retailer. Now, in the 2020s it’s experience transformation, exemplified in the acceleration of digital storefronts and online shopping systems due to Covid-19 and the growing adoption of AI, automation, and virtual realities to enhance experiences.

Then the pandemic happened and threw us a curveball in more ways than one. As we know, many businesses had to evolve their customer experience for the online environment. As a result, digital transformation globally leapt forwards by 6 years in the space of a few short months. What would have taken us years to achieve on the experience front, we managed in weeks.

In other words, Covid-19 shortened the usual ten-year cycle gap between business evolutions. In purely experience transformation terms, we’re already at 2026 progress-wise with the 2030s and the next evolutionary leap fast approaching. And if businesses want to remain at the forefront of experience, they need to look beyond infrastructure and technology to the people running their operations: their employees.

The link between customer experience and employee experience is well documented. According to Forbes, companies with excellent CX have employees 1.5 times more engaged than companies with less satisfactory CX. Moreover, companies with highly engaged employees outperform their competitors by 147 per cent.

Meanwhile, research from Perceptive has found 79 per cent of employees who treat customer satisfaction as a priority also find their job meaningful compared to the 7 per cent of the employees who do not prioritise customer satisfaction but find their job meaningful.

Meaningful work is not the only prerequisite for strong employee engagement, but it does do a good chunk of the heavy lifting. Meaningful work is also good for employee retention, with Perceptive finding 96 per cent of Kiwis who find their job meaningful plan to stay in that job for two years or more.

The question we’re left with is how do employers create a meaningful work experience for their employees? Three solutions immediately spring to mind: communicating expectations, setting goals, and career development. Communicating clear expectations helps employees know what you want and the standard you wish it done. Setting goals for employees to work towards—be it office-wide goals or personal performance goals—gives staff focus and something to work towards. Meanwhile, career development keeps employees learning and developing, improving their value to your business and helping them progress their skills, knowledge and, ultimately, their career path.

These three solutions are the gold standard; we know they work. However, I want to zero in on two critical components of these solutions that I think are often overlooked: understanding customer needs and understanding employee needs.

Perceptive found that when employers are invested in understanding the needs of their customers, 85 per cent of employees find their jobs meaningful. By taking the time to understand your customers, you uncover the expectations of those customers and empower your employees to better meet their needs. In turn, this helps employees be more successful in their jobs, which contributes towards reaching the goals you’ve set them.

In a similar vein, an employer also needs to understand their employees. Perceptive also found that when an employer is invested in understanding the needs of their employees, 77 per cent of employees found their job meaningful. By understanding your employee experience, you can develop a stronger workplace culture that employees will not only perform well in but stay in for the long term.

The critical ingredient in both these instances is facilitating feedback. As a business and an employer, you need to actively collect feedback from customers and employees alike. From the customer side, it allows you to understand where you’re performing well and where things could be better—potentially even paving the way for further training or upskilling of your staff as part of your solution. From an employee side, feedback allows you to understand how your workplace culture is perceived by your staff and gives you a chance to address any internal issues that could flow on to your customers. On this last point, I recommend offering a way for staff to provide feedback anonymously. This encourages them to be honest without fear of reprisal.

On a final parting note, it is not enough to simply collect feedback sporadically with no strategy behind it—it is unlikely to lead to any kind of action. Your best chance of success is to embed a feedback programme into your business that schedules surveys regularly. I also recommend incorporating customer and employee metrics from those surveys as part of your business reporting to hold yourself accountable.

If we’re to get ahead of the next stage of business transformation, it’s critical to set up the foundations for building a healthy workplace culture ahead of time. By focusing on gathering customer and employee feedback, you are setting your employees up for success and making them feel heard. Moreover, with customer experience so tightly linked to employee experience, your customers will see the benefit too—from happier staff interactions to service that goes above and beyond. After all, a business is its people. Take care of them and they’ll take care of you.