The Employee Experience: Overlooked Moments that Matter

Building and maintaining employee trust is imperative to organizational success. After spending decades at the front line of employee relations (ER), and now as a CEO myself, I’ve seen firsthand how trust serves as the foundation of a thriving organization. Without it, employees disengage, productivity drops and turnover skyrockets. With it, people feel valued enough to engage and safe enough to be creative and innovate.?

What matters most to employees right now?? ?

HR Acuity recently surveyed over 2,000 employees to uncover the four essential drivers of positive employee experiences and why they are so important. These drivers aren’t abstract concepts; they’re tangible, actionable values backed by real data and experiences. If you’re an employee relations professional, understanding how your organization fares against these four drivers provides powerful insight into what is or isn’t building trust in your organization.?

1. Transparency and Communication?

Transparency seems obvious, but it’s truly the foundation of creating safe work environments. So we have to ask—transparency around what exactly? Employees want to know where they stand, what’s expected of them, that promises are kept and that decisions are made consistently and fairly. When policies, expectations and outcomes are communicated clearly, employees feel respected and valued. When leadership is vague about these things, the opposite happens. Unfortunately,?the data reveals that one-third of employees don’t feel their employers consistently deliver on promises, treat them fairly or show empathy.?

How can Employee Relations help??We can ensure communication isn’t limited to high-level all-hands meetings with confusing, top-down messaging. We recommend that communication also happens at the manager level. We know that employees tend to trust their managers the most. By giving managers the tools they need to communicate transparently and frequently, we can make employees feel that their concerns are being heard and addressed.?

2. Leadership Integrity and Accountability?

Leadership integrity is about more than just honesty—it’s about aligning the organization’s everyday actions with its values. Employees look to their leaders to set the tone at work. When leaders demonstrate integrity and hold the organization accountable, they naturally fortify a culture of trust. Conversely, trust evaporates the moment employees perceive that company values are all talk.?

How can Employee Relations help??We can infuse accountability into how leadership responds to and reports on employee concerns.?According to HR Acuity’s recent report, 41% of employees experienced or witnessed inappropriate, unethical or illegal behaviors since the start of 2023, yet one in four did not report the bad behavior. Why? Fifty-two percent didn’t trust their concern would be handled appropriately, 44% didn’t think the issue would be taken seriously and 43% feared retaliation. When incidents go unreported, companies open themselves to reputational damage and legal risk. Employees will leave, and referrals to the organization will suffer.?

3. Flexibility and Work-Life Balance?

Anyone else notice the backlash surrounding return-to-work mandates??

It’s pretty obvious that flexibility is no longer a perk but an expectation among today’s workforce. It’s also a sign of mutual trust. Unsurprisingly, trust is highest among employees in stable, hybrid work environments where they can balance their professional and personal lives effectively.? ? On the flip side, trust plummets in rigid workplaces and organizations in a state of flux (think restructurings and layoffs). In 2023, 43% of employees experienced layoffs, reductions-in-force and restructurings. Sadly, this uncertainty becomes a trust fall (the bad kind). Just 23% of the workforce (affected or not) gained trust in their employer based on those experiences.?

How can Employee Relations help??Infuse accountability into the way your organization handles moments that matter–for example, leave requests. Advocate for flexible policies and an accommodation request process employees can understand. Be a guiding force to ensure those policies and requests are applied fairly and consistently.??

4. Inclusive and Respectful Workplace Culture?

There’s a reason?inclusive and respectful workplace culture?is a top value among employees. What employee would trust a company that didn’t prioritize this? With so much public debate on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), we need to double down on our commitment to protect employees. Building DEI into our culture is how we make people feel safe and set them up to thrive. Sadly, in 2023 bullying, corruption, discrimination and microaggressions topped the list of bad behaviors employees endured.??

How can Employee Relations help??While we can’t entirely prevent bad behavior, we build belonging and inclusion through the quality of our response. At its simplest, it's about building consistency, fairness and transparency into the whole process from reporting to investigations to aftercare. Then, reporting the outcomes to employees to ensure they trust the process is fair and effective. ? ? Every single step is an opportunity to build or break a great employee experience.???

We already know a positive employee experience is foundational to success. But the strength of that foundation depends on what we focus on. By focusing on transparency, leadership integrity, flexibility and an inclusive culture, we can create a workplace where employees feel valued and respected.?

I’ll finish with this:?focus without action is distraction.?How will you guide your organization toward the actions that build trust, create safe workplaces? We’re diving deep into the data about the actions that fortify trust over in the?empowER community. I hope you’ll join us there.??

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Download the full report?here?to access the full findings and insights from HR Acuity’s 2024 Rethinking Employee Experience: Four Critical Overlooked Moments.?