The Top 7 Ways to Enhance Employee Experience and Retention
Phil Mandelbaum
Fractional CMO | Agency President + CEO | Brand, Digital, Social, Content, PR and Political Strategist | Award-Winning Writer, Ghostwriter and Editor | Sold 1 Business
Pay Raises, Work Flexibility and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are No Longer Enough
Now?it’s Monkeypox .?Abortion rights . And Malcolm Gladwell?declaring ?“it’s not in your best interest to work at home.” Oh, and racism remains rampant in?policing ,?education , and?the workplace . Are your employees uneasy? Have you even asked? Will?your hybrid work environment ?continue to — well — work? And what about the benefits you offer? Will your COVID-era contributions suffice throughout the 2020s and beyond, as millenials and the remaining Gen-Xers seek?equity?and?generational?wealth ? Maybe, maybe not, as?The Great Resignation continues ?to collapse gimcrack companies and threaten the futures of even the most forward-thinking organizations.?
As they say, “employee experience is?the new customer experience .” And yet, in March 2022, 4.4-million US workers quit their jobs; three months later, they (and the rest of us) were faced with?a new 40-year high ?for the consumer price index.?
In response, smart employers are increasing salaries?more than they have in the last decade and a half ; of course, “‘show me the money’ isn’t the only thing?employees are thinking .”?
Plus, after a couple years adapting to — and proving the value of —?work flexibility ?and?diversity, equity and inclusion , it, too, is no longer enough.?
So, what?else?are employees thinking??
The answers are in this list of the most important employee experience priorities, but?the only way to know for?sure?what?your?employees and prospects most desire is to?ask them.?
“The reasons for staying [with an employer] are complex, and?the answer is no longer just offering increased salary or flexibility ,” says Jeanne Meister, founder of Future Workplace and executive VP of Executive Networks. Instead, “employers must regularly survey employees to understand the levers which can deliver the most value to various segments of workers.”
The Employee Survey: Employee Experience and the Importance of Listening
Even the best HR strategy cannot overcome a lack of quality data. And employee data is about much more than numbers — hours worked, sick days used, words typed per minute. The most critical employee data isn’t even quantitative. To run a successful organization, you need to know how your employees — and prospects —?feel, during recruitment, hiring and onboarding, and throughout their career. What’s most important isn’t which benefits or perks you provide, but that you listen to, respect and value your employees and reward hard work.
How’s this done? By listening, first, repeatedly, and methodically. So, instruct your HR director to lead their team in:
Additionally, they can follow this advice, developed based on years of HR strategy experience and the latest industry trends.
The 7 Most Important Employee Benefits (in Addition to Pay Increases, Work Flexibility, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)
Take your cues from the megacorps or the fastest growing startups: if you don’t offer the right employee benefits and perks, you’ve got no shot.?
1. Covered Abortion Services
Following the June 2022 Supreme Court vote to overturn the Court’s prior Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion, employees and employers scrambled to determine what would and wouldn’t be covered henceforth. Immediately, this became HR hot topic number one.?
Levi Strauss, for instance, reported that its 15,000 employees are eligible for reimbursement of healthcare-related travel expenses for services not available in their home state, including those related to reproductive health and abortion. “As the pandemic has shown so clearly, public health issues are workplace issues,” read a company press release in May 2022. “Business leaders are responsible for protecting the health and wellbeing of our employees, and that includes protecting reproductive rights and abortion access.” More than half of Levi Strauss’s employees identify as women.?
Big Tech companies like Amazon, Apple and Yelp, as well as Citigroup and Starbucks, also quickly announced they’d reimburse employees for travel expenses. In fact, according to a July 2022 International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plan?study :?
Which, as HR Executive put it, “indicat[es] the number of employers looking to expand their services may jump considerably in the future.”
On the other hand, though, multiple reports have shown that at least half (if not a large majority) of HR leaders have not adjusted their healthcare plans to accommodate out-of-state medical procedures — and?have not been vocal about their stance on the issue . One from May 2022 showed 60% of HR executives?did?not?plan to offer any new healthcare benefits ?in response to the Court decision. A study the following month by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) found that?more than half of businesses ?have not made a statement about Roe v. Wade, and only 15% intended to if the law were overturned.?
This is shortsighted, to say the least, especially now with?nationwide police brutality against protesting abortion rights activists ?and two thirds of American consumers now actively choosing to?buy from brands whose values reflect their own .
As Gartner research principal Crystal Styron said, “What a trucking firm in Arkansas needs will look very different from what a startup in Silicon Valley needs.” Of course, the organizations that prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion?will?act on behalf of all their female-identifying workers. Women, after all, make up only?8% of Fortune 500 CEOs ?and?20% of all C-suite roles ?— and without access to the health coverage they need, they’re not being included or treated equitably, are they?
No. So when developing your updated benefits package to ensure inclusion of female health-specific care, consider the following options:
2. Mental and behavioral health care
Even before the COVID-era quarantines, job losses and deaths, the summer 2022 war in Ukraine and?Uvalde school shooting , or the sudden stripping of abortion rights, the vast majority of workers (including about nine in 10 Gen-Zers and millennials) believed their employers should have a mental health policy, according to?a survey commissioned by Zapier .
The pandemic had short- and long-term psychosocial and behavioral health implications, as have more recent national and world headlines. In November 2020, the National Center for Health Statistics found that?36.3% of adults admitted having anxiety disorder symptoms , up from only 8.2% the year before, and a more recent report from Mental Health America indicates that high rates of anxiety, as well as depression, are expected to continue or even worsen.?
Fortunately, nine out of 10 employers are?investing more in mental health benefits , and nine out of 10 told Business Group on Health that they’d be?offering virtual counseling to all employees .
Starbucks, for instance, initiated a training program called?Starbucks Mental Health Fundamentals ?for its employees and started offering free counseling sessions. Meanwhile, UK-based?Perkbox , an?holistic ?mental health platform, has helped thousands of businesses create a happy workplace, improve employee well-being, boost employee motivation and productivity and reduce employee absenteeism by supporting employees in life and at work.?
Smart thinking, considering depression alone?costs employers about $50 billion a year , while mental health programs can?generate a return on investment of up to 1,000% !
3. Digital Health, Telehealth and Virtual Care
As Business Group on Health proclaimed in?its 2021 report , “virtual care is here to stay.” Indeed, telehealth, or the delivery of health-care, health education and health information services via remote technologies, was already growing before the pandemic, but during the first quarter of 2020 it increased 50%; some doctor’s offices were even forced to close to better prepare for?this new model of care delivery.?
Employers, meanwhile, have been steadily expanding their use of telehealth for years, and the pandemic accelerated the pace. In?a?conversation?with HealthLeaders , UnitedHealth Group’s chief medical officer Donna O'Shea reported 28-million telemedicine visits in 2021, representing a 2,500% increase from the pre-pandemic baseline. (In addition,?virtual?behavioral health appointments accounted for 63% of?all?behavioral health visits, up from barely more than 1% before COVID.)
Today, organizations like Citigroup and Bank of America are leveraging established telemedicine providers as well as offering access to local brick-and-mortar practices that were forced to switch to and later maintain their virtual offerings since the COVID outbreak.
Why? Because it makes for healthier, happier employees. And happier, healthier employees are more efficient, more productive, and more engaged — whether they’re working from home, the office, or both.?
When you offer virtual care to your employees, they have 24/7 access to everything they need to stay informed about their health and can make virtual appointments with a variety of doctors and other providers at times that best suit their busy lives.?
Plus, in addition to what has traditionally qualified as telemedicine or virtual care, employers are now also offering stipends to employees to invest in other forms of digital self-care. This can include apps for meditation, sleep tracking, meal planning, physical fitness, and even maternity. The annual fee for most mobile apps is relatively low, and some even offer bulk discounts to businesses, allowing HR departments to deliver significant ROI by demonstrating care for their employees at little financial cost.
Some of the most highly rated wellness apps include:
领英推荐
4. Financial Wellness and Generational Wealth
It’s well known that the majority of workers live paycheck to paycheck, and approximately 40% of US households would struggle to cover a $400 emergency expense. Needless to say, this produces great financial stress — and financial stress?causes a 34% increase in work absenteeism and tardiness .?
Unfortunately, COVID left more workers financially stressed than ever, and?skyrocketing inflation ?is making matters worse. Meanwhile, more than two thirds of all investors — and more than eight in 10 millennials and seven in 10 Gen-Xers — are?focused on?generational?wealth .?
To provide financial incentives and assistance, beyond salary and bonuses, offer:?
5. Family Wellness
A simple concept designed to address an immediate and long-term need, family wellness means extending wellness benefits to employees’ families; offering financial assistance and other benefits to the entire family would not only demonstrate your commitment and appreciation to your workers, it might directly impact your workers’ physical and emotional health, as well as their productivity. As part of your family wellness program, you could offer access to:?
6. Learning & Development, and Upward Mobility
As LinkedIn explains in?How Learning Programs Attract and Retain Top Talent , “to attract top talent, your organization needs to be a place where people advance their career. It needs to be a place where people are given opportunities to learn new skills and take on new challenges. And job candidates need to know about it.”
LinkedIn surveyed more than 10,500 recent job changers and found that lack of advancement opportunity was the number-one driver of job change — and this is particularly true of millennials, the fastest growing segment of the workforce
Likewise, 83% of respondents to?a survey by SHRM , the Society for Human Resource Management, said career advancement was “important” or “very important;” 78% said a clear career path would compel them to stay longer at their current organization, while only 20% reported being “very satisfied” with how their employers were managing their professional growth.
Take a look at your learning and development approach, and ask yourself:
Armed with the answers to these questions, you should know with certainty whether a new strategy is warranted; chances are, it is. Because unless you’re adhering to the principles of adaptive learning, you’re probably wasting everyone’s time.
So, what is adaptive learning? Adaptive learning is designed to:
In contrast to the typical one-size-fits-all approach, envision, for instance, an online continuing education course that adjusts to each of your employees’ unique skills, interests and learning styles. The employee who needs more context, extended explanation or additional practice receives it; the employee who doesn’t simply skips past. And the training lasts only as long as necessary for each individual.
Your adaptive learning system?(see below)?enables this by:
The goal , according to eLearning Industry, is always the same — “whether we use algorithms, nonlinear narrative (branching), personal info, clever interfaces, human intervention, or more likely a combination, to achieve it.”?The result , according to Nick J. Howe, chief learning officer of?Area9 Lyceum , a global leader in ‘micro’ adaptive learning technologies, is “effective and time-efficient pathways to mastery that are unique to every individual, while improving business-based outcomes.”
To incorporate adaptive learning at your organization, also consider:
Then, to ensure employees?and job candidates?know about the training and advancement opportunities within your organization:?
7. Personalized Wellness and Tailored Benefits
As is true of digital marketing, personalization is everything. Survey your employees, conduct competitive research, develop your slate of offerings, and promote your most innovative, employee-centric benefits. Some examples include:?
Bonus: Kindness and Appreciation
In?a gratitude survey ?of 2,000 Americans, 81% said they’d work harder for an appreciative boss; 70% said they’d feel better about themselves and their efforts if their boss thanked them more. So, sit with that for a while.
Optimizing Recruitment and Retention with HR Software
As complicated as this all may seem, you don’t need a benefits consulting company if you’ve hired (and trained) the right HR professionals. HR software, on the other hand, is nearly impossible to live without, particularly at larger companies. For your analytics dashboard alone, it’s worth it; but, HR teams have a massive, diverse set of responsibilities, with numerous stakeholders and even more KPIs.?
So, unless you want to overwork the very people empowered to recruit new employees and ensure existing ones stay, I strongly recommend reviewing and testing out at least two of the following:
When demoing your HR software, look out for:
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Fractional CMO | Agency President + CEO | Brand, Digital, Social, Content, PR and Political Strategist | Award-Winning Writer, Ghostwriter and Editor | Sold 1 Business
2 年Executive Networks International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP) Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) SHRM LinkedIn Zapier AskNicely GetFeedback LimeSurvey Qualaroo Qualtrics SurveyMonkey Zoho Levi Strauss & Co. Yelp Perkbox Mental Health America Business Group on Health HealthLeaders Calm Headspace Lifesum MyFitnessPal Nike Training Club SleepCycle Strava WHOOP Area9 Lyceum CanopyLAB - Social Learning Powered by AI Easygenerator Knewton SparkLearn BambooHR Engagedly Inc GoCo Gusto Namely Paycor Workday Zenefits