Why Employee Experience is the New Customer Experience

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For this week’s Workplace Intelligence Newsletter, I interviewed Melinda Cormier, VP Growth at LumApps, a global Employee Experience Platform transforming how companies engage, enable, and empower their workforces. In her role, Melinda Cormier leads the Demand Generation team, which includes digital marketing, field marketing, marketing operations, and analyst relations.

In our conversation, we discussed some of the key takeaways from LumApps’ new report, Attract, Engage and Retain: The Employee Experience Advantage. The report explores why companies must take a closer look at employee experience if they want to avoid falling victim to the Great Resignation, what constitutes a great experience for today’s workers, where employers should start, and what the future holds for EX.?

Below is a sneak peek of our conversation — subscribe to my FREE Workplace Intelligence Insider newsletter and you’ll immediately receive the full Q&A.

And be sure to join us during our live audio event TODAY (September 19) at 12pm EST, where Melinda and I will continue our discussion.

1.????Let’s dive right into the main topic — this idea that “employee experience (EX) is the new customer experience.” Can you explain what this means and tell us how this concept came about??

More than ever, in a service economy, a company cannot succeed without its people. This is because customer experience (CX) is a direct reflection of employee experience (EX), defined as the sum of all the interactions — ?and the context of those interactions — that employees have across the different touchpoints in their day-to-day work lives.

However, it’s not just the customer experience that dictates the success or failure of a company. Rather, many leaders have come to realize that employee experience is just as critical to the success of their business. This is partly because employee expectations have been drastically reshaped by multiple factors, including the pandemic.

Therefore, CX professionals must hold up a mirror to everyone in the organization and learn to view their employees as “customers” as well. Part of this process involves recognizing that the relationship between employers and workers has been redefined across key areas like onboarding and off-boarding, flexibility and mobility, the corporate culture, and health and well-being at work.

Although the idea that “employee experience as the new customer experience” isn’t new, there’s been a renewed focus on this concept over the past few years. As the power has shifted to employees amidst the ongoing Great Resignation, younger generations of workers have brought attention to longstanding issues with their work experience, many of which were exacerbated by the pandemic.

2.????What are some of the most critical pieces of employee experience today? What have companies been getting wrong about EX?

In the last two years, employee experience has become a C-level priority as modern enterprises struggle with employee engagement, retention, and knowledge-sharing in a now digital world.

Perhaps most notably, there’s been a massive switch in power when recruiting and retaining staff. Employees have taken the time to reflect on what they want from their careers, and many are deciding to change jobs or abandon the workforce entirely. The clock is running out for organizations to persuade their workers to stay — but they are persuadable if employers can get to them in time.

Companies should remember that not everyone is looking for a new job, and some workers may be open to counter-offers or better benefits and perks. Employers looking to retain employees should focus on creating hybrid work models and giving employees more flexibility. In addition, strengthening relationships and building trust will go a long way to retaining today’s workers.?

The largest misconception regarding employee experience is that the employee lifecycle is linear. Most people believe that only new hires are highly engaged, and this engagement slowly decreases until they quit a few years later — but this couldn’t be further from reality. In actuality, an employee’s lifecycle in a company is more like a rollercoaster, made up of key moments ranging from onboarding and performance appraisals to relocation, maternity leave, and more.

HR leaders who focus on the full spectrum of these key moments can make smarter investments with greater impact. These “moments that matter” are both personal and work-related, and they have the ability to make a significant impact on employee experience — either positively or negatively.

Want to read the full article? You can access it in the?Workplace Intelligence Insider Archives. To receive the new edition every Monday morning,?subscribe?for free.

And be sure to tune in for our live audio event TODAY (September 19) at 12:00pm EST, where Melinda and I will continue our discussion on this important topic.