Employee experience and employee wellness go hand-in-hand when creating a healthy and productive workplace. The relationship between the two is integral to overall job satisfaction and organisational success. They also have a bearing on customer experience.
To create the best customer experience, it is essential to understand what defines employee experience, how it relates to wellness, and how employee wellness can improve your business.
In this article, we’ll explore how these components fit together so companies can develop comprehensive strategies for fostering positive employee experience that in turn impacts the customer experience.
Employee experience vs customer experience: Is there a connection?
Understanding the difference between your employees’ experience and your customers’ experiences is critical to cultivating a productive workplace and improving your business outcomes. So how can we define these two elements, and how do they overlap?
Employee experience is the sum of an individual’s interactions with an organisation in the workplace. It encompasses everything from an employee’s initial touchpoints with a company, such as the recruitment and onboarding process, to their daily interactions with coworkers and managers, to their eventual departure from the organisation.
Employee wellness is a state of being healthy in mind, body, and spirit. It includes physical health, mental health, emotional well-being, and social connectedness.
You may think your employees are doing well, but a growing number are dreading going to work or beginning their workdays, according to recent studies. Constant dread and stress can have a serious impact on each employee’s work experience, leading to higher rates of burnout and, ultimately, lost productivity and higher labour turnover.
A study by McKinsey & Company found that there is a strong relationship between employee experience and employee wellness. They cited that employees with great work experience are more likely to be healthy and have fewer sick days.
There is also a defined correlation between stress and experience. Employees with excellent work experiences are more likely to be productive and have less stress overall. This is because they feel valued at their job and like they are part of a team. When they feel this way employee retention increases.
How does this affect customer experience?
If your staff are happy and productive it directly feeds into the touchpoints within your customers’ journey. It could be as simple as your client receiving correct and full deliveries, or a friendly and helpful tone in customer support situations.
Why great employee experience is the new customer experience
Great employee experience leads to greater employee wellness. When employees don’t feel engaged or cared for, within their organisation, customers’ experience can suffer.
According to a Forbes and Salesforce survey, 70% of executives reported that improved employee experiences result in better customer experience.
Though there are a range of factors that impact the employee experience, ensuring employees feel empowered is key. When employees feel valued and supported by their organisation, they are more likely to be engaged in their work and have a positive outlook on their careers. This leads to better physical and mental health, increased productivity, and lower absenteeism.
Providing your workers with incentives, current technology that reduces friction and making efforts to improve job satisfaction can strengthen customer-oriented work behaviours, improving your overall customer experience.
5 benefits of great employee experience on customer experience
With the link between employee experience and customer experience so clear, you may be wondering which concrete results you can expect from your improvement efforts.
According to the academic study, “Employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction: Is there a relationship?” (source: Academia, whitepaper, Chie Elacio, 2011) improved employee satisfaction can have the following impacts on customer experience. Satisfied employees:
- Are in a better position to interact with customers and develop an understanding of customers’ goals and needs and respond accordingly.
- Are motivated employees who can deliver the required effort and care when working with customers.
- Are empowered employees with the resources, training and information to provide good customer service.
- Have the energy and willingness to provide good customer service and a more positive perception of their organisation’s products or services.
- Have the emotional resources to show empathy, understanding, respect and concern for customers.
How can you start making an effective change?
While there are countless touchpoints between employees and their work organisations, there are some key, evidence-based elements where you can focus your employee experience efforts. These nine elements are broken into three categories across business functions, so you can ensure employees have the best possible experience across your organisation.
To consider these nine factors, ask yourself the following questions about your employees’ experiences:
- Social experience
- People and relationships – Are your employees and their contributions treated as valuable and significant to the organisation?
- Teamwork – Do your employees trust and care for one another in a collaborative environment? Do they feel safe to take risks and innovate?
- Social climate – Do employees feel welcome in their work community? Do they have a sense of belonging?
- Work experience
- Work organisation – Are work responsibilities, roles and expectations clear?
- Work control and flexibility – Do employees have control over their productivity with flexibility? Does work feel like a positive addition to their lives?
- Growth and rewards – Are employees incentivized and given opportunities to develop their careers and provide for their families?
- Organisation experience
- Purpose – Does the company’s purpose align with your employees’ values? Are they able to contribute to that mission?
- Technology – Does company technology allow employees to work efficiently? Does technology reduce friction
- Physical environment – Are employee workspaces safe, comfortable, and human-centred?
How employee wellness technology can shape your employee experience
With so much discussion around technology’s impact on our lives (both good and bad), it’s worth noting that specific technology can have a tangible impact on employee experience and well-being.
Around the world, workers are experiencing record burnout. In fact, 64% of US employees cite work as a personal stressor, but only 52% of employers have any wellness programs for their workers.
If you’re planning to bolster your employee experience and wellness initiatives, you may find that technology can be an asset despite potentially playing a part in employee stress.
With new data-driven apps, you can support your employees’ wellness while informing your efforts with insights specific to your organisation. New applications specifically designed to enhance employee experience are emerging, and many are based on rigorous studies and use evidence-based practices and interventions to improve workplace’ wellness.
How the Kind Mind app improves the employee experience
A data-led wellness app like Kind Mind can help organisations take employee experience to a new level.
Our wellness platform helps employers understand and improve their employees’ health and wellness whilst assisting employees in personalised self-care, behaviour change and healthy living.
When a workforce uses Kind Mind, it is equipped with insights into wellness across team and organisational levels, providing the necessary support to interpret the trends and remedy issues on large and small scales.
For example, Kind Mind regularly checks in with employees to get their current perspective on their wellness. Kind Mind takes that information and generates valuable reports for human resources, managers, and other organisational leaders to use when planning initiatives, evaluating provisional effectiveness or checking in on their company’s overall cultural climate.
These reports provide valuable insights to help improve the workplace across the nine elements discussed above. In return for participation, the app offers individual recommendations to employees to help them reach their wellness goals.
What’s next? How to take your customer experience to the next level
It is clear that a happy employee makes for a happier customer experience, so it makes sense that we spend time working on creating a better workplace environment. But where do we start?
Here at Kind Mind, we suggest opening communication with your staff and diving deep into their thoughts and feelings on a wide number of issues from work/life balance to business and customer processes. Be open and honest and you’ll see that returned in your feedback.
This is your unique starting point.
Good luck.
