How can you make your employees happy?
Employee experience is about increasing employee happiness at work. But how do you do that? Start with the company’s purpose and core values and from there create a culture that aligns with what you are as an organisation, advises employee experience expert, Heleen Mes. The following is an interview marking the second edition of her book, Employee Experience: Happy People, Better Business.
Hybrid work has become the new post-coronavirus norm, but not everyone is equally happy about it. Some managers feel they are losing control, and consequently are turning to technical means to monitor employees, while concurrently a number of companies are seemingly turning against the trend for hybrid work. Elon Musk for example recently called for Tesla’s teleworkers to return to the office full-time. “You sometimes see that we go too far with new movements. Nonetheless, turning back the clock is of course also a form of going too far,” says Heleen Mes, employee experience expert and author.
Happiness at work is paramount
According to Mes, the crucial question is not whether we work from home, work at the office or opt for a hybrid solution: “For top employers, the key question is not ‘where do you want to work?’, but rather ‘what do we want to do together?” Hybrid working is not a solo activity; it’s something we do collaboratively. It’s about collectivity and trust. If you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve collectively and how you must do it, then the rest is up to you. Discuss amongst your team when you should meet with one another.”
With the rise of hybrid work, many organizations are now more concerned than ever with employee experience. At issue is the transformation of organizations into places where happiness at work is paramount. Happy employees are motivated people and productive employees. If a company is renowned for being a good employer and having a great corporate culture, prospective employees will go to great lengths to garner the attention of its recruitment department, which in turn seriously enhances the chances that a company will attract the right kind of people during periods of labor shortages, as we are currently experiencing.
For who do you exist?
The road to building such an attractive organisation starts with establishing the company’s purpose. “An organisation starts with its reason for existence,” Mes states. “It’s not that you are the largest or largest in terms of turnover, but rather what you add to the lives of your customers or the world? If you can communicate this well, it gives enormous strength and inspiration to the people who will do this together with you.” Mes, the author of Employee Experience: Happy People, Better Business, believes that many organisations have still not clearly established their purpose.
Speaker and author Simon Sinek says that many companies make the mistake of defining their objectives too broadly. In such cases, the purpose often describes the reason why the sector exists, but not why your organisation exists. In his view, this is the difference between an average company and a great company, with the latter understanding its higher purpose, the reason that employees feel the organisation must achieve their objectives.
Consequently, it is crucial that many companies return to their core purpose and examine their original objectives. But how do you do that? “You must go back to the reason why you were founded in the first place,” Mes says. ‘Often the founder had a vision of this, but sometimes that inspirational vision has been subsequently abandoned. Such organisations would benefit from revisiting it. Sometimes, due to the belief that ‘we already said that’, an organisation’s purpose and values are too easily dismissed. But you must stay focused on the objective, while linking it to actions. It must be part of your organisation’s DNA.”
According to Mes, establishing a solid foundation starts with developing the employee experience. The company values are a vital starting point, which leads to the question: for whom do you want to be a good employer? “It’s possible that you may not be the best fit for some employees, and you simply cannot make those people happy,” Mes explains. “So you must find the people who you can make happy. That for me is the foundation of the employee experience.”
Much attention is given to attracting employees and determining what is needed to do this. For multiple generations now many organisations have searched for ways to be a good employer. Can we be more responsive to the employees’ diverse needs? Such organisations are searching for possibilities, rather than simply stating that ‘it must be this way’. Determine what is possible and what people need and want. Organisations that take a one-size-fits-all approach are less adaptable to the diversity of employees than those that can deliver customization.
“Organizations that have invested in happiness at work have lower absenteeism and turnover rates, and find it much easier than average to attract people.”
Tight labor market
Employee experience has garnered increasing amounts of attention in recent years. With the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, and people subsequently being compelled to work from home, many more organisations began thinking about their employees’ happiness. Mes however says that the organisations that were already focusing on employee happiness are now the ones that are better off: “Having invested as much as possible in it, they’re now reaping the rewards.”
“Appreciation for employers has on average increased in the Netherlands to 7.4 percent, having hovered around 7.0 percent during the previous ten years, Mes notes: “I think that’s a sign of appreciation for having received more attention, more support, and more opportunities to bond with one another. Now however that is stagnating, and so I’m curious to see what will transpire in years ahead.” Mes believes the organisations that are not yet busy with this will ultimately be the losers in a tight labor market: “Organisations that have invested in employee happiness have lower absenteeism and turnover rates, and find it much easier than average to attract people.”
Employee retention
In a tight labor market, organisations not only struggle to recruit but also to retain personnel. Mes argues that this has much to do with how employees experience their company: “If you have to have an exit conversation, yet would have liked to retain that person, then you’re too late.” She says that instead of exit conversations, stay conversations are now on the rise: “Why are you staying with us and what can we do to ensure you stay? In surveys, a considerable percentage of employees often indicate that they are in fact searching for other employment opportunities. How should you deal with this? You must ensure that you’re having conversations with everyone: ‘We want to keep you. What will it take to make you stay?’ It’s a check-in call actually, asking, ‘How are we doing?’”
Employees often have greater appreciation for organizations that work in smaller groups than those with massive departments. “People are social creatures and want to feel a certain sense of unity; moreover, they want to work for managers who can give them a certain amount of attention,” Mes says, adding that organizations have become flatter in recent decades, with the result being that a department of 100 employees has only one manager, who is thus more likely to lose sight of people. “This doesn’t make the mangers nor the employees happy.”
“The enjoyable things are like the cocoa powder atop a cappuccino. But of course a good cappuccino starts with good coffee.”
Doing enjoyable things together
This is also a task for colleagues, not just for managers. Mes: “Paying attention to one another must not only come from managers. There’s much you can do within your team to ensure that the individual members are paying attention to one another.” Young people, and people who started working for companies during the pandemic, have had a more difficult time. Companies are searching hard for ways to onboard people and include them in the group. Usually however this only happens during a (virtual) drinks party. “But It can’t go on like that,” Mes stresses. “You must be more creative than that with one another.”
“Enjoyable things are like the cocoa powder atop a cappuccino,” Mes muses, “but of course a good cappuccino starts with good coffee. The foundation – the espresso – must be well established, just like an organisational culture and management style. Additionally, you have tools, office furnishings, the employees….and that’s the frothy milk on top. If you only have enjoyable things to do, but the rest is not well arranged, you will not succeed. Enjoyable things are of course very important, but be sure to gather ideas from your colleagues as well, because what one person finds enjoyable isn’t necessarily so for another.”
What do you really need?
Now that organisations perceive the true importance of employee experience, they are also focusing more on employee satisfaction, and conducting the related research. Mes believes you should be a leading proponent of measuring, as there is something to gain from it: “In employee surveys, for example, organizations ask people what they find good and not so good, but there’s no weight attached to the findings. People may find that something is not so good, but sometimes it’s also something that they’re not interested in at all. If you only have a list of the pros and cons, you cannot properly determine the degree of importance that the employees attach to it. And consequently you’ll start working on the wrong things.”
Organisations must therefore focus more attention on what employees deem important and on what is really needed, rather than surmising that for them. “We should not agree among ourselves whether we’ll work 20 percent of the time from home, but rather first see how we can do the job with young people, newcomers and certain activities – and the rest is up to you.” It’s less important how you do it; it’s about what you want to achieve. What do employees need in order to get the best out of themselves? That’s the key question that employers should be concerned with when it comes to employee experience.
