After a decade of historically low unemployment and growth, companies are now operating in a very different environment. Even though due to the pandemic, the companies are laying off many employees, but soon a time will come when the recession ends. When this happens, many organizations will have the responsibility to ensure that their employees are satisfied with their jobs.
As easy as it sounds, but keeping all the employees happy and positive is a tedious task for employers. Enhancing the employee experience can cost the company a lot as they have to take various initiatives such as work-from-home flexibility, skill development training, redesigning the workplace, etc.
When a company is successful in meeting its employee’s expectations, it boosts their morale and productivity, thus helping in retaining the top employees. Having said that, when companies devise employee experience strategy, it drives up the expectations of present and future employees.
This can be a dilemma because if the employees’ expectations are not met, they will leave the organization without thinking twice.
Studies reveal that for better retention, a company should keep up with the expectations of every employee. But many times, the employees remain unsatisfied and end up calling it quits. This can happen due to many reasons.
The key 5 reasons why employee experience initiatives fail are-
Lack of Internal Communication-
Internal communication does much more than just exchanging information. Many times the organizations have a horizontal line of communication, making it hard for the bottom-line employees to communicate with the top-level employees. This lowers the employees’ morale as they feel they are not valued enough.
Even if they have great ideas and strategies, they can’t put it forth as there is no direct line of communication. Integrating solution like HRMS can help solve this problem as the software enable a vertical line of communication where every employee can interact with each other, thus feeling equally important.
Tedious onboarding process-
Many organizations don’t organize a new hire orientation program, let alone a good onboarding process. When new employees join a company, they want to know everything about the working of their organization. This includes the work culture, appraisal process, leaves, etc. When a company fails to make an employee understand its working and targets, the employees fail to perform as they don’t know what is expected from them.
Additionally, completing the onboarding process can be overwhelming for the new hires if they have to run around the HR manager to fill out the documents. By using good HRMS software, the companies can make the onboarding process seamless for the new hires by making every process automated.
No work flexibility-
With advanced technology, working from home has become easier than ever. Thus, many employees prefer to work in an organization where they have the flexibility to work from home. What many companies fail to understand is that employees are much more productive and efficient when they work from home.
Therefore, they don’t give the employees the option to work remotely. Especially, after the pandemic has struck, more and more people want the option of working remotely forever. Many organizations are forcing employees to come and work in the office, which is creating a negative impact on them and forcing them to look for other companies that do have work flexibility.
Bad Rewards Program-
When employees work hard, they want to be rewarded as they are worthy of it. Giving positive feedback to employees can help in improving their morale and boost their productivity. Many organizations fail to appreciate the hard work of their employees, thus lowering employee experience.
If the employees don’t get rewarded, they stop working productively as they feel unrecognised. Additionally, maximum organizations keep performance appraisal only once a year. Many employees feel this is not fair as their performance should be analysed regularly not annually.
Creating a better benefit and empowering program like ESS portal for employees can help employees serve themselves. Self-service or ESS portal gives powers to employees’ hands and free some HR time.
Absence of Career Development Program-
Gone are the days when employees used to work in the role till the time they got retired. With the modern and challenging world, every employee wants to have knowledge of every field related to their role. They want to work in a company where they are allowed to develop their skill and make an informed decision about which role are, they most comfortable in.
Many organizations are still orthodox and feel that an employee should stick to their particular field and not try anything new. This lowers the morale of employees to a great extent, and the talents of employees might go to waste just because they couldn’t work on their skill development.
Takeaway
Keeping employees happy is very crucial for an organization. Only when the employees are satisfied, they will give their best to boost the growth of the company. If the employees feel they are not being valued and don’t have the opportunity to grow, it will lead to a negative employee experience.
Author bio-
Ritik Singh writes about HR (Human Resource) software, cloud, and enterprise technology. A dynamic content writer who writes for Pocket HRMS, a leading provider of cloud-based HR software in India with inbuilt AI-powered HR Chatbot (smHRty) to small and mid-sized businesses across India.
