The Five Things Your Company Needs To Know About Employee Experience This Year

It is natural for every business to go to great lengths to get maximum customer satisfaction. But in the quest for this, it is critical to give the same level of attention to arguably the most vital cog in the wheels of your business – your employees. 

Employee experience is particularly important in the financial sector, as this is one of the fastest-moving markets, making job-hopping a common occurrence.  

The ‘employee experience’ is an increasingly examined area in the structure of a company, as noted in this Deloitte University Press report, almost 80% of executives state that they feel their employee experience is ‘very important’. 

Australia is now in its second year of hosting the ‘Employee Experience Summit’, held at Park Hyatt, Melbourne. This annual event showcases speakers from Australia’s top-rated employee experience organisations, sharing their industry knowledge on subjects such as personalising your employee’s experience, journey planning, and using technology to enhance the employee experience.  

Good employee experience is the best way to keep your company competitive and your staff happy and more importantly – in their jobs; this should be the primary goal of any business. 

In this article, I will guide you through five of the main topics on employee experience that your company needs to know. 

1. Expectation Vs Reality 

Why does an employee look for a new job? The biggest factor is job dissatisfaction. If you have promised an employee something at the start of their contract and then fail to deliver on it, not only have you broken your promise, but also your bond of trust with them. Not getting quite what they were expecting out of the position is a huge factor in an employee wanting to look for another position in a company who will deliver on their promises. Look back at the job description you offered your employee when they were a candidate – are these responsibilities still in place six months after a new candidate is placed? A year? Or have they been given different duties such as a greatly reduced, or increased workload? If you have advertised for a mortgage broker position ‘with a difference’, make sure this is what you deliver on.  

Meeting an employee’s expectation of a role is key to them having a positive experience, and this is something that needs to be monitored for the duration of their time with your company, not just the honeymoon period. 

2. Viewing Your Employees Through a Customer Lens  

Keeping your customers happy is the key to a successful company; this is business 101. Customers put the money in your bank account and pay your salaries, so it is natural to want to bend over backwards to impress them. But what if you started to apply this idea internally, and treated every member of staff with the care and attention you want your customers to feel? This is not a new concept; a select number of companies have been using this philosophy for years and to great effect. This Forbes article highlights how employee satisfaction directly results in customer satisfaction. 

While this holistic approach gets returns, it can be easy to overlook it, due to the reason that it doesn’t fit in with the Western obsession of getting results fast. It can take a little longer for a company to see the results of an overhaul in the way they treat their staff, but it does work – the results speak for themselves. The Temkin Group Employee Engagement Study found that 63% of highly engaged employees try their hardest at work. 

3. Diversity Is Key 

As humans, we can be real creatures of habit, and this is evident in the choices we make every day – from our choice of dinner to our favourite car parking spot. Because of this, you might be mistaken into thinking that a productive workforce is one in which all the members have a certain set of similar characteristics, which enable them to work well together. In fact, the opposite is true. The best kind of workforce is a diverse one, in which there are enough differences for everyone to bring something new, making them feel unique and valuable.  

The financial sector up until now has been dominated by a narrow margin of people – predominantly white male – but reports show that the tide is turning. The latest Financial Times gender diversity review reports that women in senior financial roles have increased by around 80% on previous years, creating an even balance in financial workspaces.  

4. A Culture Shift 

Millennials are often blamed for a shift in the world’s norms, particularly in the world of work. While this has created a surge in the amount of ping pong tables now found in offices across the world, you will be pleased to know it has also had an impact on the importance of salary. Younger employees are now citing factors such as flexibility, ability to train and workplace culture as just as important as salary. This 2018 Pentegra report found that salary was no more important to the younger workforce than other benefits that an employer can offer. Providing your employees with conditions that lean towards their needs is one of the best ways to avoid burnout, which is being reported more frequently among those in high–pressure roles.  

5. Artificial Intelligence (A.I) – Looking to The Future

The financial sector has been one of the areas most affected by the rise of artificial intelligence. Automation has been the cause for job cuts in some areas, but it has also lent itself to new opportunities. At present A.I can only mimic automated tasks; it is unable to do what the industry defines as core ‘value-creating’ tasks. Creating value is the key to growing your company, but it also goes hand-in-hand with creating a positive employee experience. A clever use of A.I. will free up time spent on menial tasks allowing your employees to focus on creating value for your business by creative thinking and problem–solving. 

What next? Your company could be on either side of this scale, from providing the best employee experience to never having given it a second thought. If you are starting to think about employee experience or are wanting to take it up a level, this is a great place to start. We have written several blogs on honing your staffing skills, which can be found on our blog page here.  

Thanks  

Amrutha 

About JobFitts 

JobFitts Consultants are a specialist provider of professional Recruitment Services for the Financial Services sector and related suppliers in Australia. Since 2003 we have recruited and placed a breadth of operational roles at all levels from HR, Accounting, Marketing and Customer Service/Frontline. 

To find out more visit our website at JobFitts here or call us on (02) 9220 3595 or email here.