Their four-pillar approach puts the employee at the centre of every key decision.
As a leader in the people space, you will know that the employee experience is difficult to pin down, track, quantify and report. For that reason, we at Torque have compiled our knowledge, experience, ideas, as well as current trends and compared them to our robust methodology (that we’ve spent the better part of the last year field testing) to produce a report on the Employee Experience for 2021.
The 4 Pillar Approach puts the employee at the centre of every key decision. It offers verticals to track the employee’s experience in the organisation and is a helpful tool to incorporate when planning your next strategy. The four pillars are:
- Conversation: Moving from a broadcast mentality to a 2-way conversational approach, responding to the business as the pivotal element of success.
- Rewards: Don’t always equal cash. Effective rewards can encourage employees to gain the necessary skills to help them and the organisation grow.
- Community: It makes people feel they can bring their whole selves to their work, and employees want to invest in and further their mission.
- Function: A positive employee experience requires using tools to reduce friction from day-to-day work, making it easier for employees to find what they need when they need it!
The 2021 EX Report highlights the 4 EX Pillars and unpacks the employee experience trends in each area, indicating some of the tactics that can be used to engage the employee more effectively.
We have paid special attention to how the employee experience differs by role in the organisation and how to consider the needs of ALL.
Conversation, communication and language
Keeping communication frequent, natural, and honest and setting a common language from leadership throughout the organisation helps build a robust and inclusive culture.
Businesses leading in this space embrace openness and vulnerability and are learning that communicating – even when the response reflects the genuine uncertainty of the situation – this way is reaping dividends in terms of the employee’s experience and engagement levels.
Taking a new view on rewards
Companies that reconsider their view on what is beneficial to the employee leads to improved engagement and increased productivity. Work flexibility, enhanced culture, open access to career development are some of the new hygiene factors we should be paying attention to.
Businesses are seeing the value of co-creating with their employees; opening collaborative and innovative initiatives excite and delight employees whilst including them in broader strategic business conversations.
Building community in new spaces
As work moves into a more remote and hybrid model, businesses still struggle to keep employees engaged. Companies that are winning in this space are utilising online tools to build employee communities and making sure to use their data to tailor this experience at scale.
Leveraging function through technology
The functional aspect of the employee experience should form the backbone of all employee strategies. When choosing a digital tool to enhance the experience it is imperative to place usefulness at the centre of the experience.
The chosen tool can go a long way in addressing accessibility, especially for workers who don’t sit at a desk. User stories and hallway testing are part of the agile approach that refines digital solutions to make them incrementally better and drive business value.
If you would like to learn more about the 4 EX Pillars and understand some of the actionable items in more detail, then download the 2021 EX Report.
