Today, employees have their choice of employers. As they look to switch careers or companies, they want more than just a regular paycheck and access to good benefits.
What do employees really care about, and what keeps them engaged and satisfied? Here’s what some of our recent research shows.
Employees want to work for a company whose mission, vision and values align with their own. In fact, workers are more likely to recommend their employer as a great place to work (70% vs. 25%), more likely to say their work gives them a sense of personal accomplishment (72% vs. 29%) and less likely to quit (33% vs. 44%) if they feel aligned to their company’s mission, vision and values.
Employees are prioritizing their physical and mental health. Nearly 3 in 4 (71%) employees say workplace health and safety are a top concern when deciding where to work. This isn’t surprising as two years into the pandemic, people are burnt out, with nearly 2 in 3 (58%) of workers saying their job is the main source of their mental health challenges.
Employees want better technology experiences, especially with the rise in hybrid and remote work. Workers who say that their technology is enabling productivity, compared to those who don’t, are 158% more engaged in their jobs and have 61% higher intent-to-stay at the company beyond three years.
With 28% of employees planning to quit in the next year, understanding how employees think and feel about their jobs is critical to understanding the why behind turnover and burnout.
How can employers keep up with the changing needs and expectations of their workforce? The answer lies within understanding how specific moments in time through the employee journey impact their overall experience and ultimately, their willingness to stay with the organization.
Holistic listening is the key to personalized experiences
Over the past two years, organizations across the world have more frequently asked employees for feedback, or started implementing an employee listening strategy, including what workers think about their remote work experiences as well as their overall well-being. Yet, company leaders often focus on analyzing experience data—how employees think and feel about work—for specific moments in time, without connecting the dots between how certain moments or experiences impact one another. As a result, employers aren’t able to see the full picture of how their employees are actually doing and miss the mark on identifying and fixing issues that most impact worker retention, engagement and productivity.
Qualtrics’ Employee Experience ID brings together employees’ experience data over time, including their preferences (i.e. how and when employees prefer to work), engagement, performance and feedback about work.
This enables company leaders to identify trends among similar groups of employees and actions they can take to boost engagement and productivity. For example, organizations could identify that female middle managers are among the employee groups most likely to quit and then ask for feedback on what changes leaders can implement to create better experiences for those groups. This level of insight can give employers a competitive advantage in their efforts to recruit and retain top talent.
When it comes to offering more personalized employee experiences, it’s critical that employees trust their confidential information is actually kept confidential. How an individual responds to a quarterly pulse about their work experiences, for instance, will remain anonymous.
Understanding the impact of individual experiences on engagement and retention
Employee Journey Analytics is a new capability powered by Employee Experience ID, which reveals how individual moments in an employee’s journey—including hiring, onboarding, manager interactions, technology experiences and more—impact one another.
For instance, a large multinational retailer discovered that when managers reached out to new employees on their team before the first day of work, those employees were more likely to say their jobs met or exceeded their expectations on day 30, and less likely to experience on-the-job stress compared to those who did not hear from their manager before day one. They also found that managers reaching out via text had a more positive influence on engagement than email. By analyzing feedback from onboarding with engagement metrics, this company directed managers to take a small but important action to effectively welcome new hires and significantly impact their team’s future performance.
People want to work for—and do business with—organizations that show they are listening and responding with empathy. Organizations that leverage both operational and experience data to personalize the workplace experiences they offer—giving people what they want and need to feel engaged at work—will stand out in the eyes of current and prospective employees.
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