#EmployeeExperience.
Today, I overheard a conversation amongst employees of an organization I visited briefly, and what struck me was not just the “sentiment in the conversation” but how many of the colleagues shared that vibe!
And it got me thinking on #EmployeeExperience: I decided to pen this quick before other priorities say NO.
You never really know who it will help.
Employees are (should be) your business….but does your corporate disposition or actions show them that they are really YOUR business?
Employee alienation is a very bad signal in an organization that is often missed or ignored by the management/ leadership, often because of extenuating factors.
When the employee experience has become so sour...
- that they (the employees) see themselves just working for the money;
- referring to themselves as distinct and separate from the organization;
- referring to the company as “they”;
- not taking ownership of the shortcomings arising from the company's products, services or people;
- or worse still, not even willing to take ownership of/promoting the achievements of the said company amongst each other, to the customers or to the public....
The result is that you have a sorry state of demoralized workforce that will find it difficult to infuse enthusiasm, talk less of creativity into any and everything they do for the company.
A popularly ignored saying that I've observed is....
#EmployeeExperience is directly or conversely Proportional to Customer's Experience.
This obviously cancels growth and leads to stagnation.
Big sized, properly structured, organizations are able to get away with this stagnation, only seemingly without loosing much, but in reality, the potentials they could harness for exponential growth and are not optimizing is a loss to them.
And believe me, most Nigerian top 5 companies in every industry and sector are on this table that I’m shaking.
It is the reason why their growth at best, is only linear/arithmetic in nature as opposed to geometric progression they are capable of, given the resources at their disposal.
The complacency has made it so hard to break out of this fix/rut…..and guess what? Most of them either don’t know it, are unwilling to admit it, or otherwise unable to work on it.
Small and Medium scale businesses on the other hand can’t afford the luxury of stagnation for too long...... atleast not yet.... and as such, their growth often seems to be rapid........until they’re not. This is because stagnation for them is visibly tantamount to retrogression…something which is almost imperceptible in bigger companies.
If one looks closer though, a lack of focus on optimizing #EmployeeExperience by Nigerian companies is endemic to even the best and oldest of them.
In a research conducted by Deloitte University, over 80% of top executives have recognized the importance of employee experience, even though only 22% of them are satisfied with their company’s progress in that area.
According to Talent Lms, You can start with these employee experience boosting tips.
- Be open to employees’ opinions
- Be appreciative of employee contributions
- Offer plenty of career advancement opportunities
- Build a real office culture (not to be mistaken for a company culture)
I would like to write more
about this, especially about how to climb out of the rut, but duty calls.
If you’ll like to know more, drop a comment, share or like, and I’ll do a podcast episode Ope Diamond (@cexprofs)
In the meantime do follow this handle (@cexprofs) on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube.
Do have a great day.
~OVDS
