Beyond Onboarding And Compliance
Training across the entire employee experience
Posted on 09-04-2018, Read Time: - Min
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Often when we think about HR’s role in creating and delivering training, we jump straight to the basics of onboarding and compliance. While these are critical areas and may in fact take a good deal of time and effort to do well, there’s a growing trend for HR departments to take a broader look at their involvement and contribution to learning and development (L&D). This broader viewpoint requires consideration of the entire employee journey or what is now most commonly referred to as the employee experience.
Customer experience (CX) has long been a serious business discipline. Expensive consultants are hired to examine and streamline CX across the organization. Comprehensive training programs are launched to educate employees on detailed facets of the customer experience, even beyond their own reach. Service and sales people are measured, and sometimes compensated, based on customer satisfaction (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS)™. Executives take seats at the boardroom table with titles such as chief experience officer or chief customer officer.
In other words, CX is and will continue to be a high-priority strategic initiative. Especially in light of recent big-name scandals, whether in the airline industry, the social media world, or in the coffee business, negative CX has the potential to break a brand, if not nipped in the bud and immediately remedied.
On the flip side, positive customer experience has the potential to inspire profound customer advocacy, even to the amusing degree we see in this day and age, such as people literally tattooing logos on their bodies, naming their child after a brand, or buying any form of bizarre branded gear.
Of course, the most common expression of modern customer advocacy is effusing on social media -- today’s most effective, but most elusive, form of advertising. This level of customer loyalty, whether it endures for decades or flashes in and out of the pan, without a doubt translates into big financial wins. Simply put, every company wants it, but it can’t be bought; it needs to be authentically earned.
What about Employee Experience?
With all the attention CX has deservedly received, there’s another “experience” that holds equal weight: the experience of employees. It’s the most crucial part of the business that HR professionals can directly affect for the betterment of the company. Just imagine if employees felt as passionate about their company as some of the CX advocacy examples above. Ok, maybe we don’t want them to get brand tattoos, but wouldn’t it be great to ignite that degree of connection and loyalty?
According to one study, 83% of HR leaders reported employee experience as either important or very important to their company’s success, and as such are investing more in training (56%), improving work spaces (51%), and giving more rewards (47%).
By direct extension, engaged, satisfied employees are the driving force behind engaged, satisfied customers. One without the other doesn’t exist, other than in purely digital, transactional business models, such as Amazon or Spotify, etc., in which the consumer likely never interacts with a human representative of the company.
In all other models, happy, informed, inspired employees tend to create customers with the same adjectives. In fact, Temkin Group research shows that companies with excellent customer experience have one-and-a-half times as many engaged employees as customer experience laggards.
According to one study, 83% of HR leaders reported employee experience as either important or very important to their company’s success, and as such are investing more in training (56%), improving work spaces (51%), and giving more rewards (47%).
By direct extension, engaged, satisfied employees are the driving force behind engaged, satisfied customers. One without the other doesn’t exist, other than in purely digital, transactional business models, such as Amazon or Spotify, etc., in which the consumer likely never interacts with a human representative of the company.
In all other models, happy, informed, inspired employees tend to create customers with the same adjectives. In fact, Temkin Group research shows that companies with excellent customer experience have one-and-a-half times as many engaged employees as customer experience laggards.
Continuous Learning Enhances Employee Experience
Building training programs that consider the entire employee journey may be one of the most powerful ways to improve their overall experience with your organization from pre-hire to offboarding. A new approach to training also addresses the modern workplace challenge of rapid change that pushes employees to frequently redefine their career paths, according to new knowledge and skills requirements.
“The concept of a ‘career’ is being shaken to its core, driving companies toward ‘always-on’ learning experiences that allow employees to build skills quickly, easily, and on their own terms. This year, careers and learning rose to second place in rated importance, with 83 percent of executives identifying these issues as important or very important” (2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends).
So, with learning and career development near the top of most companies’ priority lists, how can you shape your training programs to support the entire employee experience? Here are five tips to help solve that challenge:
“The concept of a ‘career’ is being shaken to its core, driving companies toward ‘always-on’ learning experiences that allow employees to build skills quickly, easily, and on their own terms. This year, careers and learning rose to second place in rated importance, with 83 percent of executives identifying these issues as important or very important” (2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends).
So, with learning and career development near the top of most companies’ priority lists, how can you shape your training programs to support the entire employee experience? Here are five tips to help solve that challenge:
- Map training to the employee journey. Just as marketing maps the customer experience, HR should map the employee experience and determine the right training opportunities at key points in the journey. Keep in mind that some of the same special qualities that define your customer experience and distinguish your brand will also define your employee experience.
- Segment learners by more than just their role. Consider the wants and needs of different workers. Just as customer experience design considers a more nuanced understanding of customers than basic demographics or purchase history, employee experience design should be based on employees’ drivers and desires. Training options should support this broader perspective, rather than simply pigeonholing people into where they are today.
- Empower workers to chart their own direction. Segwaying from the prior tip, people may want to transition into a different function or learn enough to be promoted in their current one. Discovering these drivers will help you present learning paths that take people where they want to go. With the help of your LMS and a rich library of relevant, off-the-shelf content, people should be able to create their own learning paths that support personal and career goals. Empowerment is a key element in enriching the employee experience.
- Make training continuous and evolving. Today’s job descriptions are working documents that must evolve according to new responsibilities, technologies, and skills requirements. As such, training needs to meet the continuous need to learn on-the-job, on-demand, and in an ongoing fashion.
- Request and respond to feedback. People want their opinions and input to not only be heard, but also acted on. This is true for your training programs, as well. Encourage feedback on courses to improve communication, develop dialogue, and enhance the learning experience. Your LMS likely has feedback capabilities built right into it.
Author Bio
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Samantha Lang is Senior Marketing Communications Manager for Litmos, now part of SAP, and formerly Litmos by CallidusCloud. She joined CallidusCloud in 2014 with the company's acquisition of Clickools, where she'd served since 2012. Samantha has contributed to B2B software marketing teams for more than 15 years, specializing in messaging, branding, content creation, and social media.
Visit www.litmos.com Connect Samantha Lang |
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