What really is employee experience? Looking beyond even simple break downs, you’ll find a whole cavalcade of different organisational challenge, from integration to siloed working to upskilling and fallout from acquisitions.

Also, how do we know that employee experience (EX) works for our people?

This was the topic at the heart of our latest breakfast event, bringing together a smorgasbord of communicators to talk about the challenges, opportunities, and fundamentals of employee experience.

Held at Bread Street Kitchen in Liverpool Street, we were honoured to be joined by Lauren Hoare, Vice President of Global Associate Initiatives at Lockton, to take us through this topic.

Beyond Buzzwords: Designing employee experiences that actually work

Lauren began by establishing that there is no one quick fix when it comes to nailing your employee experience and it should be a constant back and forth with your people. Lockton has 13,000 associates (employees) across 40 countries; and with the number of associates growing by nearly 2,000 during her current tenure she’d explored scaled up comms with a personal touch.

Why EX is so important

Organisations are under more pressure to retain talent and understanding EX is crucial to knowing this. This isn’t just a nice-to-have, as Lauren brought research from Gallup on employee experience impact on the business. They found that organisations that prioritise EX reported:

• 65% higher wellbeing scores
• 80% lower absenteeism
• 233% greater customer loyalty

At Lockton, EX spans the total interactions and perceptions employees have throughout their journey with the organisation, from water cooler moments to macro events, encompassing everything from onboarding to maternity leave.

She then posed the question “Can you name a memorable positive experience with an employee?”

This led to a more open discussion about what real employee cut through feels like. One attendee talked about how crucial onboarding was, remembering a job where the onboarding took four weeks because of the company’s focus on integrating history, culture, and best practice. It meant he could articulate for himself what they did and wasn’t chucked into the busyness of the role too soon.

Five practical tips to improve EX

1. Have a conversation

Use real conversations and use real-time feedback loops through regular surveys.

From these surveys and focus groups with Lockton colleagues, including both hiring managers and new hires, Lauren knew what professionals want. They were then able to leverage their new cohort of apprentices to provide a talent attraction strategy for early careers. This was based in questions like ‘How would you sell Lockton to your peers?’

2. Make work easier

Streamline and simplify your EX so there’s less frustrating back and forth. One example that Lauren came onto later was Lockton’s 10 and 2 rule: they only sent out internal comms at 10am and 2pm to establish regularity and rigour.

Lauren’s research showed some people are switching between 36 platforms a day (!!!!). Take digital wellbeing into account to avoid digital fatigue and wasted time.

3. Design thinking

Building on point two, you can tailor your problem solving by emphasising user experience through design thinking: a non-linear iterative process of considering what they’re thinking, feeling, saying and doing.

At Lockton, when building out their employer brand, they found that the social elements of the talent offering was a major appeal to new talent. From here, they updated their website and job descriptions and used socials (Instagram and LinkedIn) to produce content to capture what it really felt like to work for Lockton. This was done through the apprentices’ view, who were given free rein to capture a day in the life of working for Lockton.

4. Personalisation

Colleagues want increased amenability to their specific team focus and routines. Some of our attendees even talked about how they had used AI chatbots to further support onboarding to enable this personalisation.

Practically speaking, their strategy wasn’t just targeting early careers, as Lauren discussed the advanced persona building that defined Lockton’s internal communications. They adapted their communications between employees and managers, as well as between early career and established career.

In doing so, they were able to provide more specific ROI on their activation because of the specificity of each segments’ need as well as creating a more holistic picture of what working there meant.

4. Alignment

This increased focus on how employees relate to their personal and professional goals opens the door to increased alignment to business strategy. Implicitly, day-to-day activities can be drawn to the wider achievements of the business, giving recognition and clear purpose.

Onboarding is everything

1 in 3 new joiners leave within the first 90 days. More than this, 70% decide if a job is right for them within the first month and 29% decide if a job is right for them within the first week.

How you onboard is essential when communicating your values, culture, and how to embody the company culture effectively.

Again, personalisation made a huge difference; new starters received an email with the CPO CC’d in so they can reply to everybody and personally welcome new joiners to the team. Hybrid training was a no go and scheduling start days and training should always occur when everyone is in the office. It also meant regularly scheduled Coffee Connects: 1 to 1 meetings with other employees from across the business.

The Three T’s of communication

Comms is the glue that uplifts the employee experience, and at Lockton this meant adhering to the Three Ts:

Timing – pick the moments to communicate avoiding holidays and busy times, maintain a regular drumbeat

Tone – keep it human, authentic, consistent with your external brand TOV, culturally aligned, segmented and personalised (e.g. different tone for early careers)

Trust – Right message coming from the right source (e.g. should this be from the CEO?), consistency across channels.

Key takeaways

Lauren rounded up her presentation by reminding us:

1. EX drives business, employee, and client success. It’s a strategic lever with a tangible impact and should be simpatico with client experience.
2. Design thinking was the most direct way to create communications with empathy and simplicity. Your colleagues know how their job works and want that experience reflected in how company values are articulated.
3. Comms have all the power to shape colleague perceptions and with measurable impact.

It was another wonderful 106Communications breakfast with engaged compelling conversation and a focused, impact-oriented group. We can’t wait for the next one!