5 wellbeing tips to improve the employee experience

In recent years the employee experience has become critical to key attributes that make for a great workplace. Think retention, job satisfaction and higher productivity and performance. A workplace that neglects its employee experience strategy, opting to do very little from the hiring process to the onboarding stage and beyond, does not succeed. 

Unlike many years before now, employees must be at the forefront of a business. What we’ve learnt here at Heka is this… 

Healthy employees are happy employees, and happy employees thrive in the workplace. For that reason, we’re exploring 5 tips to transform your employee experience strategy starting today! 

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Transforming employee experience with wellbeing

Although we can’t wait to share these tips with you, let’s first understand what the employee experience really means. To put it into layman's terms, the employee experience (commonly abbreviated as “EX”) refers to the unique stages or lifecycle of an employee. 

From the candidate process to the onboarding process and the continuous efforts to ensure employees experience the best workplace culture, employee benefits and more. It’s an active strategy to ensure team members enjoy their time with an employer.

Review employee performance with consideration to wellbeing

Performance reviews and feedback are critical to any organisation, role and industry. It’s how employees ensure they’re making progress, and how leaders manage the performance that impacts business success. 

That said, employee performance reviews, as part of any employee experience strategy, should be carried out regularly and honestly. Regular performance reviews don’t have to be investigative of an employee's ability to bring in results. Instead, we’re proposing a better idea - an employee performance review that focuses on the person themselves. 

Too often, employee performance reviews focus solely on an employee's performance, and not on what could be impacting them in the workplace. Going forward, host your employee performance reviews by looking at the difficulties, problems and hurdles your team members are facing. 

Are they experiencing problems outside of work that they haven’t shared? Do they feel undervalued or ignored in the workplace? Are they caught up in a toxic workplace relationship with other colleagues? Dig into their health and wellbeing - you may find solutions to their performance. 

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Have a wellbeing platform or package at the ready

Does your workplace offer an employee wellbeing platform or package? Many do not. The future, however, suggests that employees are looking for better wellbeing benefits. In one study reported by Forbes, 1 in 6 employees see personal wellbeing as a top priority when searching for a new job. 

These figures demonstrate that more needs to be done in offering employee wellbeing initiatives. Whether it’s access to private healthcare, retirement tools or a platform like Heka, there are many wellbeing solutions out there. 

Through Heka, our users receive a monthly allowance from their employer to spend on our employee wellbeing platform. There are thousands of experiences to be had - everything from in-person yoga classes and virtual gong bathing to outdoor activities and life coaching. We’ve compiled more than 50+ categories of wellbeing to ensure wellbeing remains personalised for each member.

If you’d like to find out more about Heka, speak with one of our wellbeing experts - they’ll be happy to share the vast range of benefits to be had for your team.

Make sure to do your research on the different things you can introduce to improve employee wellbeing. Perhaps earlier finish Fridays and healthy office snacks are all you’re looking for to add to an existing benefits and wellbeing package. 

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Employee learning and development is a must-have

Most employees want to progress, it’s as simple as that. In one study, a staggering 94% of employees said they would stick around if they invested in employees’ careers. This lack of employee learning and development poses a threat to workforces and teams around the world.

Without learning and development opportunities, our careers can become stagnant. This stagnancy is the perpetrator of falling retention, job satisfaction and performance. If you want to ensure employees stick around and enjoy the employee experience you’re providing, learning and development must play a role. 

In many employees’ understanding of a job, progression and development are opportunities that should arise. That said, there is only so long you can promise progression and development without materialisation. 

So, if you’re looking to improve your employee experience strategy, start with learning and development. People want to work for a forward-thinking and progressive company. Nobody wants to know their salary will never increase, along with their responsibilities and position within the company. 

In fact, 64% of L&D professionals said learning and development shifted from a ‘nice-to-have’ to a ‘must-have’ during the pandemic. 

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Promote diversity and inclusion throughout the employee experience

Not only does a culture that embraces diversity and inclusion improve the wellbeing of existing employees, but it demonstrates a great culture to new hires - diversity and inclusion are a necessity in any workplace. Companies that neglect these attributes are left wondering why they can’t attract or retain the best talent. 

Ultimately, people do not want to work in an environment where they feel no sense of belonging. That belonging is built on bringing people together from different backgrounds, with different views and beliefs. It’s about learning from one another and finding ways to communicate, collaborate and succeed with anyone who joins your company. 

We’ve written extensively about creating a culture of diversity and inclusion, and think it’s an essential ingredient to a successful employee experience. It’s time to have a deep discussion about diversity and inclusion with your leadership team. Find out how you can improve these qualities in every stage of the employee experience. From recruitment to onboarding and through various events and initiatives. 

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Carry out employee experience surveys to eliminate any issues

Surveys and questionnaires are a great addition to your employee experience strategy. They help people solve issues all the time. When it comes to the employee experience, our ideas above are great places to start. However, surveys and questionnaires will help you develop further ideas and solutions. 

With an employee experience survey, it’s about finding out the smaller details about things like workplace culture, the work environment itself, and employee wellbeing initiatives. Depending on the kind of questions you ask, you can uncover what percentage of employees find the workplace environment toxic or the utilisation of employee benefits.

Below, we’ve included several questions you can ask regarding the employee experience. Remember to use this list as a rough guide to a better employee experience survey. 

1. How well have you settled into your role since joining? 
2. Do you think the company embraces diversity and inclusion?
3. Do you have a good understanding of the workplace culture and vision?
4. Would you say the company culture is toxic in any way?
5. How often have you considered changing jobs due to the employee experience?
6. How well do you get along with your colleagues in the workplace? 
7. Which employee benefits do you use?
8. Which employee benefits do you not use?
9. In three words, how would you describe the current company culture?
10.  Would you say the company is progress and forward-thinking?
11.  How likely are you to refer to our company as a great place to work?

These questions are designed to uncover different elements that make up the employee experience. When you’re considering more questions for your workforce, think about things like diversity and inclusion, employee benefits, learning and development and health and wellbeing.

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Using Heka to build healthier, happier teams 

Heka is an employee wellbeing platform serving thousands of employees throughout the UK. Our wellbeing platform grants employees access to thousands of wellbeing experiences, products and services. Think life coaching, virtual GPs, learning and development courses, health vitamin supplements and more. 

It’s always been our mission to introduce a wide variety of wellbeing experiences to our platform to ensure wellbeing remains personalised for every employee. Want to find out more about Heka? Our wellbeing experts are on hand to answer any questions and walk you through the platform's features and benefits!