Written by Martha De Troyer, Product Solutions Manager
Employee journeys; meaningful through moments that matter.
Find out how to create these moments and the benefits they will have, as discussed at a roundtable hosted by HR Magazine.
Technology that makes work pleasant is often adopted by people faster in their daily lives than it is applied by their employers in the work environment.
The employee journey consists of different touch points, moments when the employee is in contact with the company. Think of the first contacts with the company, the recruitment interviews, the onboarding, then leading to the training, the career and ultimately the exit. A positive employee journey ensures happy employees, which in turn leads to a higher engagement rate and better business performance.
Sander Poos (Indeed) notes that there is a big difference between perception and reality. “It used to be very cool to work for the largest and best-known companies. They had the best appearance, everyone wanted to work there. But as soon as you entered, the employment conditions may not have been as good. Some companies would have little, or no people investment because they could still get enough employees. Even today there is sometimes a big difference between what people think it will be like to work for a certain brand compared to the actual reality of working there.”
That is why it is important that a company starts from the culture, thinks Jolien Van Waeyenberg (TalentSoft):
“The recruitment, the onboarding and the career are indeed all different touchpoints, where the employee gains experience. You have to see what you want to put in, to get what you want. It is an interaction.”
At Mobile Vikings, they also start from the values of the company and show them across all touchpoints. Sofie Van Eemeren: “One of our basic values is ‘Together’. We strongly focus on teamwork. During the selection interview we therefore also try to do duo interviews where two employees interview a candidate together so candidates get to experience the dynamics between our employees. At every step we try to think about what value we add to the candidate or employee, how we can do that.”
Martha De Troyer (Cubiks) also states the importance of updating the company values. “It makes no sense to invest in a value framework if you never change it. You cannot continue to work with principles that were relevant five years ago. Otherwise your company will die off.”
“That’s right”, says Sofie Van Eemeren. “When I came on board five years ago, I did a first exercise. With the takeover by De Persgroep I did that exercise again. What do you want to keep and what do you want to change?”
Moments that Matter
Bart van Keer (Oracle) compares the employee journey with the customer experience. Moments of truth are important there, the moments at which the consumer buys and experiences the product after seeing advertisements. “It’s no different in HR,” he says. “But here we are talking about ‘moments that matter’. Every day that an employee is working, they have such moments. Can the employee follow the training they want? Does the HR department answer the question of the employee in the way and when they expect it? Is the first day at the office going the way it was presented to the new employee? Those moments that matter are crucial to building a good employee journey.”
Companies often forget that the employee journey is very personal and offer a culture that many employees no longer feel comfortable with.
In these ‘moments that matter’ we look in particular at the tools that employees use: do they have the same intuitive and innovative tools at work as they do in their private environment? Or have they stepped back in time at the front door of the company 15 years? As a company you have to be attentive to that. The technology that makes work enjoyable is adopted by people faster in their daily lives than it is used by their employers in the workplace. And there are important opportunities for those employers.
These moments are also important at Logi-technic. Els Rijckaert: “Because our employees always work on external customer projects, it is very important that we really know them personally and that they never have the feeling of being a number. We regularly ask how they feel about their job and what they get satisfaction from. That is why we regularly visit the sites or the projects to listen to them. We organize ‘cosy corners’ on Fridays. All employees arrive at the branch on Fridays to conclude the working week. We listen to what it has been like this week and what their plans are for the weekend. ”
Jolien Van Waeyenberg notices that those moments that matter are everywhere. “Sometimes this happens before you work for the company. I met my current colleague at a trade show where I went as a customer. As an employee you have to realize that every moment you come into contact with the outside world you have different experiences. ”
“The most successful companies use the slogan: employees first, customers second,” adds Bart Van Keer. “First make sure your employees are happy, the customers will follow. You won’t have happy customers without happy employees. ”
Sofie Van Eemeren also notices that employee satisfaction is very strongly linked to customer satisfaction. When Mobile Vikings changed platforms in June 2018 and had to cope with many technical problems, she simultaneously saw employee satisfaction go down. “Customer care employees were confronted with bad reactions. At that moment they get so many questions that they can no longer handle it. We then decided to close the telephone lines and to help customers further online. The effect was immediately felt. We then also communicated why we made that choice. We immediately looked at how we could organize the job differently. In October 2018 we took the team to an offsite and by the end of the month we saw the scores rise again.
“If you take such an action, the employees will feel strengthened at that time,” says Els Rijckaert. “That is your role as an employer: ensuring that employees are satisfied and can do their work under optimal conditions.”
Jolien Van Waeyenberg: “I also think it is important to continue to involve current employees, for example in the onboarding of new candidates. We send a card to new employees and have it signed by everyone on the team. That way you strengthen the team and involve everyone in those moments. But a lot depends on the local employees. Sometimes they don’t have the time or forget it. That remains a difficult one. ”
Sander Poos: “However, it is just as important that the arrival of a new employee receives as much attention and value as the launch of a product. That is the biggest change you will see. If people don’t do that, this can have major consequences for the business.”
Companies often forget that the employee journey is very personal and offer a culture that many employees no longer feel comfortable with.
In these ‘moments that matter’ we look in particular at the tools that employees use: do they have the same intuitive and innovative tools at work as they do in their private environment? Or have they stepped back in time at the front door of the company 15 years? As a company you have to be attentive to that. The technology that makes work enjoyable is adopted by people faster in their daily lives than it is used by their employers in the workplace. And there are important opportunities for those employers.
These moments are also important at Logi-technic. Els Rijckaert: “Because our employees always work on external customer projects, it is very important that we really know them personally and that they never have the feeling of being a number. We regularly ask how they feel about their job and what they get satisfaction from. That is why we regularly visit the sites or the projects to listen to them. We organize ‘cosy corners’ on Fridays. All employees arrive at the branch on Fridays to conclude the working week. We listen to what it has been like this week and what their plans are for the weekend.”
Jolien Van Waeyenberg notices that those moments that matter are everywhere. “Sometimes this happens before you work for the company. I met my current colleague at a trade show where I went as a customer. As an employee you have to realize that every moment you come into contact with the outside world you have different experiences. ”
“The most successful companies use the slogan: employees first, customers second,” adds Bart Van Keer. “First make sure your employees are happy, the customers will follow. You won’t have happy customers without happy employees. ”
Sofie Van Eemeren also notices that employee satisfaction is very strongly linked to customer satisfaction. When Mobile Vikings changed platforms in June 2018 and had to cope with many technical problems, she simultaneously saw employee satisfaction go down. “Customer care employees were confronted with bad reactions. At that moment they get so many questions that they can no longer handle it. We then decided to close the telephone lines and to help customers further online. The effect was immediately felt. We then also communicated why we made that choice. We immediately looked at how we could organize the job differently. In October 2018 we took the team to an offsite and by the end of the month we saw the scores rise again.
“If you take such an action, the employees will feel strengthened at that time,” says Els Rijckaert. “That is your role as an employer: ensuring that employees are satisfied and can do their work under optimal conditions.”
Jolien Van Waeyenberg: “I also think it is important to continue to involve current employees, for example in the onboarding of new candidates. We send a card to new employees and have it signed by everyone on the team. That way you strengthen the team and involve everyone in those moments. But a lot depends on the local employees. Sometimes they don’t have the time or forget it. That remains a difficult one. ”
Sander Poos: “However, it is just as important that the arrival of a new employee receives as much attention and value as the launch of a product. That is the biggest change you will see. If people don’t do that, this can have major consequences for the business.”
Companies often forget that the employee journey is very personal and offer a culture that many employees no longer feel comfortable with.
Long-Term Satisfaction
Do companies give too much attention to the successful selection and onboarding of employees and then lose focus on their development and engagement throughout the rest of their tenure? Martha De Troyer from Talent Consultancy Cubiks notices that some clients give new employees a good start and allow them to receive training during the first two years… “but after that, companies expect the employees to remain motivated on their own initiative and to look for training themselves. How do you ensure long-term satisfaction? What do you do with those experienced employees?
Sofie Van Eemeren: “As a company we provide a framework with our expectations, but the employees can fill this in themselves. We want to be a learning organization and therefore allocate them five days a year for each employee to invest in themselves.. Everyone enters it differently. ”
“Logi-technic has the attitude to start from our employees and we will continue to do so,” says Els Rijckaert. “Therefore, we think it is important that we really know our employees. What do they like to do? Where do they get energy from? Therefore you do not always have to provide a course. If someone is interested in the food industry, we ensure that they can implement projects in that sector. Or we connect them with other employees. They learn a lot by doing.”
Everyone around the table is convinced that companies must invest in this. “The big problem is that you don’t always see the ROI”; says Jolien Van Waeyenberg. “You also have to keep track of the figures, which helps to convince management. Software plays an important role in collecting figures. ”
Els Rijckaert: “You have to do something with that data: who is absent, why does someone leave, and so on. But you should mainly use it to make it better for employees. And then the return will follow.”
Sander Poos: “The ROI of employee experience is not immediately visible and that makes it difficult. It is not an action response, but the moment the response arrives, it is often too late, certainly if it is negative. When companies want to reverse that, you notice that twenty or thirty percent of employees leave because they are dissatisfied or find that the company has not kept their promise. . . Companies sometimes have a hard time because they are unable to take employees with them at the same speed of the organization or the changing market. What if those employees no longer fit well with the organization?
Communication is Central
Els Rijckaert: “That is why we mainly recruit our employees on attitude, precisely because the job content is constantly changing. We bring in so much more than purely technical knowledge. Our technicians must also be innovative and forward-thinking. We offer career paths for our technicians. Not only vertically, you can also grow horizontally or in competencies. Some employees were given the opportunity to provide technical training to children aged 6 to 12 years. They get a lot of satisfaction out of it. In addition, the employee journey depends on communication. Certain things seem logical to management, which means that they are not communicated internally or not enough: what do we do, how do we do it, what steps do we take? This requires a lot of time and energy, but it does help. At Logi-technic we learnt to think about how we will communicate the decision and the steps to follow after each decision. And we keep repeating that communication.”
Sofie Van Eemeren: “At Mobile Vikings we think it’s important to measure the evolution. For example, we made a baseline measurement by asking the employees a hundred questions. In addition, we do a pulse survey every two weeks, which consists of ten questions. For example: can you trust leadership, is our work sufficiently result-oriented, is there sufficient clarity about the mission of the company? Through this biweekly survey we can establish if there is change, or attention needed in a particular group or theme. Due to the arrival of the new CEO and the acquisition by De Persgroep, we were too focused internally. We forgot to include our employees in the story. We solved this by converting those statistics into action points, discussions or workshops. This way you keep your finger on the pulse.”
