People is the force the gear-up company and business success.

Phrases like “People make the difference” or “Employees are our main assets” have become just cliché that have lost their energy over repeated use.

The old employee engagement playbook is no longer enough to keep people. Instead, leaders must strengthen the holistic employee experience in the new working world.

Across most industries, frontline employees are the human interface between the customer and the company. As a result, we typically see significant value creation and value capture happening disproportionately at the frontline, impacting customer experience and business results.

Managing job satisfaction and even employee engagement are no longer sufficient. Traditional incentives, such as raises and bonuses, are table stakes. Organizations must evolve their paradigm by focusing on a holistic employee experience that puts equal emphasis on growth, engagement, and well-being. These three factors are essential, because their balance drives a positive or negative employee experience.

It comes as no surprise that a high percent of frontline workers would like to leave their job in the next 3-6 months. But they do not do it, simply because they do not find anything better or when comparing, the sense of complacency is higher than what the new job can offer.

In recent research, employees rated three elements of employee experience as most and equally important reasons for recently leaving a job:

1.  Not having caring leaders.
2. Having sustainable work expectations.
3. Lack of career development and advancement potential.

These findings underscore the need for a genuine, personalized, and multidimensional employee experience. To create the human-centered experience people are craving, here are four things leaders can do:

1. Personalize relationships and avoid transactions. Employee engagement is also driven by nonfinancial recognition. Employee’s decision to leave is often driven by not feeling valued by the organization or their managers; or because they find not real purpose on what they do. Leaders should integrate a greater sense of meaning by determining what matters most to their teams, personalizing expressions of recognition and appreciation, and providing opportunities to build relationships.
2. Give them room to grow. In today’s labor market, employees can switch jobs more frequently than ever, or although they do not switch; they do not feel engaged. However, treating employees as temporary will only exacerbate the transactional relationship. Employees who left because of a lack of career development and advancement potential reported that they could not achieve their career goals, did not have advancement opportunities, and did not feel an investment in their knowledge, skills, and abilities by their organizations. In other words, employers must treat their employees as though they have come to stay, invest in developing them and show them a future in the organization, or watch them leave.
3. Prioritize social interactions. The strongest predictors of a positive experience are the social aspects, including quality relationships with leaders, trust, caring teams, and organizational social climate (e.g., respect and inclusion). Employees with an overall positive experience were eight times more likely to stay and four times more committed than those with a negative experience. These elements create a “sticky,” relational employee experience, compared to a more fleeting, mercenary one.
4. Create sustainable working models. While many organizations acknowledge the growing levels of disengagement and burnout, they frequently fall short in addressing it. To maintain growth and development, organizations must create easy avenues to seek help and promote flexibility, work-life balance, and emotional resilience; all of which lend themselves to a more sustainable working model focused on productivity and well-being. Employee experience has always shaped how employees think about why they come to work. Now, it has become an indispensable part of an employer’s competitive advantage. With supportive leaders focused on building meaningful relationships and creating sustainable working models, companies can transform work from something employees have to do into something they want to do.

Remember that at the end of the day, employees are who gear-up company for success and sustainability.

What can leaders do to increase frontline employee engagement, help strengthen networks, and ultimately retain their workforce?

It is important to examine the immediate actions leaders can take to retain and attract talent at a time when employees are leaving their jobs in droves or lack the ownership needed to provide a great customer experience that positions their company for success.  Money cannot buy your employees’ loyalty. How to keep top-performing talent, the nuances emerging in different industries, adaptability as an antidote to burnout, the implications for the labor shortage and what to do about it, how to build a sense of community in the new employee landscape, the complex relationship between diversity-equity-inclusion and attrition, the importance of employee experience, socioemotional support as the organization’s social glue, the need to reimagine and personalize flexibility at work, and competition from the gig economy and entrepreneurism; are only some of the topics that should be in any leader’s mind.

Do you know your employee’s engagement gap?

Do you know what to prioritize?

We are here to help!