According to a 2021 Totaljobs survey, nine in ten UK workers plan to change jobs within the year. Data gathered by Personio shows that most of these workers will quit because of poor employee experience at their jobs.

These numbers indicate that if you want to attract the best talent and retain your current top employees, you need to create the best possible employee experience. How can you do this? Let’s find out, starting with a quick peek at how a great employee experience should look.

What Does a Great Employee Experience Look Like?

What counts as a great employee experience varies between workers. However, if you want to attract the best talent, your employee experience should at least feature the following:

Seamless Onboarding

Onboarding is the process of providing new hires with the skills and tools they need to become productive members of your company. The onboarding process should be hassle-free and help new recruits settle in as quickly as possible. It should also help new recruits understand the company culture and feel welcomed. Most importantly, it should make a new hire feel like they’ve picked the best employer.

According to data gathered by Sapling, a great onboarding experience can improve employee retention by 82% and productivity by 70%. On the other hand, a negative onboarding experience doubles the likelihood of a new hire searching for a new job.

Transparency within the Organization

Studies indicate that millennials are 22x more likely to seek employment in companies that are transparent and trustworthy. In a transparent organization, employees experience higher morale, which leads to increased employee performance, happiness, and job satisfaction. If prospective employees know that your company offers these benefits, they will prioritize your job offer over others.

Multiple Communication Channels

Having multiple channels for internal communication shows prospective employees that you have a collaborative work environment. Collaboration allows employees to contribute their talents and opinions towards moving projects forward. Collaboration also improves employee engagement, camaraderie, and productivity, leading to work satisfaction.

Communication from the Bottom Up and Top Down

The best job applicants want to work in a company where they will feel valued. Employees feel valued when colleagues and company leaders listen to their opinion. However, this cannot happen if internal communication is strictly top-down.

The most attractive workplaces have a bottom-up communication system that allows employees to participate in decision making and give upward feedback to superiors. According to TINYpulse, when employees are uncomfortable giving upward feedback, they are 16% less likely to stay at that job.

Quality Leadership

Having workplace leaders that support and care for the wellbeing of employees makes a job role more attractive. Also, quality leadership provides employees with a sense of purpose, which boosts employee engagement and experience. According to Qualtrics, employees are 5x more likely to stay at a job if they receive support and acknowledgement from their superiors.

Learning and Development Opportunities

Prospective employees want jobs that give them opportunities to grow and improve. Attract the best talent by providing an employee experience that includes learning and development opportunities. Such opportunities create room for career and financial advancement.

Work-Life Balance

According to The Gazette, two in three employees are looking for a better work-life balance in new roles. If you have a stress-free and flexible work environment that allows employees to have lives outside of work, top job applicants will want to join your team.

How to Create a Great Employee Experience

Now that you know the features that make a great employee experience, let’s look at how to make your company more appealing to the best talent:

Provide an Employee-Centric Workplace

An employee-centred organization does not sacrifice employee safety and happiness for profit or customers. Employees in such companies feel valued and taken care of, which increases workplace engagement and commitment to their employer. Attract new talent by creating an employee-centric organization that puts its workers first. You can establish an employee-centric organisation by:

  • Ensuring bottom-up communication

  • Caring for your employees

  • Supporting innovation

  • Embracing diversity

  • Celebrating employee achievements

Ensure Open and Frequent Communication at an Organizational Level

Keeping employees in the loop at an organizational level will help workers understand their importance to your company’s success. However, open communication isn’t just about talking to your employees. It also involves listening to them.

Establish open and frequent communication that allows you to reach employees and hear their feedback. Quality communication will help create a healthy and understanding work environment where in-office and remote workers are less likely to feel left out or disconnected.

Make Information Easily Accessible

Accurate information is essential for employees to do their job correctly. Create an information resource centre that employees can access at their convenience to get the information they need to fulfill duties and deliver the best results.

Allow Freedom of Expression

Your organization must provide employees with the freedom to be themselves and share opinions without fear of humiliation or repercussions. In such a workplace, employees will feel valued and accepted by their co-workers, leading to a quality work experience.

However, you must provide freedom within boundaries. Otherwise, employees may stray into unethical practices or develop ideas that do not align with company goals.

Provide a Degree of Autonomy

60% of workers experience micromanagement at work. 68% of employees also claim that micromanagement negatively impacts their morale. Besides low morale, micromanagement can cause anxiety, increased stress, and reduced motivation. The best job applicants do not want to work in such an environment.

Make your workplace more attractive by giving your employees a degree of autonomy. According to a CIPHR article, giving your workers autonomy improves employee experience by making workers:

  • Happier and engaged

  • Feel a greater sense of value

  • Motivated to learn new skills

  • More productive

Conveying Your Employee Experience to Potential Employees

After improving your employee experience, you have to let the world know. Otherwise, top talent won’t know about the employee utopia you’ve created, and if they don’t know, they can’t apply for your jobs. Promote your company and attract the most desirable potential employees by:

Having a Great Glassdoor Rating

Thousands of job seekers flock to Glassdoor every day to find new jobs. Since several companies are on Glassdoor looking for the same potential employees, you need to set yourself apart with a stellar Glassdoor rating.

Improve your Glassdoor rating by asking current workers to provide feedback on the platform about their employee experience. When top talent sees that your current employees love working with you, they are more likely to apply for your vacancies. Besides Glassdoor, you can improve your rating on other top job board sites like Indeed.com and LinkedIn.

Channelling Your Company Culture through Your Content

Is your company a fun place to work that embraces diversity and innovation? If so, show it in your blog posts, videos, and other types of content. Doing so will help you attract top candidates that admire your company culture and want to be a part of it.

Instilling Company Values and Culture in Your Employees

When your company values and culture become a part of everything an employee does, people outside the company will see the changes in that employee’s life. People attracted and impressed by the changes will desire to join your team and experience the same improvements.

Start Attracting the Best Talent with a Superior Employee Experience

Even the least qualified job applicants don’t want to work in a company where open communication, transparency, career advancement, and good pay are unobtainable. Since top job applicants can work in almost any company, you need to give them a good reason to consider joining yours.

Attract and retain the best applicants by creating an employee experience that shows you care about your workers and guarantees job satisfaction for all.