Ten Ways to Keep Employees: Fundamentals for Robust Engagement

If I had my way, everyone would stop referencing Customer Experiences and Employee Experiences and instead would talk about Human Experiences.

The rationale for my renaming preference is twofold:

1. You can’t create excellent customer experiences if you don’t provide outstanding employee experiences. (If it doesn’t live inside your brand, it won’t live outside.)
2. Our goal should be to engage the humanity of those we serve – not define people by their role in relation to our business.

For this newsletter, I will resist conventional language and talk about ways to enhance the human experience of employees. For our purposes, I’ll stick with evidence-based approaches (those that show reliable and replicable results) and will feature ten actions you can take to enhance the mastery, autonomy, and purpose of your team members:

1. Provide frequent, constructive, and growth-focused feedback to your employees.
2. Ensure employees have a line of sight between what they do and the impact of their work, particularly as their work supports your company’s mission.
3. Develop social support networks and mentoring programs.
4. Look for ways to give team members some control over completing projects.
5. Create a safe environment for employees to give input on their experience at work.
6. In addition to considering job skills, select individuals who will fit your culture and organizational values.
7. Create career paths and stretch opportunities that help team members learn and grow.
8. Automate repetitive and mind-numbing tasks.
9. Review the employee journey to identify and remove pain points.
10. Train leaders on skills needed to drive workplace engagement.

Related: How to Guide Customers Through Transitions