Building an Employee Experience Strategy to Attract Top Candidates

The employee experience is a culmination of all the interactions and experiences an employee has at your organization. Starting with the initial candidate outreach and up to the exit interview, your employee experience strategy directly impacts your ability to recruit and retain A Players.

After a year of uncertainty and adaptation, organizations are now taking the time to evaluate their current employee experience. Do your current business strategies facilitate a positive remote experience? Below we assess how the events of 2020 have impacted three distinct aspects of your employee experience strategy.

Outreach & Hiring

The employee experience is directly influenced by the hiring and application process an employee undergoes. There is currently a low supply of talent and growing demand for skilled workers. Creating a candidate and application process that is enjoyable and efficient helps you stay competitive when finding talent. To avoid losing a candidate due to a poor experience, HR leaders need to find strategies and tools to expedite the hiring process and open a flow of dialogue to nurture your candidates down the pipeline.

Today’s job seeker uses various career sites, social media platforms, and networking applications to search for jobs. Recruiters need to modernize their outreach and recruitment strategies to better reflect the remote world many organizations are operating in. The glory of remote and virtual work is that recruiters can expand their talent pool outside of their immediate vicinity. However, this borderless recruiting world means that the competition for talent has also expanded. Top talent has the luxury of being choosier about whom they’d like to work for. Leaders must provide a compelling, desirable employee experience to help attract and retain these A Players.

Onboarding

While much about our old traditions and processes have changed over the last year, one thing remains the same — the first impression you make when you onboard new employees is crucial. Many organizations have moved to remote work formats, meaning that recruiters are now sourcing and hiring employees virtually. This also means that many employees are now undergoing an entirely virtual onboarding process.

Your onboarding process is your chance to showcase why working at your company is the right choice. A successful onboarding experience is one where employees come out the other side engaged, excited, and prepared to tackle their role. But, what does onboarding look like when there is no office to walk your new hire around?

The best way to create an enjoyable remote onboarding experience is through embracing a digital onboarding platform. HR leaders can get their new hires started on compliance documents before day one, leaving less time for boring or tedious tasks on their first day. By getting the paperwork out of the way, your new hire can enjoy more time getting to know the team, discussing workplace expectations, and fostering meaningful connections. As you analyze and evaluate your current onboarding method, ask yourself:

• Is our onboarding process supportive of both an in-person and online experience?

• Does our onboarding process adequately introduce new hires to the team and make them feel connected?

• Does your onboarding process leave room to grow and evolve as your hiring needs expand?

Performance & Development

This past year, many organizations had to adjust their performance expectations due to the ongoing pandemic. As business operations slowed and organizations adapted to the new environment, the way companies tackled performance management evolved. Despite this, only 2% of companies believe their performance management process delivers exceptional value. 55 percent of workers believe annual reviews don't improve their performance or professional career. After a year of disruption and uncertainty, employees deserve a transparent and honest review that dictates their future performance.

In addition to creating an unbiased and honest review process, employers need to find ways to retain their talent. We know that retaining your existing employees is cheaper than the cost of turnover, so companies need to find ways to keep their current talent engaged.

One method: investing in professional development opportunities. Employees today want to work for an organization that puts their professional development first. With the addition of this engagement strategy, HR leaders will notice improvements in your workplace, such as:

• Attracting better employees — employees want to work for organizations that help them advance along the career ladder.

• Improving performance and skill — training and development opportunities create a highly skilled and productive workplace.

• Training future leaders — your current employees are your best talent pool to draw from; take the time to train these employees for future leadership roles.

• Boosting employee satisfaction and retention — employees who feel valued and supported at work are more likely to be satisfied within their roles.

Businesses need to adapt their employee experience strategy to better reflect the current needs of their employees. By investing time and resources into creating a stellar employee experience, HR leaders can create a culture of highly engaged and skilled employees and attract more A Players.

ClearCompany has a proven track record of success when it comes to revolutionizing the employee experience. With software solutions aimed to assist with performance tracking, goal tracking, and employee engagement, HR leaders can gain insight into the existing experience they provide. To learn more about how ClearCompany’s award-winning platform can help you create a positive employee experience, reach out to our team of experts or sign up for your free demo today.