{"id":48539,"date":"2022-09-20T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-20T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/?p=48539"},"modified":"2024-08-09T10:10:02","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T16:10:02","slug":"improving-employee-advocacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/blog\/improving-employee-advocacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Employee Advocacy: Improving Experiences for Employees and Customers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article was originally posted on Quirk’s Media.<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every successful business outcome benefits from having a reliable, flexible, actionable and amply proven template and improvement guide. This is as true for employee experience<\/a> (EX) as customer experience<\/a> (CX).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a clear path to greater, more progressive employee experience, insights and greater stakeholder centricity for any organization, and it begins with understanding the concept of experience improvement (XI) as it proceeds and matures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most basic definition of employee experience often has to do with overall happiness on the job (or what is generally understood as employee satisfaction). Subsequent stages in EX maturity build upon that first step. Exploring that progression, and how it will lead to experience improvement for everyone in your organization\u2019s universe, is the focus of this discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employee Satisfaction: Providing a Little More Than the Basics<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Employee satisfaction typically encompasses basic job functions like compensation, workload, flexibility, teamwork, resource availability and so forth. It\u2019s built on the basic premise that if employees are happy, they will be productive and remain with their employer. Satisfied employees, then, are generally not aspirational and remain positive if things stay pretty much the same. Much like customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction is largely attitudinal and tactical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major challenge with employee satisfaction, though, was identified some time ago. Companies want to keep employees happy and reduce turnover, of course, but it was found that programs and strategies that support improved satisfaction can often result in demoralized staff \u2013 especially among employees who either want to perform at higher levels or are unmotivated to contribute more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even consultants and professional HR associations like the Society for Human Resource Management have determined that even high-level satisfaction doesn\u2019t necessarily mean closer connection to the employer or greater employee performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a brief example of what can occur through satisfaction-based initiatives, irrespective of intentions. A large national financial services company, concerned that it was experiencing over 30% turnover among new employees, decided to give them a 13% bonus. Those employees who were \u201csatisfied\u201d happily took the additional money, but the result was no discernible decrease in churn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employee Engagement: Doing What (Almost) Everybody Else Does<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The predominant EX construct that most organizations follow these days is, at its core, to consider employees as necessary costs of doing business. The overall objective of this construct is to optimize employees\u2019 overall fit, utility and productivity within the enterprise. This construct is engagement, which also seeks to quantify emotional and rational job satisfaction (as well as motivation to think, feel, and act). The principal intents of employee engagement, then, are to identify:<\/p>\n\n\n\n