Improving the Employee Experience Using Digital Signage

Every organization needs to prioritize its efforts to build a thriving business. One priority is to provide excellent customer service. To create long-term customer value, companies need to ensure all touchpoints on a customer’s journey are handled with exceptional care and focus on the customer’s needs.

On the other side of a customer touch point is an employee of the company. This overview explores the employee experience (EX) and how vital it is to make employees feel comfortable, encouraged, and engaged in their work experience. Contented employees can better help customers and improve the bottom line.

The employee experience (EX) begins with a person reading a job opening and ends when the employee leaves the company. Everything about how the person feels, learns, engages with others, and succeeds in their work efforts becomes part of the EX.

It is common sense that the EX will greatly influence the company’s performance. Many research studies back up this premise. With competitive salaries being an equalizer, money earned is no longer the main issue of concern for employees. Companies distinguish themselves from their competition by having a more positive EX.

The timeline for the EX during an employee’s journey with a company is the following:

1. Recruitment: This portion of the EX includes everything that leads up to an accepted job offer.
2. Onboarding: Once a recruit accepts a job offer, the onboarding process begins. A good onboarding process is critical in helping a new employee feel welcome and fit in with the company’s culture.
3. Training: Training teaches new employees the job skills needed to thrive in their new position.
4. Development: Development is ongoing training for career advancement. This process allows employees to improve skills with cross-training to widen their skills and foster positive relationships among co-employees.
5. Engagement: This phase is when an employee is the most enthusiastic and highly involved in the work. Recognition of a job well done is important.
6. Assessments: Assessments are peer-to-peer evaluations that are more helpful when encouraging rather than criticizing.
7. Feedback: Feedback includes taking surveys of employees about their EX, which can be anonymous.
8. Exit Surveys and Review Systems: When an employee decides to leave, it is helpful to conduct an exit interview and survey the employee about their EX with the company. HR staff should monitor a company’s online reputation with online company review systems such as Glassdoor and others. Any serious complaints, especially a consistent pattern of complaints about a company made by more than one ex-employee, should be addressed and remediated as soon as possible.

Most companies can divide employees into three categories of in-house staff, remote workers, and hybrid combinations. Internal communications directed at employees must be consistent and available to these categories in ways they can access and navigate.

One strategy is to focus on internal communications with the same target audience methodologies typically used for marketing campaigns directed at customers.

Best practices for internal communications include the following:

Branded Look and Feel: Messages prepared for each segmented employee group must have a consistent look and feel that employees recognize as the company’s brand.

Customized: Internal communication messages must display properly on any device an employee uses and be part of the working environment for in-house employees.

Personalized: Personalized messages increase employee engagement. Personalization should consider employee interests, work roles, team designations, projects and other differentiators.

Ease-of-Use: Based on an employee’s personalized profile, targeted information and access to systems and resources help guide them to anything they need to know and explain how to get help for issues as necessary.

The employee experience improves when using multichannel internal communications accessible by employees on any device. An intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) is a portal for employees to access secured online data. The GUI must be intuitive to use.

The goal of internal communication is to reach and connect with every employee, no matter where they work, and convey personalized information that is tailor-made for their use.

IBM defines the employee experience (EX) as the set of perceptions that workers have based on their experiences at work. The employee experience derives from the work environment, company culture, management, and leadership.

Research studies show that positive changes in the EX may benefit the company’s revenues and customer retention rates. Additionally, employees who are content with their work make better workers and usually are more productive. They are less likely to quit or resign.

Positive workplace experiences create a sense of belonging, being part of a team, and loyalty to an organization. Relevant internal communication promotes purpose and shows why the work matters. There is a sense of achievement when accomplishing work and contentment with the efforts. The employees feel energetic, enthusiastic, and excited about their work.

Digital signage is the display of internal communications on any device's screen. With the help of a comprehensive internal communication management system, digital signage delivers consistent branded content to your employee segments, wherever they may be and regardless of how they access the company’s systems.

The key is to use digital signage to explain and promote human qualities in the work environment to increase employee engagement.

Workplace practices, internal communication, and company leadership work together to create a positive work environment.

There is the expectation that organizations act responsibly with all stakeholders. For employers, the goal is to create core values that employees share. Workplace practices include supportive co-worker relationships.

Employees do far better when they receive quality peer-to-peer feedback and recognition for their contributions to the success of their team and the company.

Senior leadership and human resources staff are key participants in creating positive employee experiences. Moreover, the methods and ways a company communicates with its employees can positively impact their experiences.

Digital signage is an effective communication channel for company culture, news, and important information. It may help reward employees with recognition. Learn more about how to use digital signage to improve the EX at your company.