Employee Experience vs. Employee Productivity: Does One Affect the Other?

Employee productivity is completely separate from employee experience in the minds of many managers. But as many businesses are actively learning, this is usually a mistake. It’s a bad idea to consider employee experience as contrary to productivity. With the right tools and strategies, you can improve the experiences of your employees and see major benefits to your business’s bottom line. Today, let’s look at employee experience vs. employee productivity and examine how one affects the other.

What Is Employee Experience?

Employee experience is the aggregate metric for the quality of life employees experience at your business.

Think of employee experience as a combination of workplace culture, quality peer relationships, and the balance of workplace pressures and challenges. The better your employees’ experiences are, the more satisfied they will be working for your brand.

Unfortunately, recent data indicate that employee experiences are universally low across industries. Some studies show that only 38% of employees are “highly satisfied” with everyday experiences in the workplace. Your brand can immediately set itself above the competition by going beyond this average metric.

Also Read: The Importance of Workplace Environment in Employee Engagement

Does Employee Experience Affect Employee Productivity?

Yes! Employee experience affects productivity in several ways:

• It affects employee energy and drive. Generally, happy employees who are satisfied with their workplaces have more energy when they come to the office or worksite for the day. This translates to greater productivity and improved efficiency across the board.

• It affects employee dedication when your business faces major challenges. Satisfied employees who like to work for your business are more likely to go above and beyond and help your business get through the tough times, while the reverse is true for unsatisfied employees.

• It affects employee loyalty to your business. In a time when many brands struggle to retain top talent (since many millennial workers are more than happy to abandon a brand for a competitor if the price is right), this is a major factor you can’t afford to ignore. Happy employees are more loyal, plain, and simple.

On some level, this is a no-brainer. Happy, satisfied employees who have reasonable challenges are more productive since they have more motivation to work hard for your company and the energy to get the job done.

In contrast, unsatisfied employees with more negative experiences than positive ones are less likely to give things 100%, especially when the going gets tough.

Does Focusing on Experience Reduce Productivity?

No. This is backward thinking that’s only practiced by a few managers. Focusing on employee experience doesn’t decrease productivity; it has the opposite effect.

While it’s true that improving employee experiences will necessitate reassigning some resources and undertaking new initiatives, those steps are normally well worth it. Improve your employees’ experiences dramatically, and you could see major boosts to your business in a matter of weeks.

Also Read: 7 Employee Motivation Strategies to Enhance Your Team’s Performance

5 Ways to Improve Employee Experience and Bolster Productivity

If you don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. There are five big ways you can improve experiences for your employees and, in so doing, bolster productivity for your company.

Improve the Onboarding Process for New Hires

First, consider your current onboarding processes. Many businesses have less than stellar onboarding procedures, which typically throw new hires into the proverbial deep end without any tutorial materials or guidance.

Instead of overwhelming your new employees in their first week of work, consider these practices to create and maintain a much better, supportive onboarding experience for all new hires:

• Assign each new employee a mentor to show them the ropes and break down their responsibilities.
• Be sure to give new employees plenty of introductory materials, like manuals and guidebooks.
• Don’t overwhelm new employees with too much or too complicated work at the start. Instead, give them manageable challenges for the first week or so.
• Make sure your onboarding process uses intuitive, easy-to-navigate digital tools. This will ensure your employee has and knows everything they need to start working productively from day one.

Lean in to Remote Work

Next, consider allowing remote work like many competing brands. Remote work isn’t going away – the COVID-19 pandemic has standardized the expectation of flexible work schedules for employees across industries.

Rather than fighting against this trend, focus on the positives (for example, you may have to pay less for office space if you can downsize into a smaller building). In any case, offer employees remote work options where appropriate and possible, and let them enjoy part-time in-office work so they can spend more time on their hobbies or caring for their kids.

Also Read: How to Develop and Sustain Employee Engagement in a Remote Workplace

Emphasize Clear Communication Channels

Clear communication is an important executive business principle in general, but it’s also vital if you want to improve employee experiences at your company.

Clear communication channels include clear ways for employees to send reports or make requests to management and speak to their supervisors.

For the best results, consider starting and keeping an open-door policy as the leader of your business. Allow your employees to bring concerns to you whenever they have them. This will improve trust in your leadership style and help you keep tabs on your company’s health much better than if you heard everything secondhand from your HR department.

Focus on Workplace Culture

Your workplace culture is a major part of how your business feels and runs. If your workplace culture suffers, so too will employee experiences.

Focus on improving workplace culture as much as possible by doing things like:

• Holding more after-office parties and social occasions, like cocktail hours. This gives people a chance to make friends and socialize outside the workplace.
• Having “employee of the month” or other celebratory events to highlight rockstar employees at your company.
• Get rid of bad actors or negative employees whose attitudes drag everything down. Those employees can have negative effects on other workers at your brand and ruin their experiences.

Offer Workplace Perks

Lastly, consider offering more workplace perks. Competitive pay is always important, but employee experiences are more directly impacted by workplace perks like free coffee, gym memberships, on-site daycare for kids, and so on.

In addition, remarkable or unique workplace perks will help your brand stand out from competing organizations in the same industry. This can help you attract new employees and bolster productivity by bringing the most competitive, talented workers to your company.

Wrap Up

As you can see, employee experience has a direct and important effect on overall employee productivity. Improving the experiences of your employees typically leads to improved performance, too. Therefore, it’s in your brand’s best interest to cultivate a strong, supportive workplace culture and experience for each worker.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. How does experience affect productivity?

Ans. Experience can have a significant impact on productivity. As you gain more experience in a particular field or job, you develop a deeper understanding of the tasks involved and the most efficient ways to complete them. This can help you work more quickly and accurately, leading to increased productivity. Additionally, experienced workers are often better at identifying potential issues before they arise and coming up with effective solutions. However, it’s important to note that experience alone is not enough to guarantee productivity; you also need to have the right mindset and work ethic. Nonetheless, the experience can certainly be an asset in improving productivity.

Q2. What is the correlation between employee satisfaction and productivity?

Ans. Employee satisfaction and productivity are strongly correlated.

• Happy and content employees tend to be more engaged in their work and are motivated to perform well.
• Unhappy employees may lack enthusiasm and engagement, resulting in lower productivity and subpar performance.
• Employers who prioritize employee satisfaction through initiatives such as flexible work schedules, work-life balance programs, and recognition and rewards programs may see an increase in productivity as a result.
• Neglecting employee satisfaction can lead to high turnover rates and decreased productivity, ultimately hurting the bottom line.

Author: Nahla Davies

Nahla Davies is a software developer and tech writer. Before devoting her work full time to technical writing, she managed – among other intriguing things – to serve as a lead programmer at an Inc. 5,000 experiential branding organization whose clients include Samsung, Time Warner, Netflix, and Sony.