These days, many employees (and prospective employees) expect employers to provide a workplace environment that’s comfortable, transparent and relatively free of stress.
All of these factors contribute to what’s known as the employee experience, “the totality of an employee’s experience during their time with a company,” notes MoreThanDigital, and “how the company treats its employees.”
For us, we believe it is important to stay focused on our employees and continuously strive to enhance the work environment. This pertains to all aspects of the business from our foresters and log buyers to lumber handlers and inventory managers. Doing our best to ensure everyone on our team feels comfortable and motivated to deliver exceptional service is critical. We feel it helps us achieve our best when attempting to provide the highest-quality hardwood lumber products to our customers.
Here are tips we find helpful when trying to improve the employee experience:
Check the physical environment. Every work environment should be kept clean, furnished with adequate lighting and spacing, proper acoustics and ventilation, and with policies in place that support employee safety. Your workers can’t be at their best if their physical environment is sub-standard.
Promote an “employee-friendly” culture. Be sure your team members know you are committed to fostering a positive employee experience. Remind them of your vision, mission, purpose, and company values. Try to emphasize the value you place on their emotional and physical well-being using all your communication tools such as company newsletters, company intranets, office signage, etc.
Provide the appropriate technology, tools and resources needed. The quality of your employees’ experience will be heavily influenced by the value of the tools and resources you provide them. From information management resources to training guides and collaboration tools, equip your team with the best tools you can to achieve greater productivity and higher morale.
Keep communicating. It certainly seems you can never communicate enough! Employees rely on regular and consistent communication from you. Their experience with your organization is also improved when you and your executive team make every effort to communicate corporate policies, changes in the industry, upcoming organizational initiatives, and so on. Leverage every opportunity—from town hall meetings to one-on-ones—to keep your employees informed.
Increase your listening. Employees want to know if they’re doing well in their jobs, and where their performance might fall short. Invite employees to take part in surveys (anonymous or otherwise), to speak up at all-staff meetings, and be more forthcoming in their one-on-ones.
And when suggestions for change are made, be sure to listen! “Not doing so results in loss of trust, and moving forth, employees might not even bother sharing feedback asked or unasked for,” notes Hirebook. Share survey results after review and begin “assigning and holding people at work responsible to implement [requested] changes.”
Renewing your focus on the employee experience can generate higher morale and greater productivity. These tips have worked for us in the past. What other things work for you? Let us know!
Tony Cimorelli
Baillie Lumber Co.