Written by Amy Summers, Freelance Finance Writer.

Some executive managers dismiss employee satisfaction as a nice-to-have but ultimately inessential. Research disagrees with this. In a longitudinal study conducted by the World Economic Forum examining employee experience (EX), researchers found that employees with low EX were 4.9 times more likely to leave a company within a 6-month timeframe. 

The takeaway is clear: if you want to retain your employees and thereby promote the health and success of your organization, you need to build up how your employees experience work.

Here are five tips to boost your company’s employee experience.

Enhance your workplace environment

Whether your workforce consists of web designers, writers, or engineers, they’ll likely have one thing in common: they spend extended time at their desks. This poses numerous painful risks, including musculoskeletal disorders, reduced cardiovascular health, and poor posture that can lead to back and shoulder pain. Preventing these conditions can go a long way toward improving employee wellness—and even enhancing workplace productivity.

You can start by investing in ergonomic equipment. These are specially designed to support the body’s natural contours, improve alignment and blood circulation, and increase employee morale. Pain Free Working notes that the best ergonomic chairs, like the Herman Miller Aeron, possess a tilt adjustment mechanism that automatically corrects your posture. Meanwhile, standing desks like the Fully Jarvis Bamboo Standing Desk should have easily adjustable controls and a durable weight capacity, so it can easily encourage employees to occasionally stand while working and prevent the pains that come with sitting for too long.

And if your employees are working from home, providing them with a stipend to help with some of these costs can be beneficial both for your employees’ environments and wellbeing, and for showing their wellbeing is important to you.

Keep team units small

Whether your company is a vast multinational or an up-and-coming start-up, you’ll want to keep your teams between 3-5 people. From the employee perspective, The HR Digest observes that smaller teams connect better. Everyone knows and relies upon one another, which fosters a culture of helpfulness and assists your employees in feeling valued. To further this, you can encourage team leaders to prioritize recognizing their teammates’ individual needs and commend their effort and progress. Overall, this will lead to happier groups of workers who can handle challenges effectively and collaboratively.

We know that sometimes this just isn’t feasible though. Other ways to keep teams connecting and collaborating better is to build smaller subsets within teams. Collaboration in any force is key and with smaller units, more employees will have an opportunity to voice their opinions and great work.

Offer training and upskilling resources

With the looming threat of AI promising to eliminate jobs and industries that present game-changing innovations every day, some employees may feel insecure about remaining relevant in their careers. This is why upskilling should be a vital part of your strategy to improve the employee experience. An article by Forbes underlines that employees are more likely to leave a company when they like they do not have opportunities to grow or learn. In the US alone, 48% of workers would be willing to switch jobs if their new employer provided skill training opportunities.

Fortunately, there are many things you can do to meet your employees’ career aspirations and development needs. For example, you can work closely with the learning and development professionals to create courses and coaching opportunities that you can then promote for your workers. You can also construct an online opportunity marketplace where employees can advertise new projects to those interested in gaining new experiences. Integrate upskilling as a vital part of your company culture, and you’ll end up with an organization that is more contented and competent.

Provide benefits

Outside of work-related resources, you can also grant your employees benefits that can further secure their personal lives and what matters to them. What this signals: You see them not merely as workers you obtain labor from, but as people you want to support. Working with leaders and within environments that see them holistically is invaluable to employees, and will increase their loyalty. The benefits you offer can include things like life insurance, flexible work schedules, or paid family leave. You can also turn it into an ongoing discussion that you revisit during certain points of the year, wherein you or your team leaders can collate information on what benefits would be most relevant to your employees for better customization.

Pay attention to feedback

To ensure you’re updated with your workers’ employee experience, you need to continuously seek out and pay attention to their feedback. You can do that directly by arranging surveys and focus groups to explore employee motivation, as well as giving your employees an anonymous suggestion channel where they can submit their opinions without fear. However, it’s also crucial to heed indirect feedback. As noted in another TrueConnect article “2023 will be the year of the best employee experience“, you have access to important information on employee experience drivers, including employee productivity, absenteeism, and retention rate. You can utilize this data to determine the effectiveness of your employee wellness initiatives.

Your employees are the backbone of your company. With these tips, you can enhance their experience in the workplace and make your organization even more successful.

To learn more about TrueConnect’s Financial Wellness Platform, with access to financial advisors, emergency savings plans and loan options for your employees, click here.