Employee engagement has become an area of increasing focus for organizations, and rightly so. After all, engaged employees are happier, more productive, and tend to perform at a higher standard. A similar, yet different focus is emerging known as the employee experience.
This article from Gallup is worth a read, as it provides an in-depth overview of the differences between employee engagement and employee experience. It suggests that the employee experience is made up of the entire journey an employee takes with your organization. This includes every touch point from the first time they see your company website or job advertisement, through to their onboarding and their eventual exit (as well as everything in the middle). What experience does the employee have when interacting with your organization? Is it smooth and easy to navigate, or are there multiple roadblocks? Is it easy or difficult for them to identify and understand the organization’s values and what is expected of them?
Gallup suggests that engagement can be summarized as the basic psychological needs that must be met in order for an employee to perform their work well. While this includes the usual points of knowing what is expected of you and possessing all the necessary tools for the job, it also encompasses wider social and emotional needs such as finding meaning in your work.
The point of the article is that engagement stems primarily from relationships within the workplace. In fact it states that the most important relationship is between the employee and their manager, which accounts for 70% of variance in employee engagement. Because of this, engagement is not quickly fixed through incentives, perks or one-off team activities. In fact, one could view these as more ‘employee experience’ solutions. Engagement is built through the consistent cultivating of workplace relationships and the work environment.
Essentially, the employee experience could be summarized as the surface-level interaction with the company, while engagement stems from the deeper workplace culture. Which do you need more? Both! Employees who have a positive experience will likely seek to be engaged, and engaged employees tend to feel better about their work and will view their experience in a positive light.