Employee Experience Vs Employee Engagement: What’s the Difference?

What is employee experience? What’s the difference between employee engagement and employee experience? And how can you create a positive experience for your people?  

While employee experience and engagement may seem similar, there are important distinctions between the two. Let’s explore the two concepts, how employee engagement feeds into employee experience and how your organisation can provide its employees with an exemplary employee experience. We’ll also look at how employee surveys can be used to ensure you are giving your people everything they need to work productively.

Related reading: employee experience trends

What is Employee Engagement?

There are a lot of takes on defining employee engagement. However, we believe the definition below from Engage for Success sums up employee engagement well:

“Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organisation to give their best each day, committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being.”

Put another way, employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to their work, the organisation and its goals. An employee could be extremely talented and skilful and yet not at all engaged with their work, and this makes all the difference. If an employee is disengaged, they will never completely achieve their potential.

Studies have shown that employee engagement relies heavily upon management. A Gallup poll shows that the right management relationship results in 70% variance in employee engagement levels. Other elements affecting employee engagement include a connection to the company culture, a sense of purpose, strong relationships with colleagues, a sense of teamwork and intrinsic motivation. An engaged employee likes their work and, importantly, finds meaning in their work that goes beyond pay.

While the benefits of employee engagement are long-established, its measures tend to look at a particular moment in time —annually, monthly or yearly.

Driving employee engagement is a topic that has captured the imagination of a lot of thought leaders in the HR and management worlds over the past decade in particular, and our focus on engagement doesn’t appear to be waning. Employee engagement is typically measured via an employee engagement survey – keeping track of employee engagement levels within your organisation will help you put measures in place to improve it in the long run.

Why is Employee Engagement Important?

There has been a tremendous amount of study into employee engagement and its importance to productivity and performance. Below are a few of our favourite statistics:

• Companies with higher engagement levels experience 43% less staff turnover
• Businesses with more engaged employees see a 21% increase in profitability
• Engaged employees are 87% less likely to quit a job
• Companies with more engaged employees are 17% more productive

What is Employee Experience (EX)?

The phrase “employee experience” rose in popularity in 2017. In contrast to employee engagement, which measures how connected employees feel to their work and the organisation, EX extends the approach to consider all touch points throughout the employee lifecycle from the employee’s perspective. It encompasses the physical, technological and cultural environment of a business.

Employee experience is an employee-centric way of thinking about the organisation, which takes into consideration what employees see, hear, believe and feel about all aspects of their employment. These aspects stretch from the recruitment process,  through to their last day at your company.

When decisions are made with the experience of employees in mind, HR executives and business leaders ask “How will our people perceive this?” and “What impression are we giving our people if we act this way?”. For employee experience to be the best it can be, a company needs to adopt an organisational culture where leaders and managers alike put themselves in their employees’ shoes.

The key difference between employee experience and employee engagement is that ‘experience’ is the input from an organisation (i.e. what employees feel, see, and hear in their daily work lives), whereas ‘engagement’ is what employees feel as a result (usually measured via an engagement survey).

Josh Bersin says:

“Starting as potential hires and recruits, employees look at everything that happens at work as an integrated experience that impacts daily life in and outside the workplace, including overall physical, emotional, professional, and financial well-being. Candidates assess future employers from the very start of the talent acquisition experience and make quick judgments about what life will be like for them in the organisation, based on how they interact with the enterprise during the recruiting cycle.”

Our preferred employee experience definition comes from Olivier Dubuisson:

“Employee experience is the sum of the various perceptions employees have about their interactions with each domain of the organisation in which they work.”

Now, an organisation just focussing inward on employees wouldn’t survive, so the employee and customer experience should be considered together. There shouldn’t be intended differences between how the customer and the employee perceive an organisation’s actions. (More on how to design and align an effective relationship strategy between CX and EX).

Now, an organisation just focussing inward on employees wouldn’t survive, so the employee and customer experience should be considered together. There shouldn’t be intended differences between how the customer and the employee perceive an organisation’s actions. (More on how to design and align an effective relationship strategy between CX and EX).

Employee experience is all-encompassing, but one source has identified the following six elements that ultimately drive EX:

• Purpose: Giving an employee something larger than themselves and their role to strive toward in the long-term
• Employee outlook: Positivity and optimism make all the difference to a good employee experience
• Authenticity: The ability to be themselves at work, while experiencing authentic relationships and connections
• Social interactions: Don’t underestimate the importance of watercooler conversations, social connections and personal relationships at work
• Belonging: We’re tribal beings at the end of the day, and when we feel we belong at a workplace, like we’ve been accepted, this can tremendously positively impact our employee experience
• Engagement: An employee’s feelings about, and commitment to, an organisation

As you can see, looking at these factors, we can see that employee experience actually encompasses employee engagement.

Why is Employee Experience Important?

So now we have covered the concepts of employee engagement and employee experience, we can explore the business benefits of prioritising employee experience. Why is it important?

1. A good employee experience attracts, and retains, top performers. Today more than ever, a business is made or broken by its reputation. If a business caters to their employees, trains them well, cares about their wellbeing and provides them with the tools they need to succeed, your employees will rave about you. Your reputation will spread and you will ultimately benefit from a higher quality of applicants. Not to mention the fact that once they experience what your business has to offer them, they’ll be unlikely to jump ship. For more information on this topic, have a read of our guide on employee experience and retention.
2. A better employee experience results in more engaged, productive employees. A study by Oxford University indicates that a positive employee experience may result in a 13% increase in productivity.
3. A good employee experience results in stronger bonds between managers, employees and the company itself. People who love their workplace go the extra mile and they are less likely to look elsewhere for opportunities.
4. A healthy employee experience goes hand-in-hand with improved levels of wellness and wellbeing, as well as a sense of security and psychological safety.

While you’re here, check out our employee wellbeing guide

Employee Experience vs Employee Engagement: What’s the Difference?

So what is the real difference between employee engagement and experience? Employee experience is the input, while employee engagement is the outcome or result that you are aiming for.

By improving the employees’ experience of your organisation, you are going to achieve more engaged employees and team engagement. Improved levels of employee engagement can be seen as the end goal while improving EX is the means to that end.

Forbes has another interpretation of the difference between employee experience and engagement. They claim employee engagement is a top-down philosophy. The hope is employees will choose to be highly engaged with the workplace culture, purpose and work. Employee experience, conversely, is a bottom-up concept in that the work environment and processes are specifically designed around the employees.

Another source suggests that while employee engagement generally focuses on the workplace and productivity, employee experience also encompasses the worker as a human being. All sources appear to agree that experience is a much wider and richer concept than engagement. All definitions also agree that when discussing employee experience, an increased focus is on the employee — and less on the employer.

Mapping the Employee Journey

To truly understand its meaning we need to evaluate employee experience, starting by mapping employee journey.

The journey looks at the employee lifecycle and thinks about the EX at each stage. The aim of considering the employee journey is to ensure employees are highly engaged all along the way, from candidacy through onboarding, performance, growth, and eventually exit. Disengagement at any stage leads to a worsening experience.

How to map your current employee journey

There are several employee-centric questions we can ask at each stage of the employee journey.

For example, during candidacy, we might consider:

– Does the candidate feel treated fairly and equally?

– Have their contacts from the organisation “lived” the values?

– Have they had a positive experience of the meeting places, technology and tools used through the process?

During onboarding, we can ask:

– Does the employee know how to use the various technologies and tools your company relies on?

– Has your new employee been made to feel part of the team?

– Does your employee know where they can get the support and resources they need?

– Does your new hire know what you expect of them?

During the performance stage, we might ask:

– Does the employee feel they are getting enough feedback?

– How often is the employee meeting for a one-to-one with their line manager?

– Does the employee feel supported and encouraged by those around them?

– Does the employee feel they are part of a well-functioning team?

During “growth” we might think about some of the same aspects of EX differently:

–  Does the colleague feel they have fair and equal access to development opportunities?

–  During periods of stretch and learning, is their physical and mental wellbeing supported?

–  Do they have access to the technology and tools they need to develop?

Finally, at the “exit” phase:

–  Does the employee feel valued for the work he or she has done for your business?

– Does the employee feel that sufficient measures were put in place to ensure they had a good experience at your company?

– Did the employee feel fairly treated throughout their employee journey?

Why Are People Focusing on Employee Experience?

There are many reasons for an increased focus on the experience at work. Companies are looking to combat the talent shortage and encourage people to stay, for example. Another important point to consider is social media’s role when it comes to recruitment and retention.

How employees experience your company is not likely to remain a secret. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the efforts you have put in place for your employees. Your people will likely share their impressions of your organisation online. Blistering employer reviews on Glassdoor quickly catch a prospective employee’s attention, while glowing recommendations can attract top performers to your door.

Companies should not underestimate the damage caused by publicised poor experience for employees. Amazon, Sports Direct and even “best place to work” selection Google saw damage to their employer brand from widely reported stories.

What’s more, employees have a great deal of choice these days and are therefore more selective. They are actively seeking companies who care about their workforce. According to Gallup, employees want companies that give them opportunities to grow while providing meaning and purpose.

Internally, a poor employee experience at any point in the lifecycle can lead to disengagement. Other ensuing, proven problems include increased absence, lower productivity, increased accidents and employee turnover.

How Can You Measure the Employee Experience?

According to the 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, while 84% of employers acknowledge the importance of positive employee experience, as little as 9% of organisations feel ready to address this issue. At People Insight, we believe the first step to improvement is to measure your current employee experience accurately. This way, as time passes, you have the quantitative data at hand to demonstrate how the experience has improved. You can start assessing it by using employee engagement surveys.

The groundbreaking employee engagement model used by People Insight as a basis for employee surveys comprehensively includes each aspect of EX. It can serve as an assessment tool through the employee experience lifecycle to help you understand, and adjust your employees’ experience accordingly.

The PEARL™ Employee Experience Model

There are several ways to tackle EX assessment, based on the model. For example:

– Surveying all staff simultaneously and splitting results by stage of the life cycle. This way, you can compare EX at different stages to plan specific improvements.

– Use the model and survey simultaneously, but tailor your questions specifically for employees at each stage. You won’t be able to compare stages as thoroughly, but you may get more in-depth feedback about each stage.

– Run completely separate onboarding, engagement, wellbeing, culture, and exit surveys, to different schedules. This method may fit better with separate activities, e.g. induction programmes and individual exits. But it requires more admin and comparisons won’t be as clear.

However you design the process, it is critical that leaders from across the business buy into the importance of a good employee experience. Critically, they should also take action based on your survey findings.

How to Improve Employee Experience

Now you are aware of the importance of a great employee experience, how can you deliver a motivational employee experience?

Below are a few tips for you to keep in mind:

1. With every single internal decision you make at your organisation, take the time to question how this change will impact your employees. How will they perceive it? Have efforts been made to keep employees in-the-loop and engaged with the change? To find out more about how to get your employees excited about transformational change, read our financial services employee engagement report to see how industry leaders successfully take employees with them through change.
2. Remember that employee experience begins before the employee’s first day. The first step is recruitment. Employees have more choice than ever and a good recruitment experience could sway a candidate away from a competitor and towards your company.
3. Leadership is key to a great employee experience. Make sure they receive the training and support they need, so they know how to motivate and engage their employees.
4. Encourage transparency throughout the employee experience and encourage open lines of communication. Operate an open-door policy and encourage employees to give feedback. Equally, leaders need to be open to answering difficult questions.
5. Keep up-to-date with workplace trends. As time goes by and technology advances, employees will expect different things from their employee experience, including the opportunity to work remotely and decide their hours. Consider how you can adjust your company culture to accommodate these changes.

Employee Engagement vs Employee Experience — the Key Takeaways

– Employee engagement is the end goal while employee experience is the means to that end.

– Employee experience extends the approach to consider engagement at all touch-points throughout the employee lifecycle.

– Employee experience is an employee-centric way of thinking about the organisation where decisions made internally consider how employees feel about all aspects of their employment

– Both require a culture where leaders and managers alike put themselves in the employees’ shoes.

– A robust employee engagement model, such as PEARL™, provides a good basis for assessing EX.

As time goes by, employee experience management is a topic that will gain more and more interest. Organisations are likely to become increasingly aware of the impact the experience for employees has on their business. They will also instigate both short-term engagement initiatives and longer-term strategies as they design a more meaningful EX lifecycle. Indeed, without employee engagement throughout the life cycle, the experience is likely to be poor and short-lived.

We expect this trend to continue in the future, resulting in happier, more productive and more engaged employees.

If you are looking to adapt your company culture and give your employees an inspirational, positive employee experience, contact us for an employee survey today. We’ll work with you to create an employee engagement survey that will accurately measure your existing company culture, so we can help you get where you want to be.