The EX: What is Employee Experience?

This article is the first of our brand new series called “The EX”, where we explore the physical aspects of the employee experience and their impact on the quality of their tenure and, ultimately, employee retention.

It’s often easy to forget that big tech brands like Google aren’t run by a legion of robots supervised by an omnipresent artificial intelligence. Despite the funky automata facade and material design, it puts on, Google is actually run by 72,000 employees working in offices located all around the world.

With that high of a number, it’s truly an HR miracle that its attrition rate doesn’t rank first in the industry. In fact, the tech giant has landed the top spot in Glassdoor’s Best Place to Work list for 10 years in a row. This begs the question: What does Google do differently to maintain employee retention?

The Role of Employee Experience in the Job Market

Before we get to learning about what the Employee Experience really is, we need to look into why it surfaced as a solution to employee attrition and high turnover rate.

The ever-increasing competition for high-talent performers has driven employees to be pickier, and more inclined to constantly be in search of better opportunities. A published Gallup Perspective states that 51 percent of currently employed workers say they are actively looking for a new job or watching for openings. Practically, the skilled workforce of today has become the “customer of the workplace.”

It has become more critical for companies to keep an eye on the decisive moments when employees decide to join or to remain with an organization to create a great employee experience.

The Employee Experience

Google is one of many companies of today that have shifted their HR focus towards a more human-centric approach. This new trend, called the Employee Experience (EX), leans more towards the quality of the entire journey that an employee goes through during the period of their tenure. This includes the major milestones and achievements, personal relationships with team members, the technology utilized and the quality-of-life perks and benefits brought about by the company’s workspace.

Covering these milestones are many aspects of the employee experience: the physical workspace and all its benefits, the office culture, and the bureaucratic and administrative interactions with the employee. All of these parts interact with each other along the period of employment to build a definitive sum of all connection between the employee and the company.

In the next few weeks, The EX series will delve into the physical aspect of the workplace, and learn how your office can make or break a team. Make sure to check our blog every Friday for more insights on how you can utilize these methods to help your team thrive.

If you’re looking for a workspace that can work for you, why not consider GoWork? Our enterprise solutions thrive on tailored, meticulously-designed workspace with layouts based on years of experience and research. Employee Experience starts at the office, and it begins here at GoWork.