Opportunities to shape the employee experience to attract and retain talent
A report on employee experience trends*, highlighted the Australia-New Zealand region is underperforming against global norms for employee engagement, well-being, inclusion, intent to stay and overall experience vs expectations.
Data shows that employees with less than six months of tenure have the lowest intent to stay and more than a third indicated they would leave their employer within the next 12 months.
Employee experience plays a key role in this decision-making process and is shaped by several factors, but according to Harvard Business Review five of the most important are:
- Mutual trust through empowering employees to solve problems
- Leaders that are committed to the well-being of employees, as well as the business
- Alignment to vision and values through clearly defined goals, and objectives that connect them to the employee’s role
- Recognition that the work employees are doing makes a difference and contributes to the organisation’s purpose
- Seamless technology that provides a frictionless experience and increases employee productivity.
This presents an opportunity for Australian businesses to focus on improving key areas of employee engagement and in doing so increase the attraction and retention of new talent.
Perhaps not surprisingly then, culture and belonging and strategic alignment have been key success indicators for internal communications teams, highlighted in a global internal communications sector report for 2024^.
The top three priorities for communicators in 2024 were:
- Engaging teams on purpose, strategy, values
- Developing and refreshing the internal communications strategy
- Enhancing leadership visibility
But in what is ongoing trend for internal communications teams the biggest barriers to success were:
- Lack of time / team capacity
- Disengaged employees
- Lack of budget / financial resources
This highlights the significant role the function plays in the employee experience in organisations. But also, the challenges facing internal communications teams and the need for them to focus on quality over quantity, prioritising high value, strategic activities, to deliver impactful change to overcome them.
Achieving that requires the function to step up and be recognised as a strategic advisor to the leadership team. To take a strategic view of the function, developing a strategy that focuses on supporting the business to achieve its strategy, connecting it to their people, recognising their efforts and amplifying employee insights and feedback to help shape decision making.
*Qualtrics 2024 employee experience trends
^Gallaghers state of the sector 2023 – 24
