Top Employee Experience Challenges of 2023
At Maxwell we are committed to ensuring we are solving the needs of our customers. That’s why we spend part of Q1 interviewing dozens of people and culture leaders across industries to talk about the challenges they’re facing this year and how we can help. Here are the top 3 employee experience challenges we uncovered, and what you can do about them.
1.Growing & Distributed Teams Pains
Ourfirst key finding was the unique challenges of companies with rapid growth or distributed teams. The approaches they used in the past to create and maintain a positive company culture are not scaling.
A company’s culture is defined by its mission, values and ethics, and work environment. Company culture is what creates happy employees who feel they belong. It also builds trust between employers and their workers, increases productivity and employee retention rates, and attracts customers who want to support a company with good business practices.
The leaders we spoke with said they found their original practices like regular 1:1s with everyone at the company or offering lunch at all their locations to be less effective now that their teams have quadrupled in size. Even companies that are not growing but have seen a rise in remote work, are having to rethink their culture beyond the office and offer benefits that help employees maintain a healthy work-life balance.
2.Elevating the "Hidden" Invesment of Benefits
This ties into our second finding which is that employee benefits are a “hidden investment.”. The leaders we spoke with had impressive benefits and rewards ll but employees were not using them regularly. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, access to healthcare benefits was available to 74% of civilian workers, and 57% of workers participated in these benefits in 2022. How do we understand this discrepancy? One answer is that the benefits[ being offered do not match an employee’s needs]2. Conducting surveys or talk in small groups will help companies get a sense of what they should be offering to their employees.
Additionally, these companies were relying on Human Capital Management (HCM) systems, internet, email, Slack/Teams, or paper methods to communicate with their employees. It’s easy for important information to get lost in the shuffle or to be confused by the medical jargon in a benefits package. That’s why companies need not only a great set of relevant benefits to offer workers, but a streamlined system which administers information about the benefits they have access to. When employees fully understand what’s included, employers can leverage the highest return on their investment.
3.Need a True Partner not Just a Product
The final key finding was that companies are looking for a true partner to help them deliver their desired employee experience. People and culture leaders are spread thinly so they need solutions that take work off their plate and help them cultivate the culture they worked so hard to build.
To address the top 2023 employee experience challenges employers need to create employee experience practices that scale, keep the “hidden investment” of benefits top of mind in employees minds by communicating with them via channels they will actually visit, and when selecting solutions for delivering their desired employee experience, ensure the vendor is a true partner that will help them reduce work no just another solution to manage.
At Maxwell we are doubling down on features and capabilities that help employers communicate with their workforce, track workforce engagement and benefit usage, and build the kind of culture that supports employees and unlocks their true potential. You can read more about what that looks like in our next blog.