16 Strategies For Creating A Positive Employee Experience

Studies have shown that workers who have ideal workplace conditions are more likely to be innovative and creative. It’s up to leaders within the company to set the stage for this sort of mindset. Engaged workers tend to enjoy their work more and are far more productive, but without leaders invested in creating ideal working conditions, employees may consider leaving the company for greener pastures.

Suppose a business wants to have employees that remain creative and motivated in their work environment. In that case, leaders need to find the right approach to develop the best working conditions for these employees. How does a manager do this? Sixteen leaders from Forbes Business Council examine the most effective strategies for leaders to encourage a positive employee experience by creating the ideal work environment.

1. Be Inclusive

Be an inclusive leader and work to ensure you are hearing from all the voices on your team. While you may have some less vocal introverts that may have an innovative idea. Given our new ways of working, be intentional about redefining collaboration as teams are moving into new flex working arrangements and create new standards for collaboration that work for your team. – Jamie Jacobs, Gig Talent

2. Keep Your Promises

Keep your promises to employees. There’s nothing that exits employees  from your organization faster than feeling duped or unclear about what their job is. Be honest and upfront about expectations. Then hold yourself and your managers accountable to deliver on what you promised with clear, open communication. – Melissa Pepper, Total Solutions, Inc.

3. Find Out What Motivates Them

Work conditions are all determined by your employees’ personalities. As a leader, it’s your job to talk with your crew and find out what motivates them. Cash, time and projects are all important, but how important are they to that particular employee? If you want to foster a breathtaking workplace, it starts with a real conversation with the individuals who make up that workplace. – Jackson Hedden, Jackson Hedden .LLC

4. Provide Direction, Alignment And Commitment

Great leaders provide three key things: direction, alignment and commitment. When people have direction, things become clearer. When the internal and external components of a business are aligned, processes and tasks get completed strong and fast. Most importantly, stay committed and always have your employees’ back. – Wilbert Wynnberg, Think Act Prosper

5. Change Your Culture Around Failure

You have to change your company culture around failure. In normal businesses, intentional failure is rare, so there is a reason that the intended outcome didn’t happen. Learning the cause rather than blaming the person allows people to actually solve the underlying problem. – Christian Brim, Core Group

6. Always Make Time For Employees

Make time for employees, especially when performance is less than desired. During a pandemic, there are good days and bad. We will never know how our staff may be handling the waves of uncertainty unless we ask. Therefore, consider having leaders run a buddy system. Delegate them to answer calls from staff, day or night, to remain aware of individuals and groups. Route calls accordingly. – Olivia Friedman, Institute of Higher Global Studies

7. Keep An Open Communication Channel

Above everything else, make sure to always have an open channel of communication with your employees. No matter how busy you are, give them a way to get in touch with their manager or CEO and show them that their voice is heard and appreciated. – Dimitri Akhrin, CRMDialer

8. Inspire And Empower The Team

Innovation and creativity flourish when the team is inspired and empowered to flourish themselves as individuals. When a company provides the framework for teammates to feel inspired by the work they are doing, people start to look at their role as more than a job and start to care about the company like an owner. This shift fosters much more creative energy that leads to innovation. – Kristen Sieffert, Finance of America Reverse

9. Show That Each Individual Is Valued

Maintaining a positive experience is rooted in the consistent demonstration that each individual is valued. This goes beyond saying the right things; the real determinant is the consistent and pervasive demonstration of it across the employee life cycle. Take a possibly painful look at policies, processes, behaviors, decisions and communications in your organization. Is the individual demonstratively valued at every step? – Barry Marshall, P5 Collaborative Consulting, LLC

10. Don’t Micromanage Your Team

If you hire someone for a function, it should be because you trust their skill set and expertise beyond your own or those of the existing team. Therefore, don’t overcomplicate the hire’s day-to-day functions by jumping in and dictating their schedules or how they do certain work. It’s important to maintain quality standards and consistency, but balance that with freedom and flexibility! – Maurice Harary, The Bid Lab

11. Leverage Design Thinking

Use design thinking to design employee experiences instead of traditional programs. We have found that nurturing diverse connections across the company, where we bring together employees who might not otherwise get a chance to collaborate on a particular initiative, can help drive a culture of innovation. – Sindhu Kutty, Kuroshio Consulting

12. Build Online Community

Build an online community via tools like Slack, so that everyone can interact with each other both in and out of the office. Don’t assume everyone will always be in the same place at the same time. – Adam Viener, Yazing

13. Utilize Personality Tests

Utilizing specific personality tests can ensure that each employee is appreciated in the ways that are meaningful to them. Enneagram types are becoming increasingly popular as they can often speak to the deeper motivations, needs and desires of each employee. – Cody Jefferson, Embrace The Lion

14. Focus On Increasing Positive Stress

For innovation to flourish within any organization, focus on increasing positive stress and reducing negative stress for employees. Why? Negative stress hinders our capacity to think creatively and find long-term and complex solutions. Good stress, or “eustress,” is the type of stress we feel when we feel alive and excited about life or a project, and there is no threat or fear. – Andreea Vanacker, SPARKX5

15. Categorize Tasks Based On Importance

Certain tasks with very high importance should be required to follow a strict process. The lower the importance, the more freedom the employee should be allowed to complete it as long as it meets company standards and deadlines. If an employee fails at a task, it should be corrected in an educational manner rather than punitive. – Robert Depalo, National Financial Network

16. Offer Cross-Functional Opportunities

A smaller, but potentially mighty way to foster a positive experience is with some cross-functional opportunities. Ask people to work outside of their role and explore other passions. Either in the form of learning or working on another side of the business or in a more leisurely way, for example, ask an employee to create some art for the office or ask for help on designing a conference room. – Simon S. Mass, The Condo Store Realty Inc