This article has been reviewed by Billy Stevens for accuracy.
Businesses often focus on customer experience, especially residential plumbing and HVAC contractors for whom much of the success relies on delivering prompt and excellent service. However, just as important to the bottom line is employee experience (EX). After all, dedicated team members are what enable contractors to provide top-notch service, so they want to ensure they attract and retain top talent.
By focusing on EX, businesses reap many benefits, including lower turnover rates. Learn more about EX and its impact on employee retention from Sera.
What is the meaning of EX?
EX refers to the journey a worker takes while employed at your business and encompasses the various perceptions they have of the company during this time. It begins when the employee is applying for the job and becomes a new hire and continues until the exit interview.
Major components of EX include role and responsibilities, workspace, well-being, and every interaction throughout the employee life cycle. Another key aspect is milestones, such as onboarding, development, and exiting, but milestones may look slightly different depending on the industry or specific company.
What is the impact of EX?
When contractors focus on creating a better employee experience, they’re investing in the success and growth of the business. How workers feel at each step along the employee journey directly impacts engagement, performance, professional development, and retention. With greater employee experience comes higher job satisfaction, which can significantly boost profitability. Consider the following benefits of EX:
- Reduced absenteeism: When workers are satisfied with their jobs, they’re more motivated to come to work each day.
- Increased productivity: EX boosts employee engagement, empowering workers to be more productive. It can also encourage them to follow industry best practices and adhere to safety standards, which fosters a better work environment for all.
- Enhanced quality of work: Happy employees are more likely to bring their all to the workplace. This can result in more creativity and innovation, which may not only enable better customer service but also allow contractors to seize more growth opportunities.
- Improved customer satisfaction: Effective EX typically translates into a profitable customer experience. Engaged employees tend to display better attitudes on the job, showing homeowners more compassion and patience when providing service. This can have a great impact on the employer brand, helping increase leads.
How does EX affect retention?
One of the biggest reasons business leaders are focusing on maintaining a good employee experience is to help with retention. Employee retention is keeping employees with the company for a long time. Organizations often calculate retention by looking at employee turnover, or the number of workers who leave during a set period.
A great employee experience strategy will provide business owners and human resources teams with insight into the benefits and perks that most appeal to employees. This can help them highlight these aspects at each point along the employee journey, from the onboarding process to departure from the company, to retain talented workers.
What is the difference between employee experience, engagement, and satisfaction?
Two other concepts associated with EX are employee engagement and employee satisfaction. While all three overlap, they’re not the same idea. Employee satisfaction gauges how well a business does with meeting the needs of a worker. It usually focuses on their feelings about their job. Employee engagement goes a step further to investigate how a worker’s feelings contribute to their commitment to the business. Put another way, it’s the purpose the employee derives from the work that drives them to meet goals.
EX incorporates satisfaction and engagement, among other aspects, defining overall employee wellness. It’s company culture that generates specific perceptions about the business, which in turn dictates employee satisfaction and engagement.
What are the best practices for EX?
No two businesses are the same. The unique concerns of residential contractors and the professionals they employ (plumbers, HVAC techs, dispatchers, etc.) will determine their EX strategy. However, the following best practices are valuable for any company that wishes to maintain a positive employee experience:
- Considering the whole employee, including who they are in and outside of work environments
- Developing objectives that support numerous types of employees
- Encouraging employee feedback on new initiatives, strategies, and goals to ensure workers’ opinions are valued
- Creating an EX framework that includes the various touchpoints along the employee journey, such as the hiring process, onboarding, career development, retention, and offboarding
- Use metrics and tools to measure and improve EX (pulse surveys, Net Promotor Scores, focus groups, communication and collaboration technologies)
Enhance Employee Experience with FSM Software
Making employee experience a top priority can result in many favorable business outcomes, but knowing where to begin can be challenging. For residential plumbing and HVAC contractors, a great option is field service management software from Sera.
Our software solutions are designed with the needs of small to medium-sized home service businesses in mind. They enable contractors to detect and minimize inefficiencies in their daily operations, which helps streamline tasks and reduce employee stress. By taking away some of the more time-consuming aspects of manual field service management, our software allows contractors to achieve better EX and secure employee retention.
Contact us today for more information about our software and pricing. You can schedule your 15-minute discovery call or 45-minute demo.