Many of us are familiar with the concept of customer success. According to some, customer success is your customer’s full appreciation of your product or service’s value proposition, from the very first engagement to ongoing maintenance and support.
But what is employee success? Like customer success, employee success should look at the holistic experience of your employees, from when you recruit them to when they leave your company. Looking at the lifecycle of an employee, this means you want to start focusing on your employee's experience even before they join the company:
It begins with your recruiting. When you recruit, you want to be honest and transparent about the opportunity. A critical component of employee success is matching the employee’s skillset with the position. This aligns the candidate with the opportunity, which leads to happier candidates and more effective hiring managers.
The next part of employee success is the interview. The interview is one of the rare opportunities to showcase your culture to people outside the company. Of course, not all candidates are going to get hired. That’s why it’s important, you want to treat each interviewee as if they are all getting hired.
For many companies, employee on-boarding includes mandatory legal and regulatory items. Of course, you’ll have to fill out a Form I-9, a Form W-4, and your local state new hire reporting for your new hire. But If that’s all you do as part of your on-boarding, you are missing a big opportunity to showcase your culture.
Of course, the onboarding doesn’t end at the end of the first month. To truly maximize your employees’ performance, you want to help them with continuing education. Did you know that you can exclude up to $5,250 in employee tuition costs? That means if you pay for a qualified employee’s tuition, you can write off up to $5,250. Why is this important?
In a study by the Society of Human Resource Management, 84% of employees listed Job-specific training as “very important” or “important” in a survey on job satisfaction. Employee education gets the dual benefit of not only increasing retention but also making your current employees more productive.
The next part of employee success, employee mentorship, is also a very important part of increasing employee performance. In the same study from SHRM, the #4 most important aspect of job satisfaction was the “relationship with immediate supervisor.” It’s important to understand that mentoring your employees is a critical part of employee success. Just like you wouldn’t abandon your customers after they purchase your product, you also don’t want to abandon your employees after they’ve joined your company.
Of course, we know not everyone stays at their company forever. An employee departure is challenging, especially if the employee was well-liked and productive. That’s why it’s important to make career empowerment a part of employee success. Within Gusto, career empowerments mean increasing responsibilities and continuing education. But outside of Gusto, it means our employees are better equipped to take on their next challenge.
That’s why when you think of employee success, you have to think holistically from start to finish.