How I Shape the Employee Experience and How You Can Too
By: Jaime Aholt, Sr. Benefits Analyst and Well-being Lead, Bayer U.S.
The employee experience is important to the company I work for, Bayer, and personally very important to me. How I approach my day, how I engage with others, the opportunities I pursue, the difficult conversations I have, the personal connections I make and how I tackle my everyday job all ties back to shaping employee experience and encouraging well-being.
The employee experience, as described by leading well-being researchers at the Limeade Institute (2020), is how all interactions, big and small, affect how employees feel about their day. It’s not surprising they found well-being at the heart of this. In a recent 2021 Limeade Institute study, they looked at how work impacts well-being and how well-being impacts work. Work provides us a source of meaning and purpose, social interaction and a path to financial stability. If you’ve had a negative employee experience, you may feel stressed, overwhelmed and burnt out. Conversely, Limeade describes how a positive employee experience, where you feel care and support, can boost your well-being.
High well-being allows us to have the physical energy to do our work and maintain high levels of engagement, reframe and handle stress — better known as resilience, and know when to take breaks to prevent burnout. High well-being provides a positive perspective and improves mindfulness. The employee experience doesn’t have to be shaped by something monumental. In fact, the small moments of interaction can have the biggest impact.
Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to connect with many employees across Bayer on the topic of well-being. The accomplishments I’m most proud of are all tied to paying well-being forward. My professional and personal goals are to create a culture of well-being and make an impact on the employee experience. Through job crafting, I have sought many opportunities that go well beyond my everyday job, that foster my eagerness to connect with others, and have those connections go beyond my voice, my email and my interactions. I work to bring fun to the workplace, build relationships, bring employees together who can share their stories and inspire others to pay well-being forward.
Job crafting is about taking proactive steps and actions to redesign what we do at work, essentially changing tasks, relationships, and perceptions of our jobs (Berg et al., 2007). The main premise is that we can stay in the same role, getting more meaning out of our jobs simply by changing what we do and the ‘whole point’ behind it. (PositivelyPsychology.com)
During my job crafting journey, I took on many new roles, said yes to every request and with each activity I promoted or event I hosted, I never missed an opportunity to promote well-being. I set-up meetings with site leads, safety leads, site nurses, well-being champions, team managers, Human Resources Business Partners, heads of Business Resource Groups, you name it, and I integrated well-being into every facet of my interactions. Not only did each opportunity help shape my own employee experience, but I got to witness others paying well-being forward.
Well-being is personal. It impacts our work, our family, it’s what we’re eating for dinner, how we spend our free time, it’s what stresses us out, what keeps us up at night and what makes us feel our best. I’ve had the privilege to work with employees who inspire me by paying well-being forward. These individuals are promoting health fairs, asking you to join walking challenges, sharing their personal adoption story and organizing informational well-being sessions.
In our current working environment, it has become a challenge to connect with people, yet there is an even bigger need to connect. I encourage you today to show someone you care, create an emotional connection. Congratulate someone on a job well done, but go beyond that, tell them how they impacted you personally. Thank someone and then tell them how their help made you feel. Share a well-being resource or benefit that helped you, or share your well-being goals, make an emotional connection and inspire others to keep the momentum going.
