Reasons why employee experience stories are good for your EVP

Employee Experience Stories

Employee experience is the journey an employee has with your organisation. Every moment an employee has with your company shapes their feelings about your employer's purpose, brand and culture. These feelings directly impact employee engagement, retention, performance and development. If you want to create a strong work culture, one of the best things you can do is allow your employees to share their stories. This will help you to better understand what they experience daily and how you can improve the workplace for everyone.

Sharing Employee Stories

In today’s modern world, storytelling has never been so important.

Storytelling has been around since the dawn of civilisation. Through oral narrative, music, art, writing and dance humans have enjoyed re-enacting events, fables and legends, passing them down from generation to generation.

In today’s modern world, storytelling has never been so important. Amongst the mass overload of information at our fingertips, it is powerful human stories that shine out and captivate an audience.

For businesses, storytelling is also an effective way to express the unique qualities of their brands to their employees, consumers and stakeholders.

To capture the hearts and minds of employees and potential candidates organisations must express their ‘offer’ – their Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Storytelling is a compelling way to convey an authentic view of a unique employment experience. 

Importance of employee experience Stories

Your employees are the frontline of your company, and their stories and experiences can build authenticity and create a human connection that your brand needs to thrive. By collecting and sharing employee experience stories and highlights, you're not only creating a solid identity for your company but also building a relatable, human connection with your audience that will carry your brand far.

So why is storytelling so effective in bringing EVPs to life? Here are 6 key reasons.

1. It’s Real.
   There is nothing more authentic than a personal story. By hearing employees share their own experiences rather than through the corporate voice - the EVP really comes to life in a human and engaging way. What’s more, it’s unique to your organisation. Letting your people tell the EVP in their own words helps differentiate your employment offer from your competitors.
   
2. Relevance.
   When you see and hear people telling their personal story, it’s human nature to empathise with them. In that process you start to see yourself in their position – picking out the relevant benefits and values that would appeal to you. Equally you pick up on stories that don’t appeal – which is fine because you don’t want your EVP to appeal to everyone.
   
3. More Memorable.
   When reading corporate or HR ‘speak’ it can be easy for the EVP to get lost in generic statements. However when organisational benefits (tangible and intangible) are told as real experiences, they come to life, are easier to listen and engage with and therefore much more memorable. Human brains are wired in such a way that learning is much more effective when presented in social contexts.
   
4. Universal Appeal.
   Stories can help bridge cultural, linguistic, gender and age divides. Because they are genuine and often emotional pieces of communication, we as humans can all identify with workplace feelings of passion, aspiration, values, enjoyment, challenges. These stories help create a cultural picture of the entire organisation. Even if the person’s role is not relevant to the viewer their story may have strong cultural appeal.
   
5. Living Values.
   Most large organisations have a set of corporate values for their employees to align with or uphold in their behaviours. For some, values are just seen as a checklist on a website. For others, they live and breathe their values everyday as part of their workplace DNA. By expressing how employees live these values in a day-to-day sense through their own words and images, the values take own greater meaning and depth – again storytelling helps embed and reinforce the values that are unique to your EVP.
   
6. Shared Unity.
   Listening to your fellow employees about their personal employment experience can help to foster a shared understanding about what the EVP is and means. You will find most employees will love being asked to tell their story. By simply being given the opportunity they are instantly more engaged, feel valued and become an ambassador (storyteller) for your EVP throughout your organisation and beyond.

Ready to create employee experience stories that matter?

Companies that highlight their real workplace experience and share authentic stories about their employees will attract more employees with similar values. It also reflects positively on customers as well, who will feel more connected with the human side of your brand. Belong Creative can assist you if you're ready to start building a strategy and engaging employees to help drive workplace storytelling. Get in touch with one of our consultants today!