The statistics are grim: a recent Gallup survey showed employee engagement is at a near-all time low, while the share of workers who want to switch jobs is at a 10-year high. “Why is it so darn hard to fire up the team these days?” asked moderator Callum Borchers, columnist at the Wall Street Journal during a fireside chat at From Day One’s March virtual conference. Fortunately, some companies are finding a way to break through the doldrums with innovate their engagement strategies.

Global Head of Employee Experience Jason Simmonds and his team at Morgan Stanley, a global financial-services firm with 80,000 employees across 41 countries, has developed a comprehensive employee-experience program, covering resources that improve employees’ careers, the workplace, and well-being. Among the upgrades: improving the onboarding process.

Responding to Changing Times

The social contract between employer and employee has shifted dramatically since the onset of the pandemic, Simmonds says, as workers came to expect greater mental health support and increased their focus on their families. “Employers reacted in kind, providing more generous benefits [and] flexible working arrangements, investing in products and tools that ultimately provided more to employees,” he said. 

Gen Z has also entered the workforce within recent years, and their unique values are beginning to impact demands on benefits. They prioritize mental well-being, social impact, meaningful work, and flexible working options—having never known anything else—leading to tensions as “return to office” mandates increase, Simmonds says. HR professionals are even starting to see “a managerial gap,” as balance-focused Gen Z hesitates to take on higher level positions due to the anxiety that can come with the job. 

While the “talent wars” of the immediate post-pandemic period might be over, with a 26% decrease in open positions and layoffs on the rise, employers still need to take engagement seriously, Borchers says. 

To put it bluntly: In today’s job marketplace, if an employee is unhappy, they will leave. “Ultimately, if you want to attract, retain, [and] develop talent, and differentiate yourself amongst your peers in this quite increasingly competitive landscape, employee experience is really central,” Simmonds said. “Most people agree that their employees are their greatest assets. So how do we invest in them? How do we make sure that they're providing the best outcomes for the business and for their team?”

Shaping an Employee-Experience Strategy

Morgan Stanly experienced major growth during the pandemic, including two major acquisitions and record revenues. They also guaranteed no layoffs during that time of global crisis. The bigger challenge came, Simmonds says, coming out of the pandemic with a newer, bigger workforce. “50% of the firm was hired in the last five years,” he said, and the organization needed a strategy to help transition those newer workers into a hybrid or fully in-person working model. 

During the pandemic, the organization had already amped up its benefits offerings, without the official title of “employee experience strategy” per se, including better mental health resources and expanded paid parental leave. “And then also we did a lot of investment in reimagining and redesigning our workplaces, [so] that when we bring people back into the office, we provide a flexible working arrangement that fosters collaboration, that fosters innovation,” he said. 

The company launched a branded employee experience program called “My Experience,” focused on three pillars: career, well-being, and workplace. “The importance of the ‘my’ part is that we wanted to create more ownership and connectivity between the experience and our employees,” Simmonds said. Within each pillar are sub-pillars like “financial” and “family,” so that employees don’t need to “doomscroll” through a roster of benefits options before they find what they need. The “My Workplace” pillar of the program also comes with its own app for better access and a chatbot to efficiently understand HR policy.

Prioritizing the Communication of Resources 

While the launch of the program did mark the addition of several benefits options, the rebrand also served as a way to refresh and better communicate the ample offerings that Morgan Stanley had already had available for quite some time. Simmonds says this employee-centric rebrand led to an uptick in awareness of and engagement with the program. 

His team also relied on employees themselves to be ambassadors for it. “What better way to market our employee resources than to amplify the voices of employees who have used it?” he said. “We’ve been starting to highlight employees who’ve gotten out of debt using our financial wellness resources. We highlight employees who survived cancer, leveraging our relationships with cancer research hospitals. And even if you're not in that situation, I think it makes employees very proud to work at a firm that has these resources.” 

Onboarding is also a crucial part of the employee experience, and it too hinges on communication. Having all the employee resources consolidated in a single, easy-to-understand package helps keep new workers from getting overwhelmed and empowers them to better understand both their role within the organization and what the company has to offer them. Morgan Stanley has a digital onboarding process that relies on fun and informative videos. “It brings the experience to a 21st century, and it creates better connectivity with our firm leadership”

Of course, adding employee benefits costs money. “How do you achieve an employee-centric culture in a bottom-line driven business?” Borchers asked. One way a good experience program can offset costs is through retention, since replacing employees is expensive. “90% of employees decide to remain with the company in their first three to six months,” Simmonds said, so the sooner they understand and enjoy the experience program, the better. 

Simmonds says that happier employees often turn out to be better workers: “When we communicate through this employee-centric lens, it helps to increase engagement, increase culture, and ultimately increase business outcomes.” 

Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

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