By now most HR professionals, directors and operations managers understand that the employee experience is of the utmost importance if you want your business to thrive.
After all, happy workplaces attract and retain top talent, foster optimal levels of engagement, and empower employees to offer exceptional client service. What’s not to love?
In a certain sense, it’s a good thought exercise to equate the employee experience with a child’s experience at school. When we send our younger children off to school, we take great care to ensure that they have everything they need to do well. We tuck them into bed early, feed them a healthy breakfast, pack nutritious snacks, and fill their backpacks with all sorts of awesome stationery.
We make sure they understand their work and provide them with homework support. If they seem overwhelmed, we look into it. When they’re not feeling well, we keep them home until they’re healthy and able to focus on their work. We speak to their teachers, ask them about their friends and get involved when something is off-kilter.
But then these kids grow up and make their way into workplaces, and all of a sudden it’s a dog-eat-dog world with boring stationery, a serious lack of snacks and no-one to run to when things get overwhelming, you can’t seem to fit in or you’ve got the flu but there is also a major deadline looming.
It’s no wonder people burn out, right?
All kidding aside, we do understand that work is not school and that every adult needs to don their grown-up undies when they join the workforce. However, there is a lot to be said for creating a healthy, happy workspace in which employees have everything they need to thrive.
Check out our YouTube channel for awesome videos on everything from the science of employee recognition to creating an internal communications strategy for enhanced engagement.
Here are a few benefits your business is sure to enjoy when you accelerate digital transformation to improve employee experience:
- Improved productivity. When your team has the right kind of tech at their disposal, they can do their work better, faster.
- Better customer experiences. When your team is empowered to do their work well, it will necessarily improve your customer experience. Fast service, valuable solutions, seamless support – all of this is much easier to achieve when your team’s digital workspace operates effectively.
- Effortless talent attraction and retention. When a company is known to provide its team with the right type of tools and support, it becomes a magnet for top talent. Likewise, employees are far more likely to stick around at workplaces where they are empowered to reach their full potential.
- Ongoing learning and employee development. Adapting to new technology is much easier to do if a digital workplace ecosystem is nimble – when employees get stuck in a rut and aren’t up to speed with the latest tech, they can become resistant to adopting new processes and platforms.
Read more: Your digital employee experience road map in three steps
Smart moves to make on the digital front in 2021 and beyond:
1. Invest in an employee recognition and rewards platform
The key to getting a greater return from people is to engage and motivate them more effectively. A great SaaS-based employee recognition and rewards platform focuses people’s productivity by linking employees’ actions with organisational goals and values. Each message of recognition created on a platform like this can be linked with a relevant strategic business goal or organisational value.
Studies show that recognised employees feel highly motivated to contribute to their organisation’s success. By combining the power of goal-based and values-based recognition, you can align strategy and culture for business success with the right tools at your disposal.
DID YOU KNOW? Moving beyond the analysis of employee recognition and engagement data, bountiXP analytics provide deep workforce insight. From gaining a better understanding of which talent dimensions drive performance to analysing the behaviour of high-performing teams, these deep-dive analytics help organisations make better talent management decisions. Decisions that lead to better performance, and results.
See what it means to track performance and measure success 24/7 – sign up for a FREE trial here.
2. Embrace process automation
Automation helps businesses to shift their focus from repetitive (yet completely necessary) work processes to business growth and chasing new opportunities. By taking care of mundane tasks and everyday workflows, technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation can reduce costs and increase efficiency, so businesses are able to put their budget to good use elsewhere.
Read more: The digital employee experience is here! Is your business on board?
3. Upgrade to a hybrid cloud system
In order to handle exponential data growth while also keeping the integrity of their systems intact, innovative companies are turning to hybrid cloud systems to meet all their business objectives. Integrating a system like this can be quite costly when costs like storage, servers, platforms, software maintenance and employee training are factored into the equation, but it will most certainly reduce overall IT expenditures in the long run.
4. Beef up cybersecurity
With more employees working off-site than ever before, and cybercriminals upping their game in the wake of the COVID-19 economic shakeup, top-notch cybersecurity is more vital than ever before. In fact, between January and April of 2020, there was an approximate 240% rise in cyberattacks and 630% rise in cloud-based attacks.
Companies will always be at risk of attacks from outside hackers, but the increased danger of internal security breaches due to a fractured workforce makes cybersecurity all the more crucial. As such, businesses have to invest more in their system security in order to support and manage their work team.
Now you know! Check back soon for more insider insights and helpful advice on using tech to your team’s advantage and improving employee experience at the same time.
In the meantime, remember to take a look at our YouTube channel and subscribe for great videos that unpack the importance of your in-house communication strategy, how to overcome common barriers to employee engagement and more. It’s good stuff!