Technology has without question changed the way work is undertaken. But in a rapidly changing field, what do the major stakeholders, namely business leaders, HR leaders and employees, who use tech tools day-in-day-out, expect from it?

Let’s start with business leaders, the ones holding the purse strings.

Business leaders want digitalisation to…

• Increase customer engagement
• Automate business processes
• Improve performance, so the workforce can perform work faster and perform more work in the same period of time
• Use big data to improve decision-making

It’s all about digitalising workplace processes and the workforce itself, not so much to enhance employee experience (EX), but more broadly to improve performance and productivity. How this initiative would improve growth and make us more efficient? .Understandably, it’s all about top line and bottom line.

HR leaders want digitalisation to…

• Enhance employee experience
• Provide useful analytics tools
• Create talent pools to recruit from
• Automate tasks and boost productivity
• Personalise HR service delivery

The employee experience is certainly on the radar – but it looks a lot more like HR experience; it’s ultimately going to help HR to achieve its goals and objectives. It’s about improving HR service delivery.

What do employees want from workplace tech?

• It shouldn’t require a training module or lengthy instruction manual.
• It should be able to make recommendations and suggestions. In the workplace, for example, a learning path should be customisable to the employee’s role, with suggested content recommendations that are relevant to them. Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Analytics is transforming how organisations attract, retain and engage employees by creating truly personalised experiences.
• It needs to be interactive and embedded into the tools employees are already using, so they can interact in real-time and more efficiently access the information required to do their jobs.
• Employees want to be able to work from anywhere at any time; they also want to be able to easily check and update their own personal information so self-service is a must-have.
• Employees want single-sign-on access to multiple HR services that may rely on other departments for information, and integrated access to onboarding, payroll, performance, learning tools and everything else required in the workplace.

The main idea running in the mind of an employee would be, how much time and frustration would this save me and how will it improve my work life.

How can the gap between employees, HR and business leaders be bridged, so that everyone gets what they want from technology?

First, let’s expand upon the “personalisation” aspect that employees are looking for. It requires a significant shift in HR’s thinking, but these 4 steps can help remove the “one-size-fits-all” mentality that has traditionally dominated HR service delivery.

1. Address the needs of the employees: look into what they really want

It is a well-known fact that the key to keeping anyone happy is to provide them with what they want and when they want it. There are going to be times where employees really need the human connection what comes with a face to face conversation, and at the same time just that one click that gets them all the information they need to move on with their busy schedule.

With digitalisation taking the corporate by storm the employee experience too is influenced by this than ever before. Providing a digital experience to your employees is bound to get them motivated rather than the monotonous manual process and this definitely goes hand in hand with a positive company culture. And the added advantage would be that implementing digital channels instantly turns into tangible proof that your organisation takes into count about the employee experience.

How does HR provide the digital experience that employees look for? It's all about starting from the basics. HR needs to keep in mind that unlike other resources, employees need to be dealt in a personalised and intuitive manner rather than being considered as another transaction. This calls for HR to get in the shoes of others and dig deep to find those speed bumps that could really frustrate an employee during a busy day. These can be really small adjustments that can mean so much more in results. Think about instant availability of attendance information to an effortless onboarding process.

2. Position employees like consumers: “consumer-centric HR”

We invest millions in building customer engagement strategies, but rarely know much about our employees. To adopt a consumer-centric approach, HR needs to prioritise HR solutions by also empathising with what employee’s value in their experiences.

Here are just 4 areas of the EX that might benefit from predictive analytic tools, powered by AI:

• Recruitment – show who the strongest candidates are and which ones will ultimately become high performers. Also uncover which recruitment campaign methods result in the best outcomes for the organisation.
• Engagement – identify who the more engaged employees are, and also identify those that may be a flight risk.
• Onboarding – determine how to accelerate an employee’s onboarding to increase performance in their role, quicker.
• Remuneration – what types of employee incentive produce the best performance and retention outcomes?

 

3. Enhancing the moments that matter with a digital experience

Once HR figures out these moments, that task at hand is to create the journey of employee experience that caters to the digital age. With the evolution of game changing technologies available, the choices are abundent.

From gamification to AI to predictive analytics, the list is endless but the task for HR is not to just digitalise, but to identify the most suitable technologies to implement which most often easier said than done. Hence it’s time for HR to roll up their sleeves, dig deep and scruitinise to make some serious decisions.

4. Tap into technology to create a unified employee experience layer

While traditional HR looks into the aims of the business and caters to the areas of payroll, attendance and absence, it neglects to look at the impact on employee experience. Most often it requires the assistance of 3rd party systems to do this task.

The present digital age demands an HR solution that acts as a unified platform where both the business purpose comes together with a layer of employee experience. Hence before making the big decision here are some areas that HR needs to tap into:

• Does the platform have an impressive user experience?
• How well does it integrate with the existing systems in place?
• Does the system capabilities cater to the business requirements?

PeoplesHR is a people-centric HR solution that not only takes care of your organisation but your people as well. Giving your organisation a 30% cost reduction and your employees, a platform to interact with for everything HR. It’s a win-win for everyone!