Author Red Moki Team
Making work life as great as real life
Among the most satisfying projects Red Moki is involved with include working with organisations to enhance their HR processes.
When an organisation implements a solution to transform workflows such as ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery it can have a transformative effect on their culture, and that’s always a joy to see.
One of the principles behind ServiceNow is a belief in the concept of “making work life as great as real life”.
Over the past decade or so, there’s been a wave of innovation in the consumer world that’s transformed how we live our personal lives. But many of us haven’t experienced that same level of innovative technological change in the workplace.
There’s a general perception among employees that they’re being help back at work due to a lack of task-enhancing tools, processes and procedures.
That’s unfortunate because there is clear evidence that enhancing the employee experience makes good business sense.
The benefits of happy staff
A great employee experience delivers benefits for the business in three key areas: productivity, retention and customer satisfaction:
Productivity – automating processes to improve the employee experience, including allowing access to tools via mobile devices offers clear productivity gains.
Retention – There is a strong correlation between people who have a highly positive experience at work and those who are more loyal and likely to stay with their employer.
Customer satisfaction – In short, empathy begets empathy. Creating an environment where staff feel supported – including with the right tools to do their jobs effectively – will in turn create a culture of empathy empathetic customer service and outstanding customer satisfaction.
Improving the employee experience
So how does an organisation improve its staff experience?
According to a study by ServiceNow, there are four main aspects to how organisations can improve the “employee service experience”:
1. Make it easy for employees to get service from HR and other departments in the flow of work
Many organisations forget that just as customer experience starts with great customer service, so does the employee experience. Organisations can provide better support to employees by treating them like internal “customers” – which means a poor user experience is no longer an option. In today’s modern workplace, the number of employee-facing tools continues to increase, and employees are feeling the stress.
Organisations need to give employees a single place to manage their work needs, get service from multiple departments, and be guided to all the right processes while shielding them from back-end systems complexity and multiple touch points.
Having consistent processes and user-friendly tools is important. Organisations should also consider using strategic, innovative organization methods to foster constant optimization and experimentation in the employee experience. Agile methodology, for example, can help HR and other departments accelerate planning, drive cross-functional collaboration, create better solutions, and avoid lengthy, top-down processes that hinder progress. This outside-the-box way of working and thinking is essential to creating an efficient, pleasant work experience that drives productivity.
2. Focus and design for moments throughout the employee journey
Creating a seamless daily experience for your employees to get work done is critical, but key points of inflection – such as onboarding, leave, relocation, promotions, payroll issues and offboarding – can’t be overlooked.
These moments of change can have a huge impact on an employee’s relationship with their company.
3. Eliminate silos to deliver consistent, reliable information
The ServiceNow research showed that just over half of employees felt their employers provided easy access to information from HR or other departments. Given information is key to getting work done, this seems incredibly low. Employees don’t care where they get their service from or how they get it; they care about how consistent and reliable it is.
Every team that touches the employee experience—from HR and talent to IT and lines of business—must work together to eliminate silos between technology, processes, systems, and departments.
4. Listen to the employee point of view effectively
An employee’s perception of how employers solicit feedback and what they do with that feedback dramatically influences an employee’s desire to engage in a dialogue with their employer. Less than half of all employees believe their current employers care about their unique perspectives.
Employers need to take every point of feedback from staff seriously. They should listen thoroughly to all forms of feedback, evaluate it consistently, and take the appropriate action every time.
Does your organisation need to implement change?
Is work life as great as real life at your organisation?
Do your staff find it easy to do simple things like resolve issues with software and find information on a company policy – including via mobile devises?
If not, perhaps it’s time to create a holistic employee experience that equips your staff to get work done, supports them during moments of change, and ensures they feel valued and heard.
Talk to Red Moki if you’d like to start the journey of putting service at the heart of your business through an employee service delivery platform that delivers intuitive experiences, breaks down silos, and unlocks productivity.
