The positive part of this is that most
organizations now understand the importance of employee engagement. For this,
they have appointed employee experience officers. However, it is still not a
priority for HR leaders or a continuous process with assigned responsibilities
and goals.
Employee engagement continues to be a
puzzle to HR leaders even in 2017. The work environment continues to be more
and more complex. Without positive employee engagement levels, the translation
to lower productivity and losing out to competition is only going to increase.
There are challenges as well as opportunities for improvement that exist across
multiple dimensions of the employee experience.
The positive part of this is that most
organizations now understand the importance of employee engagement. For this,
they have appointed employee experience officers. However, it is still not a
priority for HR leaders or a continuous process with assigned responsibilities
and goals. Most companies also need to update the tools and technology that
they use to engage their employees on an ongoing basis.
Keeping this ever-expanding change in
perspective, here are a few things that organizations need to focus on in the
new age in order to give employees an enriching experience:
Frame
a holistic strategy
To create an enriching employee experience,
strategies need to start right from potential to new hires to exit interviews.
Everything that impacts the daily life of employees within and outside the
workplace are areas that affect his/her overall physical and mental wellbeing.
Employees today demand an end to end experience for themselves, starting from
recruitment to retirement, and only then will they be willing to give in their
best to their jobs. Employers are still hesitant in adopting this completely
which more or less requires a radical change.
HR needs to move beyond its traditional
role of addressing diverse areas under employee engagement separately. Though
the understanding of areas such as rewards, benefits, culture and learning is
important, there also needs to be a holistic framework where all of these
converge.
Professional
development is key
95% of millennials are willing to pay for
their own professional development and training.
We live in an age where millennials form a
major part of the workforce, only to increase more in the coming years. For
this biggest job hopping generation, career growth is the biggest contributor
of higher retention levels. This is why organizations need to invest in their
employees and give them opportunities where they can learn and grow continually
during their work tenure.
On-demand training delivered across mediums
and mobile devices, along with certification programs can do a lot of good to
maintain healthy retention levels. This needs to be a well thought out
approach, involving managers and leaders as a core part. Until employees feel
like their organizations are truly investing in their professional growth and
offering them flexible learning opportunities, organizations will not be able
to harness the benefits of learning technologies.
Employee
feedback
22% of companies today survey employees
quarterly of more often, 79% survey employees annually or less and 14% never
survey employees at all - Global Human Capital Trends Report 2017
Such data clearly reflects the neglect of
regular employee feedback in organizations, which also explains why companies
face so many challenges. Feedback is critical to understand what is really
required by employees and align them with the corporate purpose. Employee
feedback has a lot of positive impact on organizations. This has been witnessed
by companies which have used tools for continuous feedback, tracked it and
reformed policies accordingly. The organizational environment has seen an
explosion of tools that allow for continuous feedback like pulse survey tools.
Relooking
at performance management
With major leaders like GE, Adobe, IBM and
others debunking the annual performance review, the debate of the bell curve
system of grading employees is actually facing the thought of extinction.
Performance management should be continuous, with teams coming into the picture
and hierarchies disappearing. There are a lot of performance management
products that also include feedback tools which have emerged from a number of
small brands, and making an impact in a huge way. Performance is now measured
on a continuous basis and is team centric, rather than having an individual
focus.
The
Role of Design Thinking and AI
Technology is advancing at a very rapid
pace, which is putting pressure on employees and organizations to keep up with
such fast-changing trends. The nature of this change is so overwhelming that a
lot of core issues are getting mixed up with unnecessary things. In order to
relive such an alarmed employee, HR practices need to adopt design thinking,
which means focusing on activities that put employee experience at the center.
The result of such an endeavor is adoption of tools and solutions that directly
contribute to employee satisfaction and productivity, without compromising on
achieving core business goals. Design thinking is important as it can work
wonders.
As per a Deloitte survey, respondents in
companies where HR delivers the highest levels of value are also five times
more likely to use design thinking in their programs than their peers. The
question is to ask what a great employee experience looks like from an end to
end perspective and how technology and strategy can be used to achieve this.
One significant development in this space
is the rise of artificial intelligence in framing employee experience
strategies. In fact, a recent study by Genpact predicts that humans and robots
will be comfortable co-workers by 2020. If this is to be true, it will also be
interesting to note how this will actually affect employee engagement indices
across organizations.
What is important to remember here is that
just plain deployment of technology is not going to be the solution. Companies
need to focus on training their workforce across levels so that they understand
the technology in their hands and how it can be used best to create engaged
workplace cultures. Employee engagement is a very broad area that needs to be
narrowed down. Disciplines such as performance management, goal setting,
diversity, inclusion, leadership and wellness need to be pulled together and
understood in unison. The focus needs to be able to provide enriching employee
experiences in order to reduce turnover rates, increase productivity and also
drive a strong customer experience.
The bigger question is how successful will
companies be in applying technology across the lifecycle of an employee and be
successful in keeping the workforce engaged.
About the Author: Bhaswati Bhattacharya
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