The Worker Experience is a lot bigger than many organisations realise. It’s not just a buzzword and it’s a lot more than that new employee portal, or a marginal improvement to the employee experience. It’s the core of what digitally transformed businesses fundamentally do. It’s about systematically creating happy, engaged employees through a repeatable process supported by technology.
It’s also essential to think beyond the people on payroll. Workers should include the wider network and anyone that is tasked with delivering a customer experience. Although HR has a big part to play in this, it does not have to do all of the work on its own. It needs to work with marketing and IT as well as all other departments to make the experience as strong as possible. The main reason for this is that it is easy for businesses to lose the connection between growing revenues and investing in the workforce. But the two are intrinsically linked.
As such, it’s time ditch the old playbook and invest in the Worker Experience in the same way we invest in the customer experience. It’s all about understanding what workers are feeling while thinking about the experience as a journey rather than a silo entity. The Worker Experience starts when an employee interacts with an organisation, when they first find and apply for a job at the company. It ends when they leave and includes everything in between. Here’s how to create a truly exceptional Worker Experience:
Provide consumer grade experience for your workplace
Treating your workers as customers and giving them a consumer grade experience is a great starting point. People have grown accustomed to accessing great technology, apps and tools in their personal lives and they should be able to use them at work too. A great example of this is collaboration tools. One billion people now use WhatsApp to connect easily with groups of friends and share images and so have grown accustomed to instant communication.
So, it’s a no-brainer for businesses to do the same. Google Docs are a great collaboration tool in the workplace. When paired with video tools such as Google Hangouts, employees are able to communicate in a much more efficient way, cutting down on the long process of administrative tasks and unnecessary email chains.
Making sure internal collaboration tools and apps that workers use, are mobile ready is also essential. Text heavy experiences don’t work on mobile devices and so it’s essential for businesses to consider this when implementing new technologies.
Eliminate barriers between workers and the info they need
This should not stop with collaboration tools though. Workers should be given the ability to get the information they need instantly.
We often hear about businesses giving a bad customer service and recent research from Customer Strategist Esteban Kolsky found that 84% of consumers are frustrated when the agent does not have the information they need. But, imagine how that makes the agent feel.
Workers, more often than not, want to provide a good service and so it’s up to employers to give them the tools they need to get their job done and provide the service they want.
Adapt to the way people want to work
Taking advantage of these technologies also has the added benefit of enabling organisations to apply new workforce models. In the past, businesses have worried that flexible working could lead to disengaged employees and reduced productivity. Thanks to modern technology however, working remotely is now just as effective as working in the office. With, smartphones, integrated applications and cloud-based document storing, employees working remotely are at no disadvantage.
Appirio follows this approach, taking advantage of cloud technologies, promoting flexible working and encouraging employees to work from home. This ethos is all about being more intelligent about driving productivity and working when there is work to be done.
It’s clear that technology is key is helping organisations provide a great Worker Experience. What is also essential is that all departments work together. As a member of the HR team, you may feel that it’s up to you to run with this and put in all the effort to improve the experience you give to workers. But, this is not the case, all other departments need to lend a hand, work together to implement new technologies and create a truly exceptional Worker Experience for all on their network.
