Employee Experience: What Role Does Technology Play

“Experience” is a world that’s appearing more often in the business world today.

Companies are beginning to discover that customer experience is the key to differentiating themselves in a cluttered environment.

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What’s more, organizations of all shapes and sizes are also investing more into the business experience, through digital transformation initiatives intended to streamline processes and improve decision making.

However, one of the essential elements of the experience conundrum is often overlooked – and that’s employee experience.

As crucial as customers are, it’s difficult to accomplish anything in your organization without the right talent to drive business outcomes and conversions.

Unfortunately, HR and employment organizations are showing that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find and maintain crucial employees.

With skill shortages appearing in virtually every industry, and turnover presenting problems to a host of companies, it’s time to look for new ways to enhance the employee experience.

Here’s how technology can take employee experience to the next level for your organization.

Reduces Recruitment Wrinkles

Often, improving employee experience starts long before the onboarding process – before your team members even join your workforce.

If you want to change the way that your people feel about your company, then you need to start with the recruitment process.

Think about the tools and platforms that applicants encounter during the recruitment process.

Are your people always waiting around waiting for feedback from their interview, or do they get automatic updates sent to them via SMS and email?

Can you offer your remote and freelance workers the opportunity to complete their meetings via video conferencing calls?

Hilton Hotels recently invested in new software to improve the recruitment process. Through artificial intelligence, they were able to more rapidly find and interview relevant employees for their team. The implementation increased speed of hiring for the hotel brand by 85%!

Enhances Company Communication

Communication is a crucial part of any employee’s experience in a company.

Your team members want to feel like a crucial part of the workforce – regardless of whether they’re working at a local office or remotely from their own homes.

The best workplaces are defined by open lines of communication and collaboration.

Through cloud-based technology and “Teams” tools, companies can now improve the communication experiences that their staff members have each day.

Collaborative solutions are excellent for everything, from instant messaging to video conferencing. What’s more, because these options are available on the cloud, they’re available to your employees wherever they are.

When Weight Watchers International implemented social tools into their collaborative and communication stack, they achieved an amazing increase in employee engagement as a result.

Delivers Greater Flexibility

Technology also plays a significant role in helping today’s team members to experience more flexible working environments.

Through the cloud, it’s now possible for employers to make work something that their team members do, rather than a place they go to.

In other words, people can connect to crucial business software and systems wherever they are, with nothing but an internet connection.

The rise of remote working has given today’s employees more freedom and flexibility in their lives, improving work-life balance, and even encouraging greater productivity for teams. The result is happier employees and better cost savings for employers.

Speaking of flexibility, technology can even give office or remote workers the freedom to use the tools that they prefer to work with.

BYOD is growing in popularity as businesses search for ways to provide their team members access to new technology, without spending a fortune on the latest devices.

Creates More Engaging Work

As well as giving team members the opportunity to choose where they work from, and what kind of devices they use for their daily tasks, technology also creates a chance for employees to select the type of work that they do.

For years, we’ve discovered that the right technology in the workplace can improve the way that team members handle their workload with things like task management tools and queue management systems.

Cloud-based collaboration enables transparency between teams, and therefore holds each person more accountable. Accountability and transparency are very important aspects of good leadership, and they are a part of FAST leadership strategy.

However, now, employees are also getting the opportunity to hand more repetitive and mundane parts of their daily schedule over to automated assistants and AI too.

The rise of automation in the workplace means that business leaders can begin to cut down on the number of repetitive tasks that waste employee time each day.

Instead, workers can spend more of their workday, focusing on creative and immersive projects that allow them to do their best work and show off their skills.

Rather than simply taking jobs away from human beings, AI initiatives and automation are giving today’s employees more time and freedom to do the things that they love in their careers each day.

This leads to greater satisfaction for staff members, and reduced costs for employers too.

Using Technology to Drive Better Employee Experiences

As technology continues to deliver new and improved opportunities for growing businesses to evolve and adapt their processes, it’s crucial for business leaders not to overlook the importance of employee experience.

Staff members are a crucial cornerstone in any organization, and the satisfaction that these people feel in your workforce can make or break your chances of success.

The companies that have the confidence and courage to invest in new solutions for better employee experience and engagement are the ones that will be able to accomplish more in the long-term.

After all, happy employees lead to better business outcomes, more satisfied customers, and reduced turnover for organizations in any industry.

Lisa Michaels is a freelance writer, editor and a striving content marketing consultant from Portland. Being self-employed, she does her best to stay on top of the current trends in business and tech. Feel free to connect with her on Twitter @LisaBMichaels.