By Richard Doherty




Daimler’s recent decision to give employees the option to have all email received while on holiday automatically deleted (see story here) has generated lots of healthy discussion and debate with many for and against such a policy.


Personally, I think the key take away from this initiative is the fact that it is an option. How each of us achieves work/life balance is a very personal thing – we’re all different and manage that balance in different ways. So I’m sure many of Daimler’s employees will take up the option to have their holiday emails deleted and many will not – as long as personal objectives are achieved, contributing to corporate objectives and everyone stays healthy and motivated, everyone wins. Auto deletion of holiday emails may not suit your organisation, but I’m sure there are some “options” you could offer employees that would help business performance that you have not perhaps considered before.


The need for a personalised employee experience, given the increasing diversity of the workforce and new ways of working, means that those adopting the one size fits all approach to attracting, developing and retaining employees are going to struggle.


By 2020 we’ll have 5 different generations working side by side in the workforce and 50% will be millennials – with different expectations and aspirations – for instance 60% of millennials will leave their companies in less than 3 years. 
The way we work is also changing – we’re beginning to use mobile devices to access enterprise applications, 67% (CEB) of us report an increase in collaboration at work and 76% (CEB) of us report an increase in working with data to get our jobs done.

As with the Daimler email initiative, employers need to give their employees options to build the employee experience that suits them best and will give them the best chance to be successful. Modern HCM solutions, like the Oracle HCM Cloud, will play a major part in providing that personalised and positive employee experience by:



Providing access to HCM services anytime, anywhere, on their device of choice
Making collaboration a part of managing people and developing careers
Embedding reporting and analytics to help the shift from intuitive HR to data driven HR and better people decisions
Supporting flexible workflows and process management, enabling more focussed people management practices depending upon the employee population
Giving managers the talent centric tools to help them manage more effectively
Giving employees more control over their development and careers
Continually providing solution updates to ensure the HCM solution stays modern and offers ongoing innovation to support changing employee needs

It’s all about options. For instance, social collaboration may not be everyone’s cup of tea and that should be fine – the worst thing you can do is to try to force people to use collaboration tools. They need to see the benefit and naturally adopt such an approach.

If we take the Employee Experience Journey Mapping approach to HR i.e. we focus on the employee experience as opposed to HR processes, we need to consider the options that need to be available to the employee during their employment journey to provide that positive employee experience that drives the outcomes our businesses desire. With such a diverse workforce, we need to do our best to understand their needs and provide as many options as possible to meet those needs. So make sure your HCM Cloud offers flexibility, functional breadth and an ongoing commitment to investment and innovation in keeping pace with a rapidly changing workforce and ways of working.





Richard brings more than 14 years of cloud based HCM solution experience to his role as HCM Strategy Director at Oracle, based in the UK. As HCM Strategy Director he has a thought leadership role and works closely with Oracle’s strategic customer accounts to explore the opportunities and benefits that can be realised by the deployment of leading edge HR solutions. Follow Richard on Twitter: @RichardDoherty

https://blogs.oracle.com/OracleHCM/entry/while_you_re_on_holiday