Creating An Employee Experience-Focused Workplace
How can HR help?
Posted on 03-20-2019, Read Time: Min
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We all know the two greatest factors necessary to create a successful and sustainable business: attracting and retaining talent. We’ve seen the competition for talent increase dramatically over the past ten years, yet according to Gallup, ⅔ of employees are disengaged at work, and a full ⅓ of these employees are actively looking for a new job while at work. Surprisingly, many companies have failed to focus on the employee experience to change these outcomes.
The employee experience-centric workplace honors the employee’s job satisfaction and productivity first. That means creating an environment where employees thrive in order to fulfill the business’ mission to its customers. HR professionals are uniquely positioned to not only shift attention to the importance of employee experience but, more importantly, work across silos to make the EX workplace a quantifiable success for everyone’s benefit.
Creating a Connected Workplace
Today, HR leaders as much as the CTO, are responsible for providing great tech in the workplace. Employees expect their office tech to work as flawlessly as their smartphones. A single Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) achieves these expectations by removing roadblocks between departments and allowing them to continuously share employee and workplace data, increase more DIY functionality for employees, and get clear insights about how employees actually use their space, all in one platform. These insights enable talent executives to take intelligent action in line with your employees’ needs, all while gaining accurate, real-time data to plan for the future.HR leaders who manage more than 500 employees and potentially multiple locations need a single platform to gain true visibility into their workforce. Large enterprises and fast-growing companies with that need to optimize their space and better manage their employee experience benefit most from an IWMS. The goal is to create a connected workplace that provides a concerted ROI on any business’s two biggest expenses: the workforce and the workplace. Add the investment in the employee experience that yields faster recruitment, better retention, and greater satisfaction and the returns are exponential.
One such IWMS, iOFFICE, allows you to leverage your current tech stack and the data it produces, to give workplace leaders and employees the tools they need to thrive by:
- Connecting departments: Most businesses use multiple systems that don’t talk to each other, so departments often work within silos. There is no need to replace these systems to create lines of communication and transparency between departments; you can simply connect them. Look for an IWMS with an open API that allows you to connect your most popular HR platforms like Workday and Microsoft Office. Imagine easily sharing your directory of employees with Facilities Management and IT. Since the employee experience begins on their first day, not having a working email, an assigned desk, or access to a conference room, can start things off on the wrong foot. By connecting departments and data, everyone will be prepared to make the first day, and every day thereafter their most productive day ever.
- Streamlining services: Nothing demoralizes A-players at work faster than an unresponsive workplace. Today’s talent leaders must ensure a work environment that fosters great work and effortless collaboration. So if a chair is broken in the Sales area or marketing needs audiovisual equipment for a presentation in Conference Room A, they need to address those requests instantly. Traditionally, employees would have submitted service requests and waited, hoping for timely responses. With an IWMS, with a mobile app or through a connected room kiosk, employees can log service requests and check status updates until they’re resolved. Employees feel empowered and in control of their workplace, while you ensure they get what they need when they need it. Watch the job satisfaction rates skyrocket.
- Supporting a mobile workforce: A survey of business leaders at the Global Leadership Summit in London found that 34 percent of respondents believe that more than half their company’s full-time workforce would be working remotely by 2020. By connecting all employees through a single system, team members can reserve a hot desk in another city’s office for tomorrow or request a conference room for next week all from a mobile app, desktop or laptop. The objective is to create a fluid, connected workplace experience for all employees to get exactly what they need to be as productive as possible, wherever they work.
- Making you smarter: Aside from the immediate impact on employees, HR professionals in the digital workplace benefit by gaining clear insights from real-time, accurate data collection. Imagine syncing important data between HR, facilities management, and IT departments to truly understand how team members use the workplace – their likes and dislikes, and what makes them hyper-productive and engaged. When you have a central data repository that provides reporting to share across departments and with your C-Suite and employees alike, together you can plan for future innovations. You can constantly optimize the workplace based on actual employee behavior and preferences, increasing efficiency while also making employees happier.
The future of work will undoubtedly be focused on a truly connected workplace and the time is now for HR to lead the charge on initiating change within their companies to lean into this inevitable change.
Author Bio
| Elizabeth Dukes is the Co-Founder of iOFFICE, the employee experience-centric IWMS platform and mobile tools designed for the Connected Workplace. Co-Author of “Wide Open Workplaces,” Dukes advocates for the confluence of people and technology that unleashes the full potential of the workforce and the workplace. Visit www.iofficecorp.com Follow @iOFFICECorp Connect Elizabeth Dukes |
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