As more companies struggle against the ‘Great Resignation’, retaining and upskilling talent has never been more important. Intelligent CXO spoke to four experts about how to create a positive employee experience and engage the workforce.
With the US experiencing the lowest unemployment levels since 1969 and reporting near-record levels of job openings, companies are facing a challenge attracting, retaining and upskilling talent. To address this need, Meeting Expectations + Business Games is now providing proven game-based learning experiences to North American corporations. Through these programmes, employers use proven and customisable learning modules to enhance employee engagement and skills.
“Attracting and retaining employees is a significant challenge right now – even in our industry,” said Christine Hilgert, Senior Vice President at Meeting Expectations. “After successfully enhancing attendee engagement and sales team training through Business Games – and their success in Europe – we know it can be invaluable for North American HR leaders.”
Many different initiatives are available – like Meeting Expectations and Business Games’ partnership – to help engage employees. We further hear from four leading experts about how companies can successfully engage their workforce and improve the employee experience.
Gavin Mee, Managing Director Northern Europe, UiPath
Employee experience is integral to the running of a business as it directly correlates to the quality of your organisation’s overall performance. If an employee feels content in their work environment and are put in the best position to be able to thrive, this will have a positive impact on the organisational culture and staff retention, which is key at a time when businesses are struggling to hire new talent. Not least, all of this will directly impact the customer experience. On the other side, with overstretched and unfulfilled employees working in an unengaging environment, it is impossible to maintain satisfied customers.
For this reason, it’s essential that employees are provided with the best possible tools to do their jobs and in the process achieve their highest potential. Many companies bet on software automation to streamline and automate their most data-intensive, high-volume, and rules-based tasks – allowing staff to focus on more interesting, value-add work. The end customers can also benefit from automation technology as things such as purchase orders, accounts and other processes are automated for faster turnaround.
Whether deployed in the back or front office, software automation is going to help employees be more effective in what they do. People are most productive and happy when they equip themselves with the tools to take their work into their own hands. It is in the hands of every CEO in every company to help make the bold vision of an engaged workforce a reality. To conclude, ‘customer first’ goes hand in hand with ‘employee first.’ Automation is crucial in transforming both as, by design, it puts people at the centre.
Ramkumar Chandrasekaran, HR Director at TCS UK & Ireland
People are the lifeblood of any business. It is vital that businesses create an engaged, progressive and inclusive work environment, and a healthy work-life balance for everyone, so employees can link their success to the success of their organisation.
Over the last two years and during the pandemic, we’ve made engagement and communication with our workforce a top priority at TCS. Our swift transition to remote working, facilitated by TCS’ Secure Borderless Workspaces model, enabled our global workforce to work safely, securely and effectively from their homes. We’ve also introduced a new range of well-being benefits to support employees working remotely, such as an employee assistance programme, 24/7 health information and advice and virtual engagement. Our employee networks, like UNO parenting (for single parents) and TCS MINDs, have been very active in creating open communities of support and connection.
A successful company will provide regular Learning and Development (L&D) training to equip staff with the right skills to thrive in their careers. Approximately 80% of employees believe L&D opportunities help them feel more engaged at work, so this should be a top priority for businesses to enhance employee engagement further.
Our hybrid L&D strategy balances digital and human elements with in-person mentoring to better engage learners. With many now working from home for at least part of the week, issues could arise such as new joiners struggling to get up to speed. By using the right tools and technologies, HR teams can onboard new recruits and provide online training for new and existing staff.
Additionally, as individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds are still underemployed, under-promoted and underrepresented at senior levels, TCS is actively working towards the Business in the Community’s (BITC) Race Equality Campaign, launched in partnership with the UK government. BITC will accelerate diversity and help employees from ethnic backgrounds to become more engaged and successful in their roles.
EJ Cay, Vice President, UK and Ireland, Genesys
Engaged employees benefit your organisation in many ways and often lead to the success of a company. If staff enjoy their work, they are more productive and motivated to perform well. Absenteeism often declines and you have a more reliable workforce delivering better results.
In the contact centre space, engaged employees are more alert and sensitive to quality standards and compliance training, which can have a big influence on each customer conversation. Quality scores and first contact resolution rates increase. Average handle times and transfer rates decrease. As an organisation that has worked with hundreds of companies around the world helping them to reap the benefits associated with improving engagement, we see plenty of success when employees are engaged.
Employee engagement is about meeting the needs of each individual team member. This means considering their passions and commitment to perform, which often goes beyond simply fulfilling the tasks of their job. Much like defining what a good customer experience is, it’s critical for business leaders to also define what engagement means for their staff, so they can design the right experiences to equip them for success.
But what underpins this all is empathy. It has never been a more important topic when it comes to meeting the needs of individual team members. In today’s workplace, empathy has a new level of importance, and for a company to be successful, empathetic employee engagement should be a priority. This is because it can help create positive workplace relationships, organisational cultures and drive positive results.
As part of a company’s engagement strategy, employers should consider what their employees’ needs include — from the more basic elements such as receiving a competitive salary to more complex needs of achieving leadership roles or becoming a mentor.
It’s also important to consider how technology can help create a more engaged workforce. Many organisations use multiple technologies in siloed systems to manage their customer interactions. The workforce schedule rarely encompasses all activities. This is frustrating and impractical for your staff, but it also means that your organisation isn’t taking full advantage of economies of scale. A good workforce planning solution takes care of integration with the contact centre infrastructure, including all channels and provides a single user environment. A better forecast creates a better schedule, and a better schedule has a direct bearing on employee engagement.
James Scott, CEO of Thrive
Considering how your employees experience their workplace is important for retaining talent, particularly now staff shortages are at their highest in decades.
The employee experience – put simply – is the journey taken by an employee within your organisation. Such a journey shouldn’t just happen it should be planned, prepared and executed carefully to ensure that every employee not only feels like part of the organisation but knows their purpose and has opportunities to grow.
If employee journeys are poorly managed employees may eventually become disengaged and less committed to their jobs. This is easily avoidable with some straightforward planning; just as a marketer or operations team would use a customer journey map to improve customer or client experience, business and HR leaders can use an employee journey map to both visualise and improve the employee experience.
Ultimately, taking time to focus on your employee experience strategy and making a conscious effort to ensure your workforce are engaged and satisfied within their roles can be hugely beneficial for your organisation. After all, those who are happy at work are undoubtedly more likely to enhance the customer experience – and what business wouldn’t want that?