Tips on how to approach the employee experience in HR

Make technology work for employees

Research by Gartner concludes that by 2022, 75% of organizations will include employee experience improvements as a performance objective for HR. As companies adopt cloud-based solutions and technologies to deliver and streamline processes, employees are confronted with multiple systems and HR is left wondering how all these systems are truly adding value to the employee experience.

In fact, tools and processes fall short of creating an environment where employees can work efficiently. The ability to use mobile technology to access information–so common in our everyday lives–is lagging far behind in most organizations.

Where do employees go to in order to get the answers and support they need? Typically, they turn to portals, help desks, submission forms or to colleagues. But often they simply don’t know where to find the things they’re looking for.

A growing priority for HR should be in ensuring that new technologies not only support complex processes, but at the same time meet the expectations of your users. A significant step forward in creating a more employee-centric model is having in place a one-stop-shop accessible on any mobile device, that does away with the need for employees to figure out where to find what in processes and systems.

Going beyond HR

Fact is, that transactions with HR often go beyond the world of HR and routine transactions. Just think of all that needs to be arranged for an employee’s first day, or when s/he leaves the company, needs a new laptop, or has a payroll issue.

Services sought by an employee to get his work done effectively at such a point in time, don’t always involve HR. They can include legal, financial, facilities or other departments. Yet, HR is often the place people turn to. Traditionally, systems help find answers for purely HR matters, but are limited or fall short in being able to interact with systems from other departments across the organization.

What is needed is a powerful, one-stop-shop platform that delivers a digital service experience that may have HR as starting point, but that extends to organization-wide service delivery.

In fact, employees should be able to instantly access the service they need at all moments in their employee journey. By giving them instant access to all resources, they become more productive workers. Such a frictionless, intuitive and mobile experience should be HR’s experience goal.

4 steps to an excellent employee experience by HR

1. Pinpoint the moments that matter in the employee journey

We believe it is essential for businesses to start prioritizing the needs of the employee before HR needs. Identifying crucial moments in the employee journey is key. Where the introduction of digital technologies used to be a prerogative of IT, it’s high time to turn things round and give what happens on the work floor the highest priority.

2. Focus on and design for crucial moments

Moments of change in your employee journey can have a major impact on the relationship with your employees and the way they view the company. Making it easy for users to do whatever needs to be done at such moments, positively impacts employee experience and boosts productivity.

3. Create a single portal

A single portal to manage work, access information and the help desk, and get service from other departments, while being shielded from complex back-end systems is what employees are looking for. Map out the roles various systems and technologies play in the employee journey and ensure they integrate with your core HR system.

4. Move from thinking to knowing what employees want

The realization is growing in HR that knowing what employees want–instead of thinking what they want–is key to attracting and retaining talent. Designing an employee journey that boosts your HR employee experience hinges on your ability to listen to your users and test what has been designed.

Creating a smooth HR employee experience is not just about removing the bumps in the employee journey. It is a true time and cost saver: for both management and employees.

According to Gartner ‘the effective deployment of integrated HR service delivery tools will help reduce HR administrative costs by up to 30%.’ We see that HR departments, that have made their services model more customer-centric, are finding that employees are productive sooner. But also in terms of employee retention a smooth HR service delivery can have considerable cost benefits.

Our one-start-shop service platform

Many organizations are looking to provide employees the service experience they deserve. Being able to do so not only results in happier employees, it also boosts their productivity. ServiceNow HR Service Delivery is designed to give a consumer-like experience with a single place for users to access all their service needs.