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5 minutes
How to turn the employee experience into your competitive edge
Nowadays, employees expect the same simple experiences at work that they have in their personal lives. To meet these expectations, companies need to move beyond complex systems and create digital experiences that make work easier, more efficient, and more engaging.
Table of contents
Redefining the digital employee experience
The digital employee experience is now a top priority, and with good reason. Gartner reports that for 30% of organizations, employees’ ability to use digital tools creatively will be a key competitive advantage. The pandemic has only accelerated this trend.
Companies are investing heavily in digital experience, but too often from an employer-first perspective. Meanwhile, employees expect the same user-friendly experiences at work that they enjoy in their personal lives.
To meet these expectations, businesses must take a more human-centric approach. Gartner recommends solutions that support both performance and culture.
What’s missing in today’s workplaces
We call it the booking.com experience. Not the site itself, but the intuitive flow it offers. Booking trips, applying for insurance, buying everyday (and not-so-everyday) items. It’s fast, helpful, and even inspiring.
Employees miss that same experience at work.
Just look at onboarding, HR may need four separate systems: one to post the job, another to hire, a third to request facilities, and a fourth for IT. Even setting up a lunch meeting can involve systems for visitor access, parking, room booking, and catering. It’s frustrating and time-consuming.
Current digital support channels
Unlike the effortless booking.com experience, most workplaces still run on siloed systems when trying to access services, such as IT, Facility, HR, Legal, Finance and more. Each channel has its own platform, emails, and contact numbers. Employees often have to re-enter the same info in different places, just to get one task done. Onboarding alone highlights how inefficient this can be.
Another day at the office
When finding the right tool or page feels like looking for a needle in the haystack, employees give up and revert to phone calls or email. It’s faster than navigating broken self-service portals.
Many companies try to fix this with a central SharePoint page full of links. But these are often static and outdated. What’s needed is a dynamic experience that actually works the way people expect it to.
Three essentials for creating a great employee experience
Research undertaken by MIT Sloan Center of Information Systems Research shows top companies outperform competitors in innovation, customer satisfaction, and profit. But what makes a great experience? Here are three essentials:
- Ensure easy to access self-service: in today’s flatter organizations, employees are expected to work proactively. Yet, it’s surprising to see how much time employees spend trying to find basic info or completing everyday tasks.
- Remove any obstacles from the journey: focus on removing the ‘bumps in the road’ from the employee journey. In fact, critical moments like onboarding, job changes, personal life, and offboarding are key to improving employee experience, productivity, and retention.
A well-designed digital workplace removes adds real value to the organization when it matters most. - Ask for feedback: feedback only helps when it’s used, and true gains come with taking action to fix things. Therefore, digital tools should track experience and flag what needs to be adjusted.
Data-driven insights help identify what improves or blocks a better employee experience.
The anatomy of an enterprise-wide employee service page
Ironically, while companies work hard to simplify the customer experience, the number of tools employees need keeps growing. You protect customers from complex systems. So, why not do the same for employees? It’s time to treat employees like customers. An Enterprise Employee Service page that’s informative, interactive, purpose-built, and easy to use delivers the great experience employees expect.
The fundamental building blocks
Enterprise search
With one simple search box, employees can access multiple information sources like Dropbox, SharePoint, service catalogs, support knowledge bases, internal news articles, and more.
Virtual chat
Using Natural Language Processing capabilities, a virtual assistant quickly understands employee requests and suggests relevant answers. If needed, a support agent can take over the conversation.
Service catalogue
Employees can easily request standard services from any support department — from laptops and business cards to meeting rooms, marketing materials, purchase orders, and more.
Announcements & news
Important company news and announcements are featured on the Enterprise Employee Service page, keeping employees informed about service changes, downtime, or other relevant news.
Employee information
A clear and integrated overview with deadlines makes it easy for employees to submit contract approvals, policy sign-offs, training certificates, holiday requests, and other personal information.
Measurement tool
Tracking what works and where employees struggle provides insights to keep improving the service. An effective measurement tool helps tailor the platform to your organization’s needs.
Seamless offering
With consistent branding, system integrations, and support for desktop and mobile devices, the platform delivers an obstacle-free employee experience.
Doing it well – A scaled and consistent approach
Things get complicated when employees can’t resolve simple issues or find the information they need. Giving them the right support at the right moment is not so much a technical challenge as it is a human one.
ServiceNow has everything needed to create a single point of entry, with features like virtual agent, service catalogue, knowledge base, and more. It can be fully branded, integrates easily with ERP and support systems, and offers native mobile access for employees.
Any gaps can be covered by integrating ServiceNow with other technologies.
With technology in place, the real challenge is creating strong executive sponsorship for full enterprise-wide transformation. Departments need to collaborate and hand over control of their own support channels to a centralized model.
HR and Facility Management are often the best places to start. They usually already have service delivery teams but need the right tools to manage employee interactions in a unified and transparent way.
Key Benefits
- One place to manage and track all employee interactions.
- Automated workflows and unified user experience.
- Supports employees throughout their journey, making them feel heard and valued.
- Quick access to information drives productivity and engagement.
- Continuously improve systems without disrupting the employee experience.