As more organisations reveal their plans for hybrid working, many will be considering how they truly measure productivity. Analysis of employee experience can help HR to understand not only engagement, but ways they can make that experience more seamless for all. Brian Berns explains.
Remote and hybrid workforce models are not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, a Conference Board survey has revealed that a full one-third of large US-based companies have expressed willingness to hire a 100% remote workforce.
But without day-to-day in-person interactions, how can you know for sure that your hybrid workforce is engaged and productive? And more importantly, how can you not know?
While many have adjusted to a remote or hybrid experience, there are still issues that must be addressed due to the nature of remote workflows.
Systems frustration
For example, systems that are meant to be accessed locally or in the office may behave differently for remote users. This can lead to an increase in user errors and decreased productivity as users encounter new interfaces and workflows.
Many HR departments use surveys and questionnaires to gauge overall employee engagement, but these don’t provide actionable, quantitative data to help HR departments identify, or meaningfully address, a lack of engagement or productivity at the individual level.
Moving to hybrid
This is where employee experience analytics software comes in. This technology can offer visibility into employees’ interactions with various enterprise systems, delivering detailed insight into business process efficiencies and employee engagement so that HR can ensure all are aligned to ensure productivity, no matter where the employees are based.
Here are three ways these tools can support HR to create a seamless experience:
Struggling employees or problematic applications
Collaboration and real-time support are key benefits of being in the office. When a problem arises, users can usually walk down the hallway to consult with a team member, seek technical support, and engage with HR as appropriate. An in-person work environment enables HR to take a hands-on approach for helping struggling employees and supporting them in their success, to ensure job satisfaction, good morale and employee retention.
A remote workforce obviously makes this more challenging. Without the ability to interact face to face, it’s much more difficult for HR to interact with employees who are encountering issues. Employees are also less likely to speak up and ask for assistance when working remotely. There are communication challenges and a reluctance to identify themselves as having challenges they cannot solve on their own.
Experience analysis enables HR teams to identify struggling users, as well as the applications that are causing the most difficulty, so that customised training programs or user interface redesigns can be deployed to address employees’ needs.
Without the ability to interact face to face, it’s much more difficult for HR to interact with employees who are encountering issues”
This means HR teams can provide additional resources to those in need, identify super-users who can support others by becoming mentors and pinpoint which elements of the software are leading to frustration and decreased productivity. It can also help to gauge whether enterprise applications provide the same user experience whether they are accessed locally or remotely.
Help out the help desk
Most support teams take a reactive approach, meaning they address problems as they arise. Using a support ticketing system, teams investigate and resolve issues after a ticket is received. However, this process can be disruptive and hinder users’ ability to conduct their work, especially while working remotely. It also requires users to engage in tedious diagnostic sessions.
Because employee experience analysis can uncover potential problems that could impact a user’s experience, managers can now take a proactive approach. By discovering crucial system performance trends and errors before a support ticket is created, they can enable companies to rectify issues before productivity is impacted. And if a support ticket has been submitted, the Help Desk can review the data and real time logs outlining the exact steps the employee took that led to the error.
Furthermore, these tools can also operate alongside IT service management tools so HR and IT teams can work together to reduce the amount of assistance needed while determining who needs the most help.
Support digital transformation
Employee experience software has helped a number of companies tackle digital transformation projects such as cloud migrations, uncovering quantitative data to assist at every stage. These insights help companies determine the scope and planning of a migration, pinpoint key user behavior and applications that must be tested at every phase, and track both user and system performance and adoption pre- and post-migration.
The hybrid workforce is likely here to stay, so HR is faced with the exciting opportunity (and challenge) of creating a positive experience for employees across a wide range of locations.
Using employee experience data can provide tremendous value by providing a unique view into how users interact with their enterprise software systems day-to-day; it empowers companies to make intelligent, data-driven decisions about how to improve workforce engagement, boost productivity, and foster an exceptional employee experience.
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