The big shift in thinking around HR Service Delivery has been the change in focus from productivity and efficiency to employee experience, and employee engagement. That’s not to say that productivity and efficiency don’t matter. They certainly do. But they’re not all that matter. The focus on the employee has risen to a higher level than it’s ever been.
According to Gartner’s Modernizing HR Service Delivery for the Digital Workforce, “While the integrated HR service delivery model has produced many success stories in terms of improved efficiency, the modern workforce now places high expectations on employee experience and engagement.”
Key Challenges for Employee Engagement
Relatively recent workforce dynamics make can make it difficult to meet these new expectations. Some off the key challenges presented by Gartner include the following:
- Global work forces with more flexible work arrangements. Differences in time zones, local labor laws and processes increase the complexity of service delivery. And flexible work arrangements drive a need for more flexible access to HR.
- Employees expect “Consumer Grade” customer experiences at work. During their lives outside of work, employees become consumers. And the quality of the consumer experience has risen significantly. Consumers are not expecting this same level of quality in their experiences at work.
- Desire for “live” synchronous communication with HR. The more recent generations of employees prefer self-service channels. But when they need help, they expect a live, more synchronous source of help than the more traditional channels like email.
How Technology beats the challenges
HR Service technologies provide several tools that can successfully address the challenges, and help an organization to deliver a more engaging employee experience.
Anytime/Anywhere/Any Device Access to HR Service
A more flexible workforce and the increasing use of mobile devices makes mobile access to HR service a virtual necessity. A Self-service Portal built on Responsive Web Design guarantees the employee a complete & consistent Service Experience from any device.
Consumer-Grade Service
The Amazon’s and Netflix’s of the world have trained us to expect personalization. And that’s when an employee should receive in terms of knowledge base, and other web content, such as announcements.
Expectations for consumer-grade service extend to transactions. All transactions should be digitized using Smart Forms, and Electronic Signatures and automated approval processes.
Voice of the Employee (VoE)
A key element in experience design is customer feedback. Properly actioned feedback has three components. First is the qualitative information captured through survey responses. Second is the qualitative information captured through interviews with the customer designed to get to the “why” behind negative responses. And third – and most important – is the capability to act on the qualitative feedback.
SLA-Centric Design
Consistently meeting and exceeding service expectations is a practice that has been around long before technology. But technology makes it easier to deliver. With every request bound to a calculated Service Level Agreement and organized within simple color-coding, front line agents can focus more on the customer. This is because the technology frees them from the mental tasks of organizing and prioritizing their workloads.
Benefits of an Employee Engagement Strategy
With the proper service technology in place, HR is better able to meet employee expectations for a consumer-grade experience. And consistent, high-quality workplace experience drive greater engagement. And the bonus? You’re accomplishing all this while still improving productivity and efficiency!
