Inherited from customer relationship marketing techniques, multichannel management of HR requests poses a puzzle for any business, regardless of size or industry. Yet, it stands as a cornerstone of employee relations, HR service efficiency, and overall employee experience. Explore in this article our analysis and recommendations to ensure your employees receive:

• Reliable and fast processing of their requests, 
• Available, secure, and confidential service, 
• A relationship of trust between employees and employers, 
• A seamless experience. 

On the organizational side, our advice will assist your managers in: 

• Managing peak activities and workload, 
• Maintaining a high level of service, 
• Limiting the risks of burnout and boreout, 
• Achieving better results. 

💡Discover in this article :

1. Understanding multichannel Management of Employee requests

2. Each channel has its specificities, advantages, and limitations

3. Our recommendations

4. Our technological solutions to optimize your organization

5. Conclusion

6. Go further

Understanding Multichannel Management of Employee Requests 

HR counter, phone, Live Agent, email, portal, chatbot, SMS, digital workplace: the transformation of companies has seen a proliferation of communication channels available to employees to ask HR questions. Concerned with providing the most engaging work environment possible, organizations often offer several of these channels so that each employee can use their preferred one. This multichannel management allows for consistent and personalized employee experience, thereby improving overall satisfaction and employee experience. 

Just as marketing segments its targets and defines its personas, your HR services can learn to know and identify your employees' profiles. To do this, they will need to listen, observe, and understand, with maximum empathy, the needs and expectations. We have observed with our clients that these profiles are determined by several criteria: 

• Function and workplace 
• Level of education 
• Mastery of tools 
• Equipment rate 
• Age 

• Personal situation 

A multichannel experience is to be favored in organizations where the workforce is heterogeneous, such as in hospitals - where healthcare and administrative staff intersect - or in industries, sales, or commerce. 

Each channel has its specificities, advantages, and limitations 

If you seek to optimize the employee experience while reducing your operational management costs, you must identify the particularities of each communication channel. 

For example, the HR counter allows for direct contact and immediate or fast response, but it is only accessible during your service hours. It also requires organizations to dedicate a specific manager to this reception, who will have to interrupt their ongoing work to respond to the employee. The management costs of such a service will therefore be very high. 

Similarly, processing requests made by phone is costly for a company. The manager must interrupt their work to process the request, which they must enter themselves. The company must also organize a service permanence wide enough to respond to the requests of all employees, regardless of their work pace or location. 

Conversely, the HR portal or chatbot display low management costs as they allow for asynchronous request management, by priority levels. This advantage is also provided by the email channel. Portals and chatbots also offer employees HR knowledge-sharing tools so that the employee can answer their questions. If their request proves necessary, it is entered by the employee, thereby relieving the workload of managers. However, these solutions seem unsuitable for so-called deskless workers, namely those who do not have a personal computer as their main work tool. 

How, then, to optimize your multichannel management without having to choose between operational efficiency and experience quality? 

Our Recommendations 

For a good experience at lower costs, we recommend the following organization. 

For your deskless staff (frontliners, blue-collar workers, manual laborers), you can choose between: 

• Direct channel, via managers or nearby HR responsible for entering their employees' requests via an HR portal, 
• Personal emails, or from the company mailbox accessible from the outside (thus from home), 
• And/or the mobile application which allows access to your HR services from your personal phone. 

For your administrative staff, with a personal computer on-site, telecommuting, or on the move, opt for the portal, mobile application, or chatbot. The live channel (Live Agent or Live Chat) is also interesting for receiving requests that require an immediate response.