Member Article

Creating the best Worker Experience

The Worker Experience is so much more than just a buzzword! It’s the core of what digitally transformed businesses fundamentally do and is about systematically creating happy, engaged employees through a repeatable process supported by technology.

To create an exceptional worker experience, it’s also essential for businesses to think beyond their standard employees. Workers should include the wider network and anyone that is tasked with delivering a customer experience.

Traditionally, businesses have left this up to HR, giving them all the responsibility of improving the experience of their employees. But this is an old school approach and one that needs to change. Organisations need to task all departments with making this a strong as possible. The main reason for this is that it is easy for businesses to lose the connection between growing revenues and investing in the workforce. But the two are intrinsically linked.

As such, it’s time to invest in the Worker Experience in the same way we invest in the customer experience. It’s all about understanding what workers are feeling while thinking about the experience as a journey rather than a silo entity. The Worker Experience starts when an employee interacts with an organisation, when they first find and apply for a job at the company. It ends when they leave and includes everything in between. Here’s how the very best Worker Experience is created:

Enable seamless collaboration

Treating your workers as customers and giving them a consumer grade experience is a great starting point. People have grown accustomed to accessing great technology, apps and tools in their personal lives and they should be able to use them at work too. A great example of this is collaboration tools. One billion people now use WhatsApp to connect easily with groups of friends and share images and so have grown accustomed to instant communication.

It’s a no-brainer for businesses to do the same. Google Docs are a great collaboration tool in the workplace. When paired with video tools such as Google Hangouts, employees are able to communicate in a much more efficient way, cutting down on the long process of administrative tasks and unnecessary email chains.

Making sure internal collaboration tools and apps that workers use, are mobile ready is also essential. Text heavy experiences don’t work on mobile devices and so it’s essential for businesses to consider this when implementing new technologies.

Make all information readily available

Your Worker Experience strategy does not stop with collaboration tools. Workers should also be given the ability to get the information they need instantly. For example, we often hear about businesses giving a bad customer service. A recent research from Customer Strategist Esteban Kolsky found that 84% of consumers are frustrated when the agent does not have the information they need. But, imagine how that makes the agent feel. Workers, more often than not, want to provide a good service and so it’s up to employers to give them the tools they need to get their job done and provide the service they want.

Take advantage of flexible working

Taking advantage of these technologies also has the added benefit of enabling organisations to apply new workforce models. In the past, businesses have worried that flexible working could lead to disengaged employees and reduced productivity. Thanks to modern technology however, working remotely is now just as effective as working in the office. With smartphones, integrated applications, and cloud-based document storing, employees working remotely are at no disadvantage.

Appirio follows this approach, taking advantage of cloud technologies, promoting flexible working and encouraging employees to work from home. This ethos is all about being more intelligent about driving productivity and working when there is work to be done.

There is a whole host of technologies that organisations can implement to improve the Worker Experience. What is also essential though is that all departments work together. Traditionally, businesses would put all the onus on the HR department but this should no longer be the case. In 2017, organisations should task all other areas of the business to lend a hand, work together to implement new technologies and create a truly exceptional Worker Experience for all on their network.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Justin Anderson .