Till approximately 20 years back, the focus of companies with regard to their resources was to improve their productivity and daily output delivered by them. In the 70s and 80s, the focus shifted to employee satisfaction. However, employee satisfaction was more about the employee’s relationship and loyalty with the company.
In the early 2000s, organizations started to realize that employees should be viewed as an asset to their brand. Increasing attrition made organizations think about the satisfaction coupled with happiness of the employees. This gave rise to the term – employee engagement.
Today, organizations are discarding terms like chief human resources officer with chief employee experience officer. With increasing competition and a tough business environment to operate in, organizations have realized the benefits of employee-centric strategies: higher revenues, lower costs, and stronger employee and customer loyalty. The question remains – why this and why now?
Millennials are certainly a factor - They account for over a third of the US Labor Force with an equivalent proportion globally. What they seek most from their jobs is meaningful work, autonomy, connection, mentoring, and flexibility. To attract and retain these employees, companies are planning to provide more options to make hybrid work/life work for them: 66% said they plan to offer greater work flexibility, a family-friendly benefit that drives employee engagement.
The pandemic has played its part - destroying the idea of a uniform work week, 9 am to 5 pm from Monday to Friday. More importantly, how people show up and interact with companies will differ fundamentally in the post-pandemic world of work. Organizations are recognizing they must reimagine every aspect of work – from recruitment and job evaluations to collaboration, perks, and the workplace itself. The pandemic has spun a new perspective, where the war for talent will be fought based on employee experience.
So, what is employee experience? Is it a fad? The new buzzword? A fresh approach to competing in today’s war for talent? Or a fancy way to make engagement sound better to millennials?
We define this trend of focusing on employee experience (EX) as companies and their people working together to create personalized, authentic experiences for employees that ignite passion and tap into purpose to strengthen individual, team, and organizational performance.
Turning the support functions (such as information technology, finance, human resources, purchasing, and real estate) into excellent customer-service operations is a powerful lever to deliver a digital transformation focusing on employee experience. It promotes a longer-term impact and the full engagement of the staff by applying the principles of customer excellence to employees’ journeys.
Wipro’s myUniHub is an integrated user engagement platform that provides employees with a consumer grade user interface to access resources and support. Coupled with industry leading technology such as ServiceNow, it offers a human-centric approach to simplify key employee journeys and transform those moments that truly matter in their day, year, and career. We borrow from great customer experience to consider how these moments provide unexpected delight to inspire employee loyalty and retention. The result is a virtual workplace which stages consumerized experiences enabled through harmonized omnichannel interfaces supported by smart automation and data insights.
Abhinav Rajan S
Practice Director – Digital Workplace Services, Cloud & Infrastructure Services, Wipro
Abhinav has experience across Consulting, Business Development, Pre-sales, Solution Design and Software Development in Digital Workplace Services. As an experienced digital transformation professional, Abhinav has worked extensively with companies around the globe in providing innovative and cutting-edge solutions that focus on transforming employee experience. Abhinav keenly follows technologies that impact the future of work.