March 29th 2024

Creating the Workplace of the Future, Today

Service providers like Amazon and Lyft have transformed the consumer customer service experience. With just a few taps on a smartphone or clicks of a mouse, consumers can have virtually any product delivered to their door, or summon a car to pick them up within minutes.

That power has raised their expectations of service delivery and customer support. Consumers demand the delivery of products or services quickly, and with minimal effort on their parts. Yet, they still have to lower those expectations at work, where they still rely on emails and spreadsheets to request and track information. That’s become a problem for the HR department.

Employees rely on HR services for myriad reasons, such as updating their benefit plans, developing a better understanding of specific company policies, and requesting help for something specific like a paycheck error. These common service requests represent their most frequent interactions with HR, so their experiences shapes HR's reputation across the company, for better or worse.

Too often, that experience is like traveling back in time. They’re forced to read employee handbooks and send emails to conduct research and ask questions, then fill out cumbersome forms. That is why creating more efficient ways for employees to find information on policies and procedures has become critical to HR’s efforts to retain talent. If there’s too much red tape to cut through, and too much time passes before they receive answers to questions, many employees simply won’t wait.

People, especially those representing younger generations, do not waste any time making the decision to leave a company for an opportunity with another organization. The answers to three key questions impact those decisions:

  1. Can I easily find information on policies and procedures to make the right choices?
  2. Am I provided with step-by-step guidance through a process like onboarding?
  3. Can I get relevant and high touch help within a process if I get stuck or have a question?

Companies must therefore create the workplace of the future today to attract and retain the talent necessary to meet its business objectives. In fact, ServiceNow’s 2017 “Today’s State of Work: At the Breaking Point” report reveals that companies are quickly approaching a breaking point and urgently need intelligent automation with processes such as managing employee relocations which are reportedly taking too long. Almost half of companies (46%) surveyed say managing relocations is the least efficient process and 33% say employee relocations are highly manual with an unstructured work process.

Success also requires the HR department, which has long kept its focus on core responsibilities such as recruiting, talent management, learning development, etc., to look to other departments for help in creating and delivering an optimal employee service experience. One driven by technology solutions that meet the needs of the entire enterprise. After all, employees expect a unified rather than a siloed approach to service delivery.

Powerful mobile devices, artificial intelligence, chatbots and the Internet of Things trend make virtually every facet of our personal lives easier. You can ask your connected mobile or smarthome device to do everything from ordering a pizza to sharing real-time biometrics data with your physician. These technologies will play a significant role in consumerizing the employee service experience. Having greater intelligence to assist in managing HR requests and inquiries via a chatbot makes it easier and faster for employees to get what they need, when they need it.

Time to value is also a critical factor. HR leaders do not have the luxury of waiting 9-18 months to recognize value. Like everyone else, they expect technologies to deliver results faster than ever before.

To meet their quick time to value requirement, HR leaders need solutions that involve minimal configuration and no customization. They want solutions that they can easily configure themselves without needing to rely on IT or a vendor for daily support. The best solutions have these four factors in common:

  1. Address the entire enterprise
  2. Short implementation times - weeks, not months
  3. Easily configurable to meet global business needs
  4. Focus on the entire employee service experience

There’s no stopping the technology tidal wave from forever changing how HR teams approach services delivery. This is not bad news, quite the contrary in fact. Jobs are not at risk of disappearing, but they will have to evolve into positions with titles like “HR Business Partner” and “Employee Experience Manager.”

There will be fewer and fewer HR administration jobs, but that translates to exponential growth in the opportunities to do meaningful and innovative work. Embracing this evolution is key to closing the gap between the level of service employees expect due to their consumer experiences outside the workplace, and what HR Service delivery teams can provide.

src: business.inquirer.net