Enhancing Employee Experience with help of HR Tech

When the industrialization began, the main focus of industries was to maintain a high level of industrial productivity, regardless of its impact on laborers or employees. However, with the passage of time, the organizations evolved in several aspects and eventually started recognizing the importance of retaining employees that are an asset to the company. This led to a change in their approach towards employee experience (EX), overall. In the present times, almost all giant industries pay attention to improving the experience that their workers have while employed at their organization. This is because it has become an established fact that happy employees mean more productivity and a healthy work culture, both of which benefits businesses in the long run.

In this article, we will cover how companies can design employee experience to tap into ways that will maximize the productivity while also offering other benefits.

There is a core purpose that makes local and international companies to invest their time and resources to design a positive employee experience at the company. As defined above, employee experience translates into analyzing the needs and wants of the employees along with the company’s goals and finding a way to align them. This approach brings a long-term positive influence on the company’s growth.

Employee Experience: Past vs Present

To understand the transformation of employee experience in the modern day, we will have to look into the shift of the employee’s approach over the past. From the very beginning of civilization to the early stages of industrialization, employees or labourers used to work only to earn their livelihood. However, with the progress in industrialization, things started to change as the demand of working class increased. Companies required workers to work long hours in order to achieve industrial goals and this led them to offering rewards for extra work.

They further added non-monetary rewards to the list and so it became a motivation for workers. Moreover, with the increased time investment into jobs, workers started to seek benefits other than money in jobs. Depending on the needs of a particular working group, benefits like commute service, meals, allocation of leaves and other such benefits could make a huge difference for employees.

In the present day, the employee experience has transformed in a way where employees enjoy numerous benefits for being a part of certain company. The existence of the HR department has enhanced employee experiences in many ways. For instance, employees in the past didn’t have leave allocations and they had to convince the employer by communicating their personal issues to avail leaves. Comparing the modern employment agreements to this, employees now have a certain number of assigned offs that they can utilize without having to give a reason.

Characteristics due to which employee experience differ

Not all working class have a similar HR experience everywhere in the world. Employee experience can differ based on the region where a certain employee is working. For instance, the employee experience for someone living in the United States differs from the experience of employees working in KSA because of the differences in economic and social structures and other aspects.

Similarly, employee experience can also differ for employees working on different designations. Usually, the higher the designation, the better the experience as people on good positions in companies enjoy more benefits and protocol.

Another factor that can impact the employee experience is the industry in which someone is working. Different industries require different work setup, timings, working hours, skillsets, and location and so on. Most employees in software industry can work remotely while those in electrical engineering positions may have to be on-site during most of the duty hours.

What local companies are working for employee experience?

In the local industry, there are several companies that are working on improving the employee experience in Pakistan. The list includes Engro, Meezan Bank, PSO, The Citizen Foundation, HBL, and more. These companies are working on different fronts to acquire their goals related to EX or employee experience.

Listed in the top ten banks to work at in Pakistan Society of Human Resource Management (PSHRM) 2017, Meezan Bank is known for offering a dynamic work culture, full of opportunities for professional growth. Similarly, Telenor offers different incentives to employees to ensure employee retention such as pick and drop services, medical facilities, allowances and more. On the other hand, Engro promises its employees a friendly work environment in addition to a medical coverage and provident fund.

How to learn from leaders of employee experience?

Small companies can learn from the MNCs as well as many big local businesses about how they make sure to deliver the best employee experience for those associated with them. Their excellent HR policies and the implementation of the best HR tech allows them to retain the best employees who can influence their business turn outs, immensely. Small businesses should start with the digitalization of their HR set-up to encourage check and balance without involving humans. Once the staff as well as the management know that there is no biasness or emotional involvement in the performance charts, both will start focusing on improvement strategies.

Present scenario regarding employee experience in Software Houses

The employee experience is a combination of employee expectations, needs with the expectations and needs of an organization. The job of a company is to find a middle way to take care of both, simultaneously. During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, businesses have molded the employee experience policies to accommodate the expectations of their employees while facing lockdowns and travel limitations without reducing the productivity rate. Some of the changes that were implemented during the situation are expected to remain even after the pandemic is over as their outcomes were commendable. Here is a detailed overview of the major change that occurred worldwide due to pandemic.

Remote and hybrid work setups

Face to face meetings are an indispensable need for many companies so the market have an array of professionals inclined towards a hybrid working setup. In hybrid setting, employees are required to be in the office on a few days a month instead of serving a regular full-time working hour.

Companies have adopted a work environment that provides their employees the freedom to access their work stations from their comfort zones and that, for many companies, has increased the productivity. This has not only improved the productivity rate but it has also helped companies cut off their on-site office expenses.

What MNCs are working for employee experience?

Many multinational organizations have been reported to encourage a positive employee experience while using different methods. According to Fortune, an international media organization dedicated to cover business news everywhere in the world, business belonging to IT, hospitality, finance and other sectors are striving to provide their employees with the best job package. The news network has released a list of the best multinational companies to work at based on the employee-centric environment they have.

Fortune conducted a research to determine the top 100 MNCs with a notable service package. The news agency took an employee survey where employees had to fill a questionnaire with 60 questions designed to evaluate their satisfaction with the company policies and environment. Some of the top software companies in the list include Cisco, Intuit, Salesforce, Ultimate Software, Workday and more.

According to Fortune, a major factor that makes the employees at these companies have a good feedback about their work culture is the inclusive approach where employees receive a supportive work environment and equal opportunities regardless of their gender, religion, ethnic background, language and other differences. Here, if we look at it closely, we will find out that these companies have set a system that has reduced human interference in HR-related areas. They use HR-based software programs for procedures related to hiring processes, termination, employee growth and other similar areas to secure an unbiased structure.

Later on, Business Insider took out the top 25 from this list and published it on their site. Most companies in the list belong to finance or IT industry.

How HR Tech is facilitating employee experience (EX)?

A huge part of present-day employee experience relies on HR policies and innovative tech-based HR systems that are implemented. HR tech are basically a bunch of HR programs that come handy in taking care of different employee-related tasks. For instance, a certain program can help in hiring the right candidate by using game-based onboarding set-up. These programs can also help collect important data of thousands of employees and generate fair appraisals for each of them on a timely basis. They also make it easy for employees to keep a track of their remaining leaves, salary slips, provident funds and other important documents.

What is the experience related to HR software?

Had it not for the handy tech tools, companies could not have run their functions smoothly with remote and hybrid workplace arrangements. Software houses have largely relied on HR software programs for designing a functional employee experience during the pandemic and even before that. The HR related software systems cover everything from keeping an attendance record of employees to maintaining data about employee performance on a monthly basis. HR related software programs have also added more value to the employee experience during these tough times by quickening different regular tasks including monitoring work hour credits, leave approval process and more. They also have eliminated the need for any human efforts for these tasks that makes employees more self-sufficient.

Conclusively, if a company invests for its employee’s betterment, it eventually benefits the company itself. The key is to know how and where exactly they should be investing. One way to attain an ideal employee experience design at your organization is to place an unbiased HR system that will hear out their concerns, ideas, complaints and professional as well as personal goals and more. The next step to design an international level employee experience would be to provide your people with a peaceful and compassionate environment along with incentives and growth chances that match their own life goals.