How to meet the needs of today’s distributed workforce while also building a more resilient business

We’ve all heard about the ‘Great Resignation’ and even ‘quiet quitting’ within the workplace on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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While this may not have had as much of an impact in South Africa, largely affecting more specialist roles, it’s a reality that many people across the globe are leaving their jobs, despite the current global economic crisis.

According to Daniel Wilks, EMEA Area Vice President of Solutions Sales, Employee Workflow at leading digital workflow company ServiceNow, this trend is due to employees placing a major priority on their experience within the workplace.

“It may sound clichéd, but there is a war for talent out there at the moment. Employees have more choice than ever and we’re finding in many places that there are typically more job openings than there are candidates, even in today’s challenged economies,” said Wilks.

“Because of this, you would be hard-pressed to find an organisation that is not currently grappling to improve their delivery of great experiences to their employees.”

The positive effects of an improved employee environment

Wilks explains that there are several macro trends globally, including an emphasis on the attraction and retention of employee talent – which is right back at the top of the C-suite agenda.

“Staff members have historically ‘voted with their feet’ if they were not having a good employee experience,” said Wilks.

“Today, we need to look at this in the context of employee expectations increasing.

Higher employee expectations are actually a win-win situation for the business itself, as delivering a better and more efficient employee experience has a direct effect on increasing operational excellence and organisational efficiency, which translates into both top and bottom-line benefits for a business.”

“So, we’re also seeing demand from businesses for what could be called unified services to employees,” said Wilks.

“For instance, an employee who needs help to get their job done effectively shouldn’t have to think about which system to use, or have some institutional knowledge on the company for which they are working.”

“There should be a unified service experience that centralises and simplifies this process for employees, allowing them to be more productive faster, and letting them focus on higher-value work.”

Wilks also said that organisations are now accepting the fact that hybrid work is a trend that’s here to stay.

“Initially post-pandemic, many companies were talking about the return to work, but this discussion has changed to the future of work,” said Wilks.

“This may certainly differ from industry to industry, but many organisations are now having to address how they provide consistent experiences to employees, wherever and however they’re working. This type of consistency is critical to boosting productivity.”

“Finally, while we know that all of this is taking place against a backdrop of cost consciousness from a macro-economic point of view, we also need to be able to extend the value of an organisation’s existing investments in technology, like collaboration tools, core human capital management systems, learning systems, and payroll solutions – all of the different applications with which employees interact with on a daily basis.”

Wilks said that this can be achieved by identifying and optimising enterprise processes that run right across an organisation – thereby transcending these different technologies.

“A simple example is looking at the onboarding of a new employee into an organisation,” said Wilks.

“It is important to get them productive as quickly as possible and also retain them, because recruiting and onboarding is one of the most expensive processes an organisation can go through.”

Wilks also noted that the onboarding process does not live solely within the HR system.

“There may be legal dependencies in terms of contracts, IT involvement as equipment is being provisioned, security to consider in terms of access, modules that may need to be completed from a compliance perspective, and payroll,” said Wilks.

Improving processes with ServiceNow

Wilks explained that ServiceNow helps organisations to identify these types of enterprise-wide journeys and processes, bringing them all together in one engagement layer and optimising them to maximise consistency and efficiency.

“At the same time, we’re aiding clients in attracting and onboarding the right talent, giving employees experiences that will allow them to do their best work, and also increasing organisational efficiency and productivity.”

The ServiceNow solution starts by looking for ways to eliminate inefficiencies in a process – such as manual processes that are laborious and inefficient, and which could also create compliance risks.

“If you’re onboarding someone you need to know that the right processes have been undertaken and the correct training done,” said Wilks.

“If you’re offboarding someone, how do you ensure that you’ve revoked access for instance, and do that in a consistent way?”

ServiceNow then looks for ways to define and optimise processes – ensuring that inconsistencies are eliminated is a key part of reducing costs – while also improving compliance.

Furthermore, ServiceNow can assist with the harmonisation of systems, masking the complexity that may exist behind the scenes by providing a simplified engagement layer that allows people to get to detail faster.

“This then allows employees to self-serve more effectively,” said Wilks.

“And for the times when employees have more complex requirements and can’t self-serve, there are a few ways that ServiceNow can help here too – by using natural language capabilities and AI to assist agents in getting to the source of a solution faster themselves, thus helping employees more effectively.”

At the heart of ServiceNow’s value proposition is recognising and leveraging a customer’s existing technology investment in different areas, connecting the dots, and allowing for automated, more efficient processes.

“We saw a rapidly accelerated digital transformation period during the pandemic and these tools are now ubiquitous,” concluded Wilks.

“By harnessing these existing tools, we’re able to meet employees where they’re at, instead of disrupting their flow of work, and allowing them to trigger requests for help or information in the applications they’re already using.”

Are you at risk of increasing employee turnover, lowered productivity, and decreased HR efficiency, or are you keeping pace with the changing needs and expectations of employee experiences?

Take a ServiceNow survey here for answers, or click to watch a practical demonstration example of unified employee engagement within the workplace.