They say you can’t put a price on happiness. They’re wrong. Every year, US companies lose between $450 and $500 billion because their employees aren’t engaged at work.
Employee experience isn’t just a buzz term. It’s a critical business imperative that can drive innovation, productivity, customer satisfaction, and revenue. Want to raise your bottom line? Focus on creating a positive experience for your people.
The crunch is on
It’s no secret that a company is only as good as the people it keeps. They are your source of innovation. They produce your products and deliver your services. And most important, they are the front line to your customers. But finding talent has never been more challenging. The fact is, there just isn’t enough of it to go around.
- Experienced workers are retiring.
- The talent companies need may not be located near traditional work hubs.
- The talent they have often lacks the skills required by modern digital business.
By 2020, estimates predict that there will be a shortage of 95 million medium-to-high-skilled workers globally. Even China — a go-to labor market for many companies — is expected to see its workforce shrink by more than half, with a deficit of 23 million skilled workers by 2030.
The face of work is changing
For first time in history, there are five different generations working together, each with different degrees of knowledge, preferred ways of working, and levels of technology understanding and use. They all need and expect to be accommodated. And gig and contract workers account for a larger percentage of the workforce than ever.
Work is radically different too. It’s no longer a place, but an increasingly dynamic activity that people expect to be as adaptable as they are.
Making matters worse
In an effort to tackle these issues, companies have steadily implemented technologies to automate everything from finance and procurement to HR, sales, and marketing. The goal was to simplify work and make employees more happy and productive. But it has actually had the opposite effect. According to one study, 67 percent of employees are not engaged at work. The reason? Complexity.
- The average company has more than 500 apps in place to drive key tasks.
- Employees only use about 10 to 15 percent of the functionality of the apps available to them.
- Information is siloed across multiple locations, apps, and communications channels. Employees spend more than 25 percent of their time searching for it, and managers more than half of their time executing routines tasks.
As a result, not much real work gets done.
Give them what they want
So what’s a business to do? Employees today expect work to be as simple and efficient as their personal lives. They don’t want to navigate through monolithic apps. They want to automatically get the intelligence they need to execute tasks quickly when they log in.
They don’t want to search for things. They want the insights they need to make informed decisions in a timely fashion delivered in context of what they need to get done. And they don’t want to have to navigate through multiple screens to execute simple tasks.
Go where the talent is
People today also want to work where they want to work. And to attract them, companies need to rethink what workplace means. With intelligent workspaces, location doesn’t matter, because you can enable work where the talent is.
Baby Boomers who retired and took the knowledge they possess with them can be set up to work five to 10 hours a week from home. Mothers who put their careers on hold to raise children can be brought back on flexible schedules.
In an intelligent workspace, you can manage the ever-increasing list of SaaS, web, and mobile apps your organization has running on any number of clouds and create a seamless, intuitive work experience for your employees in a secure and reliable way.
Organize work and guide employees through the day
You can organize work by giving employees flexible access to all the apps and content they need to work where and how they want and be productive in a one, unified experience. But beyond this, you can actually guide them through their days using innovative technologies such as machine learning alongside simplified workflows to automatically serve up tasks they need to focus on and the insights needed to get them done.
Think of it as a personal coach for every employee. One that knows who they are and what they do and when they log into the workspace might ask, “You were working on this document on the way to the office. Do you want to continue?” One that automatically extracts and presents tasks such as approving an expense report or rating an employee or purchase experience, so employees can execute them quickly without needing to drill six clicks deep into an application. One who can help build their skills and keep them on the cutting edge in their field.
Don’t just automate. Optimize
In addition to automating work, you can also optimize it using these same technologies to easily locate critical information and speed time to productivity. New salespeople, for instance, can quickly be brought on board and set up for success as they are guided through the cycle — from alerts to prepare for a meeting, to receiving a prospect’s record and history along with the right presentation or customer stories to deliver, and even triggers to follow up.
Prepare for battle and win the war
The talent crisis is real. And it’s among the biggest pain points companies currently face. A recent poll found that 61% of C-Suite executives view access to talent as the greatest inhibitor to their growth aspirations. And another survey found that the lack of experienced talent is holding many companies back from pursuing innovations such as multi-cloud strategies, security, and artificial intelligence initiatives. In creating a world-class employee experience, you can overcome these challenges and attract and retain the talent you need to make your business go.
Deliver the future of work—today
The future of work comes down to three things: flexibility, intelligence, and security. In embracing digital workspace solutions, you can power a smarter, better way to work and get the right people in the right places to unlock innovation, engage customers, and move your business forward.