Workgrid Software

As the clock winds down on Q1, the realities of a new decade are upon us. Digital transformation has been the guiding buzzword of every organization’s technology strategy for the past several years, but now what? What’s next?

The coming decade will bring a major shift in the focus on employee experience, with an increased urgency to deliver the same quality of frictionless digital experiences people have become accustomed to in other aspects of theirlives.

It’s about time.

For the past decade we’ve all experienced the power of truly intelligent experiences, with services like Amazon and Netflix using the vast amounts of data they have to simplify our lives by making recommendations, serving up information and automating tasks. It might seem like wizardry from a user perspective, but the reality is that there’s a lot of work happening on the back-end to pull it all together. Innumerable services and technologies are being aggregated to create a seamless experience, and it’s all being done without any involvement from the user. In fact, the user is blissfully unaware that it’s even happening, which is perhaps the biggest benefit of all.

It’s time for that same level of user experience to be delivered to the workplace.

Thankfully, the change has already begun. Gartner now ranks employee experience as top three initiative for HR leaders. Organizations are acknowledging the importance of employee experience and are hiring senior roles dedicated to managing the experience of workers (these roles are expected to outpace traditional HR roles by 2020). The emergence of ExTech – technology designed specifically to improve employee experience – is also further proof that this concepthas been accepted as more than just a passing fad.

  It’s time to use the technologies that are available to us, like AI, to start making enterprise solutions adapt to how humans work, rather than humans having to adapt to enterprise solutions.Implementing a digital experience layer is the ideal first step in achieving this  

Organizations that are ahead of the curve on this change are poised to be the biggest winners, because the rewards for providing an exceptional, consumer-like experience can be transformative for a business. For one thing, it’s a competitive advantage in terms of attracting and retaining top talent, particularly in a labor market that heavily favors job seekers. Companies that invest in employee experience are also four times more profitable (a drain of $450-$550 billion annually across the U.S.)than those that don’t and they can also avoid the tremendous costs that come from disengaged employees.

So how can companies take advantage of this opportunity and implement an employee experience that’s on par with the consumer experiences that have become so ubiquitous?

It all comes down to simplicity–eliminating complication and making the work day easier for employees.

The reason employee experience has become such a priority is because for too long, organizations have implemented their world-class enterprise systems in silos, with little regard for how they would impact the employees who use them. The result has been a fragmented, disjointed and frustrating experience that forces employees to toggle back and forth between numerous complex systems just to complete high-volume, low value tasks like requesting time off.

To create an employee experience that will fuel success in the coming decade, increasing productivity, reducing costs and attracting and retaining top talent, organizations need toreduce the frustration that comes withall of the mundane administrative tasks inherent in every job.

The simple fact is this:employees don’t want to be bogged down by manual, recurring, mundane tasks. They don’t want to waste timesubmitting expense reports, resetting the passcode on their smartphone orrequesting time off. Yetthose are exactly the kind of productivity drains and disruptors they’re oftenfaced with an enterprise full ofdisparate, complex systems that only handle specific functions.

It’s time to use the technologiesthat are available to us, like AI, to start making enterprise solutions adapt to how humans work, rather than humans having to adapt to enterprise solutions.

Implementing a digital experience layer is the ideal first step in achieving this.

Digital experience layers create a single unified and contextual experience that exists above the technological complexity of an organization, reducing the cognitive load on employees by orchestrating across all important systems on the employee’s behalf, seamlessly abstracting only the critical information each employee needs to know or act on. It then presents that information in a streamlined experience that mimics the consumer experiences employees have become accustomed to.

Intelligent filtering is another way technology can help reduce workplace distractions, providing a contextual view of only the things employees need to focus on. And of course, chatbots should also play a major role in any enterprise given their ability to handle simple commands such as “clear my schedule for Friday” in seconds rather than minutes, and providing answers to common questions, like “how much vacation time do I have left?” almost instantaneously.

This isn’t to suggest that what the enterprise needs is more technology. In fact, employees are already losing 32 days of work each year to workplace “efficiency” apps. What’s needed are the right solutions, purpose-built to eliminate the frustrations that are holding employees – and organizations – back.

It’s time to simplify the work day.

See Also:

Top Digital Transformation Solution Companies

Top Digital Transformation Consulting/Services Companies