The Future of Employee Engagement Automation

Modern organisations are evolving into smart organisations. 

The term “Smart organisation” is used to describe an organisation that is interconnected, dynamically adaptive, knowledge-based and responsive to change. 

Let’s breakdown the definition. 

Interconnected: They deploy the best communication practices and promote collaborative work culture.

Dynamically adaptive: They are early adopters of new technologies and emerging practices. They use the available resources to become better, faster and smarter. 

Knowledge-based: These organizations are knowledge-based and they follow a data-driven workflow.  

As the definition suggests, what lies behind-the-picture of a smart organisation is the massive inundation of technology. 

How is technology and automation helping Managers? 

Smart organisations are building better managers.

It is no secret that there is an influx of technology in every facet of business management. It has taken over the human resource management space as well.

Emerging technology hasn’t simply reduced the human efforts, in fact, it has directed the efforts in the right direction. It has made the human resources department smarter as a result of better decision making, better stress management and more innovative approaches. 

The top challenges in human resource management departments are reducing employee attrition and improving employee engagement levels. But doing so through traditional practices is even trickier. 

The need to build an employee-centric experience is more important than ever.

Employee engagement is no longer a concept but it is the topmost priority for businesses to thrive. Every organisation, small, medium or large must invest in building an engaged workforce. The focus has shifted now to creating a fulfilling employee experience that covers all the interactions in an employee’s lifecycle.  

To take your efforts in the right direction, employee engagement tools play a big role. 

Employee engagement tools are like pizza with extra toppings. (Who wouldn’t want that?)

1 in 3 employees reported that their roles or responsibilities had changed due to technology. (Mercer Global Talent Trends Report 2018)

Are you ready for the change? 

7 Areas where Employee engagement tools are boosting business performance

• Recruitment:

Hiring the right people in the organization is a crucial part. Having a good recruitment process attracts the right kind of employees that can add to the growth of the company. 

Recruitment automation tools are software programs that are used to automate the recruiting process. 

Apart from minimizing human errors and risks, these tools help in a thorough evaluation of a candidate’s skillsets to shortlist the most viable candidates. 

These tools streamline and simplify the hiring process and make it faster, smoother and more efficient. 

• Onboarding:

Employee onboarding is the process of making the new hires familiar with the organisation’s culture. Starting from orientation it involves all the steps in making them comfortable with the work environment, performance expectations and their peers. 

Employee onboarding tools are of great help to make this stage of employee journey simpler. 

They take care of all the tasks (orientation and compliance) associated with employee onboarding. They arrange the tasks in a logical manner and keep track of each of them. 

Onboarding tools also offer integration functionality with the various process such as payroll system, employee portal, self-service options etc. 

• Survey and Feedback: 

Employee Survey and feedback tools are one of the most popular employee engagement tools that companies have been adopting in the past decade. 

Online pulse surveys are proven to gauge the degree of employee engagement, satisfaction at work and passion for the job.  They are great predictors of employee behaviour and company attrition rates. 

For the uninitiated, employee pulse survey is a fast and frequent survey system designed to be deployed quarterly, monthly or even weekly. Through the survey, employees are generally asked a few complex questions and the respondents have to answer each question on a scale of 0-5 or 0-10. 

Online employees survey tools make it easier to collect, schedule and analyse surveys. Surveys can be developed in a cost-effective manner and it is possible to send multiple online surveys or multiple versions of an online survey.  

• Training

We know that employee training is a crucial part of an employee’s journey. Proper training prepares employees to meet the objectives and challenges of the job. 

The role of technology in employee training sector is huge. The surge of e-learning programs for employee training is proof of that. In-person training for each new joiner is often not feasible and that results in poor productivity. 

The prime advantage of E-learning methodologies over conventional training methods is that it saves a huge amount of time and money. 

Secondly, it eliminates the constraints of distance. You can train your employees in remote locations in a consistent and structured manner.

• Communication: 

It’s hard to imagine a modern workplace without constant messages and files being shared over popular communication tools. 

Modern workplaces now are no longer confined to a bunch of people working under the same roof in a 9-5 cycle.

On the contrary, it has now become a norm to have multiple offices across different locations and employees working across different time frames. 

Additionally, the massive digitization and immediacy of social media have resulted in a highly interconnected culture among millennials. 

As a result, communication tools for various purposes such as collaboration, chats and messages, video conferencing have become a norm.  

• Employee Recognition: 

When asked what leaders could do more to improve engagement, 58% of respondents replied “give recognition”

It is a no-brainer that employee recognition is a top-seeking criterion an employee seeks. A systematic employee recognition program is paramount in the workplace. 

However, there are certain essential criterions that should be met in a Rewards and Recognition Program. The program should necessarily have a well-defined criterion, maintain fairness, maintain timeliness and have variety.  

Keeping a check on these criteria becomes easier when you leverage technology. A cloud-based Rewards and recognition program in addition to making the process smooth also boosts a culture of mutual appreciation in the workplace. 

• Employee Benefits

The perks and benefits offered by a company say a lot about the company.  

According to Glassdoor’s Employment Confidence Survey, 79% of employees would like new or additional benefit to a pay increase. 

Also, having unique meaningful benefits helps the company in attracting top talent. 

Most sought after benefits are special discounts, financial assistance, health and wellness, corporate gifts, flexible timing, paid vacations etc.

Needless to say, having an employee benefits platform where employees can take a look into all the company perks and choose their rewards as and when they feel like is an absolute win-win proposition!

Final words: The biggest role of a manager is to manage change. The need of the moment is to retool, modernize and reinvent strategies to create a more employee-oriented culture at work. A technologically forward organization promote a much-need culture of transparency and clarity. For businesses to thrive, this is the path that every mordern organization must venture on. 

The need to build an employee-centric experience is more important than ever.

Author Bio: Darsana Dutta works as a Content marketer at Vantage Circle – an Employee Engagement platform. Darsana loves to keep herself up-to-date and share her views on the latest trends around employee engagement and human resource management.