The pandemic has swept workplaces like a hurricane and left us with no choice but to accept and adapt to the new normal. With remote work appearing in the new way of life, new strategies, technologies, and digital savvy processes are the emerging opportunities that organizations are exploring. Amidst everything, employee experience has plummeted. Uncertainty and ambiguity during the crisis have impacted employees both personally and professionally. Does employee experience still matter? If yes, how will it evolve?

As Gallup defines it, “The employee experience is the journey an employee takes with your organization. It includes all the interactions an employee has with your organization before, during, and after their tenure.”

All we understand now is that, in a time of crisis like this, it is vital to enhance employee experience with all our efforts. If employees are not happy and satisfied with their jobs, it is challenging to sustain a business in the long run.

Why employee experience?

Employee experience is a combination of culture, workspace, and technology. Also linked to company growth and employee sentiment.

A recent study by Deloitte University Press shows that almost 80% of the executive’s worldwide rate of employee experience is important or very important.

Besides, workers with high employee experience have 28% higher productivity, 37% lower turnover, 142% higher employer Net Promoter Score, 46% stronger organizational commitment, and 59% higher job satisfaction.

If organizations are looking for ways to improve employee experience at their workplace, particularly during a crisis, here are some tips for you.

Tips for improving employee experience in the workplace:

1. Strong communication

At this time of change, communication is the key aspect of the digital workplace. Often, information overload and inconsistency leads to confusion and, eventually, lower down employee productivity. Using the right communication tool can keep that in check. It will help employees intercept the right message eliminating miscommunication. This tool can further help teams to have open discussions, share knowledge, and help leaders to stay connected with the entire organization. Employees can get real-time insights based on their roles, responsibilities, location, activities, interests, and teams enhancing the digital workplace experience.

Strong and healthy communication using the right tool eliminates panic and the hassle of locating the right person to find out relevant information. Furthermore, this leaves employees with more time to focus on mainstream work, positively influencing the overall employee experience and engagement.

2. Maintain employee productivity and engagement

Employee productivity is an index of measuring the maximum mainstream work getting done, eliminating the hassle of locating the right knowledge or executing repetitive mundane tasks in the process. In a global enterprise, access to irrelevant content and lack of personalization cause employees to tune out. As a Forrester report suggests, “More than half (54%) of global information workers are interrupted from their work and have to spend time looking for or trying to get access to information, insights, and answers.” This information is typically available within the organization but is not readily accessible or searchable.

Instead of pushing the employees in content dump yards, a better way of assisting employees, especially knowledge workers, is to enable personalized document recommendations and intelligent enterprise search. It not only helps in finding the relevant information in time without reinventing the existing knowledge but also saves time resources maximizing productivity and engagement metrics.

An AI-infused intranet gives a recommended list of content based on a user profile, past interactions, activities, interest and teams in a hassle-free way that helps in the development of the employee experience and productivity. Leveraging AI, the cognitive search will give relevant and contextual search results, due to which employees will get easy access to information at the right time.

The sudden change has also brought unusual challenges to HR and IT departments who are  trying to field the support queries coming from a vast number of employees across different time zones. Chatbots work as the intranet companion providing answers to employee FAQs. They guarantee 24/7 availability, personalization and are packed with amazing features like multilingual assistance, voice enabled interactions, transfers to a human agent when in need, etc.

3. Culture of feedback and appreciation

Gartner’s research finds that employees’ desire for being recognized increases by about 30% during challenging times.

Imagine what motivation it adds when an employee receives a company wide virtual applause for his extra mile effort to counter the challenging roadblocks. The enthusiasm that particular employee shows in his present and future work and the kind of inspiration he becomes for the peers has a positive side effect for the company.

Creating a culture of appreciation and feedback motivates employees and boosts productivity. Organizations must make sure to keep that going. Especially in the pandemic times, when the employees are overburdened with a lot of other aspects both mentally and physically, acknowledging and rewarding his/her efforts will make them work even harder for achieving their set goals.

Without any additional investment, organizations can use their existing intranet portals as an excellent platform for recognition. Efforts like these will collectively build the company culture, loyalty and values. Employee recognition is a requisite part of the employee experience, and it serves to improve employee satisfaction in an organization and builds engagement levels.

4. Learning and development

Grow your talent in house by employing modern learning, inspiring continuous development & collaboration. In an employee life cycle, training and development are core aspects that build confidence and satisfaction at their jobs. Development opportunities make employees more engaged at work, articulating workforce capabilities, skills and competencies.

In the current scenario, physical or in person training has taken a back seat. In these times when employees feel isolated in a decentralised setup, individual learning and enhancement of skill become crystallized in organizational success. It has accelerated the adoption of virtual learning models. Companies are adopting a comprehensive plan for remote learning and development for employees.

Your intranet can support continuous learning by leveraging organizational knowledge and encouraging along with assisting employees, delivering staff engagement as well as business benefits. The intranet acts as a central hub to easily access training, resources, and information.

5. Idea management

Having meaningful work is what attracts and retains the Millennials and Gen Z workforce. Even though most organizations are now concentrated essentially on business continuity, few are also seeking ways to dig in opportunities in the current situation.

The organization can look for a structured process of gathering great ideas for existing business challenges, identifying the best of them, and implementing them within the organization.

For example, if you are developing a new solution that eliminates challenges that the pandemic has brought to us, allow your employees to participate in brainstorming the solution. Support and encourage your employees in sharing their ideas addressing a common business challenge. This gives you best of the solutions to the challenges in addition to the sense of ownership it brings in the employees.

It will help to make their work more significant and rewarding, which encourages and boosts the employees’ morale and experience. A gamification based idea gathering will also be a fun treat for employees from mundane work.

6. Virtual water cooler

About 80% of successful ideas created in teams were born from informal conversations, both in remote work or hybrid work. A quick coffee break or a short hallway conversation aren’t lost moments of productivity. These small moments build and strengthen company culture by breaking silos and encouraging engagement, stimulating idea exchange that boosts employee experience. The Virtual Water Cooler enables teams to collaborate, engage and communicate with employees that they may not know. Getting to know your team member before working on any tasks together enables easier project collaboration, knowledge sharing and team bonding.

It also works as a social and collaborative platform, scaling the engagement to the next level with features like Subject Matter Experts recommendations, etc., needless to say leveraging AI.

The Need To Adopt Digital

As the pandemic has changed everything. Employees working from home or office or both, employers need to make sure powerful digital workplace tools are in place for seamless work culture. The key to success, though, lies in the implementation of a digital workplace strategy. These tools build agility and ensure positive employee experience at every stage. The modern intranet features break down communication barriers, transforming the employee experience by boosting productivity, growth, and efficiency.

Unlike siloed remote working tools, new age intranets come with modern features acting as a core unified digital platform that equips employees with access to relevant information and proffers them a sense of belonging.

It acts as a centralized hub for company-wide knowledge and hence boosts knowledge availability along with better searchability, reducing the time spent on finding information from various sources.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, these are some of the tips that can create a successful employee experience.

It will create a virtuous cycle that keeps delivering more advantages to your business.Good employee experience drives employee productivity, increases employee engagement, and helps develop an organizational culture.

Employees need access to solutions that enhance communication, and collaboration. It’s the organization’s responsibility to ensure the use of the right technologies during the pandemic. A modern intranet is the best way to improve employee experience and enable employees to do their jobs successfully.

Mesh 3.0 launched as the World’s 1st Artificial Intelligence-Powered SharePoint Intranet, built using Office Graph, Machine Learning, Cognitive Services on Microsoft SharePoint. Mesh uses modern intranet features to enhance employee experience boosting engagement and collaboration creating a modern digital workplace environment.