Improving employee experience: 3 lessons from customer experience
Employee experience has a direct impact on business efficiency and profitability. According to Gallup, organisations with the highest levels of employee engagement achieve 23% higher profitability and 18% higher productivity.
However, many employees have a poor experience of workplace technology—and this impacts retention. A quarter (24%) of European employees cite unsatisfactory software and devices as a leading contributor to their looking for another job, according to a survey from Ricoh.
This is because digital transformation has often left a complex mixture of applications. Employees toggle between different apps and websites nearly 1,200 times a day, totalling 9% of their time at work, according to research by Harvard Business Review.
Organisations work hard to refine customer experience, but it’s equally important to elevate employee experience.
Using innovations like generative AI (GenAI) can help organisations create a consumer-grade experience for the workforce. Here are three key considerations for improving employee experience, drawn from customer experience.
1. Support self-service with curated responses
A more satisfying employee experience starts with more effective self-service—a system that enables workers to access what they need, when they need it, without worrying about the processes behind the scenes. Connecting the systems and applications that serve employees can be helpful here.
GenAI can also enable a more intuitive search experience by understanding the context of employees and what they’re looking for. Now Assist provides employees with a single conversational interface to get answers across all interaction channels.
For example, a worker might ask in the employee centre about a company’s donation matching programme. The employee gets a response saying the company will match every pound donated up to £1,000. This answer reflects the employee’s residency in the UK and the fact that they work full time, as well as their donations in the year to date.
Mondelez International established their employee centre as a “one-start shop” for employees to get information and achieved a 76% increase in self-service rate using ServiceNow HR Service Delivery.
Better self-service deflects cases away from business support teams, which is more cost-effective overall. Now Assist delivers an average deflection rate of 83%.
2. Escalate complex and sensitive issues quickly
Self-service can remove friction for employees completing routine transactions. For complex and sensitive issues that arise, it’s critical that they’re quickly escalated to a live person.
AI-powered technology can help recognise these moments and support the people responding. Now Assist can speed the mean time to resolution (MTTR) by summarising case information for managers and HR agents, as well as providing the option to kick-start processes directly. This can improve MTTR by nearly 20%.
AI-powered automation enables HR leaders to focus their teams in the right places. Nearly half (48%) of HR innovators report greater staff productivity from digitising HR, according to the ServiceNow Employee Experience Trends report.
3. Enhance the entire employee journey
Employees’ experiences matter throughout their time with a company. Organisations need to consider moments big and small—from high-frequency, daily actions to occasional, high-impact changes.
This involves mapping the employee journey, from the interview experience and onboarding to exit interviews when people leave. There are touch points running across the enterprise, from HR to finance, encompassing different environments.
The quality of these experiences impacts an organisation’s bottom line. Businesses with more satisfied employees have 10% higher customer loyalty and an 18% to 43% lower staff turnover rate, according to Gallup.
Technology can help when applied with care across the employee journey. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of HR innovators believe digitised employee experiences are fundamental to the ways organisations work, according to our Employee Experience Trends report.
By applying the lens of customer experience to employees, organisations can improve business outcomes and employee satisfaction, benefitting everyone.
Find out how ServiceNow can help your organisation improve employee experience and productivity.