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Summary
The C-suite has spoken: employee experience has become a critical business-wide mandate. The priority business leaders are now attaching to employee experience is being driven by a greater understanding and ability to tie positive employee experience to organizational goals and metrics, including customer experience improvements, innovation and entry into new markets, and cost efficiencies.
Elevating business performance with employee experience
Modern workplaces are juggling a diverse mix of people and technology-centric priorities and challenges, and how to optimize and better understand employee experience is a notable area of focus. The emphasis businesses are placing on enhancing and better integrating employee experiences end-to-end is being driven by C-suite recognition that employee experience is now more closely linked to significant and measurable business outcomes than ever before. Employee experience is no longer just an aspirational objective that sits with the HR function – it has transcended into a priority business-wide mandate with quantifiable benefits. The involvement of key stakeholders from different business units is also a vital driver of this shift in priority. Improving employee experience requires siloed business departments and teams to integrate more effectively under a common and increasingly important aspiration. This end-to-end integration of teams, processes, and technologies is helping ensure that the diverse needs of employees are met, consequently fostering a more productive and engaged workforce. For businesses looking to optimize work environments, focusing on employee experience is crucial. By doing so, they can create a cohesive strategy, culture, and operational structure that aligns with their overall business goals.
Challenges and opportunities businesses face in a quest to improve employee experience
Improving employee experience will require businesses to navigate the challenges and complexities presented by a workforce that is more diverse, dispersed, and digital-first in its approach to work. Supporting effective communication and collaboration has become important in overcoming these challenges. Getting this right requires businesses to adopt robust solutions and to take a more strategic, people-focused approach to technology adoption. Another key challenge is the growing need for businesses to enable collaboration and productivity tools that cater to the needs of a more flexible workforce – one that can work across different devices, networks, apps, and locations seamlessly and securely. Additionally, the adoption of AI to enhance collaboration, productivity, and streamline operations is growing, but this also requires careful implementation to avoid potential pitfalls.
Addressing these challenges and optimizing employee experience to realize the business benefits will require organizations to prioritize understanding of employee needs and working preferences. Using language and communication that resonate with the workforce across the employee journey will be vital, as will ensuring that technical solutions and the processes that guide how work gets done align with their expectations. Getting this right will enable organizations to create a more supportive and efficient workplace that drives employee engagement and satisfaction. Employee experience will then become a strategic imperative that will help transform how businesses operate.
Appendix
Author
Adam Holtby, Principal Analyst, Workplace Transformation
