For years customer experience has reigned supreme in the boardroom. As organizations have learned how to leverage data to improve business outcomes, they placed a strong focus on pleasing customers. That makes sense but employees deserve great experiences too, and organizations that provide them become measurably more productive and profitable.
In fact, organizations that optimize the employee experiences outperform S&P 500 companies by 122%. It’s hard to ignore this metric. But what makes it achievable? It comes down to the tools you put at the disposal of workers so they can access, use and share content to better do their jobs and advance their careers.
The corporate intranet is at the center of it all. Set up properly, it makes for a happier, more dynamic and productive workforce. As HCL executives recently discussed in this video about creating a successful employee experience, getting it right requires investing in the right digital experience platform (DXP) — one that connects people across the organization to work, communicate, and collaborate.
The platform should make it easy for employees to find answers to their questions on topics that interest them, such as HR policies, sick leave, travel guidelines, and finding subject matter experts within the organization. A platform with the right levels of functionality can empower employees to make them feel good about their work and their contribution to the organization. It makes for motivated, gratified workers.
Four Key Ingredients
The right DXP enables the creation of a rapidly evolving, hyperconnected ecosystem that encourages participation and collaboration across the enterprise. With that in mind, the platform requires four essential capabilities:
- Engagement — Provide meaningful personalized content that motivates employees to seek, use and share content.
- Connectivity — Provide links that allow employees to engage with each other to share common interests and address needs.
- Access — Enable a single point of access for all applications that employees need, and personalize access to match employee roles and duties.
- Collaboration — Make it easy for employees to collaborate and share information so they can do their jobs better, individually and collectively.
While all four ingredients are essential, the importance of engagement cannot be overstated. Engagement goes beyond what happens to the user; it requires action by the user — press a button, click a link, read something, email content to a coworker.
That’s achievable only if the content is timely and relevant. It has meaning because it matches their personal interests, helps them complete tasks, or connects them with another employee with similar interests. Often employee experiences fall short because they don’t drive engagement.
Centralized Platform
To drive engagement, a company’s intranet must be designed properly, so architecture is key. With HCL, organizations can create a central repository for all employee self-service operations and integration with productivity tools such as Microsoft Office 365. This gives people quick access to what they need through a single point of contact.
Switching between multiple screens and websites to get content is frustrating. And, unfortunately, all too common. Consider that in the past three years, the number of applications organizations use increased by 68%. Companies have an average of 129 applications, and individual employees access a whopping 72 applications to do their jobs. If those applications aren’t easily accessible from a centralized portal, the result isn’t hard to figure out — it’s a whole lot of wasted time [Link to the other blog]
In addition to silo-busting, HCL DX has built-in intelligence for continual self-improvement. Using behavior analytics, the platform tracks and interprets user interactions to tailor the experience to everyone. So, every time the employee logs in, the experience gets better and better. The use of intelligent chatbots enables conversational interactions, further enhancing the experience.
And the better the experience, the happier the employee will be, knowing that whenever they need content, it is readily available, meaningful, and relevant.
Ready to empower, educate, and engage your employees? Learn how the HCL DX platform can help you create a more connected workforce.
Worried about adopting yet another tool? Schedule a demo of HCL DX today and see our powerful, fast, and easy-to-use employee experience platform in action.