After roughly a year and a half of video happy hours, check-in meetings, and virtual team-building activities, many employees are turning off their cameras and saying to heck with it all. Couple this with record burnout and anxiety of returning to the office, and the need for enterprise leaders to address the employee experience once and for all (if they haven’t already) has never been higher.
Employee experience has been a hot topic this year, and many inside and outside the enterprise are looking for innovative ways to address it. In
my last Workspace Wednesday post, I argued that in addition to relying on communications and collaboration technology, a solid employee experience strategy needs effective leadership, and most importantly, a willingness to listen to employees. Each component (leadership, technology, and empathy) is vital to a well-rounded employee experience.
However, enterprise leaders looking to boost the employee experience, whether in-person or virtual, don’t have to go it alone. For example, the monthly subscription service LeaderKit from startup Rising Team provides leaders with audio and written training materials to promote connectivity and engagement, as my colleague Beth Schultz shared in an article on No Jitter’s sister site
WorkSpace Connect. For example, LeaderKits are available with themes like amplifying natural talent, managing difficult work conversations, and addressing with unconscious bias, Schultz explained.
Communications and collaboration technologies also play a vital role in providing enterprise leadership with the ability to listen to employee concerns more intently. To keep their employees connected and engaged, medical transportation company Royal Ambulance leveraged the Workplace from Facebook collaboration platform, supporting up to 15-20 formal groups, as Schultz shared in
a separate WorkSpace Connect article. “Shifts Happen,” where EMTs can trade shifts, and “Praise & Props,” for congratulating trainees for passing field tests, are two group examples. The reason for investing in this technology was simple: “We realized that there was no way our people were going to provide an exceptional patient experience, if we did not replicate an exceptional employee experience,” Eve Grau, VP of HR for Royal, told Schultz for her article.
Facebook is by no means the only cloud app provider looking to address employee experience concerns. Microsoft aims to do so through its Viva platform, and just last week it
revealed a host of new third-party integrations as well as APIs that enterprises can use to customize their Viva experience. Salesforce also plays here, and last month it
launched a suite of products around employee wellness, talent acquisition, and HR services for its employee experience platform Work.com.
While finding the right technology and creating an employee experience strategy might take time, the clock is ticking, as many employees are turning their work burnout into resignation letters. A study from employee experience management firm Qualtrics
found that 44% of 1,000 employees surveyed are planning to look for a new job in the next year, citing stress and burnout as two leading reasons. Enterprises looking to retain and find top talent will do themselves a favor by taking an honest assessment of their employee experience strategy.
