As we get closer to the end of 2021, many companies are planning budgets and initiatives for 2022. Yet they are still adapting to legislative changes (such as the recent Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for mask mandates, vaccinated workers, and COVID-19 testing).
One common theme across industries is apparent. Many organizations have underinvested in solutions to support and manage the most valuable part of their business: their employees. As a result, organization leaders discovered that they were not fully prepared to support a shift to a more flexible and hybrid world of work. Without enabling technologies that power this change, it’s challenging to create an environment where hybrid work (in office and remote employees) can collaborate seamlessly and achieve elevated levels of self-sufficiency, engagement, and productivity.
This has been a time for many internal teams to solve together, to re-think their current business processes and technologies that support their employees and focus on the employee experience. And the two teams that can provide the most impact are HR and IT. They will drive today’s hybrid workforce transformation by working together to evaluate and implement digital solutions.
HR and IT can take these five steps to develop a holistic approach to Employee Experience (EX)
- Start by creating a design model that combines IT, HR, communications, and other teams (like operations and facilities) that puts the employee at the center of business operations and change management. Focus on the “moments that matter” to see opportunities to leverage technology to power this design model.
- Examine the talent acquisition process from the point of engagement with candidates through the onboarding process. Surface opportunities to use technology solutions to create efficiencies (such as Robotic Process Automation for automating manual processes) or develop integrations to key systems (such as Applicant Tracking Solutions to HR or payroll solutions).
- Enable collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, Asana, and others, that help with productivity for teams that are distributed by time zones or workplace locations (hybrid workplaces). According to PWC, companies that facilitate collaboration are more likely to retain their top talent, resulting in stronger overall organizational performance.
- Enhance collaboration tools with applications that open new communication channels and facilitate supporting employee engagement and self-service approaches to getting work done. Use these apps to survey employees, gather feedback, and listen to what’s working for them and what’s not. Use this people analytics data to learn how to be agile, to make minor modifications and changes together, to the solutions shared by all teams and think about opportunities for improvement and engagement.
- Combine budgets and resources to power the Employee Experience (EX), as it’s time to remove the silos and to join forces to purchase technology that allows changes to happen faster. Technology that powers EX should be amortized across all budgets, just as expenses for physical workspaces and facilities are accounted for as a “per headcount” or “per employee” basis.
MeBeBot’s Intelligent Assistant (AI Chatbot) is an integral part of our customers’ IT and HR employee experience technology solutions. Here are the ways HR and IT collaborate using MeBeBot:
- As an app in Teams and Slack, MeBeBot automates answers to employees’ commonly asked questions for HR, IT, Facilities, Operations, and all areas of the business. Supporting employees’ immediate needs, 24/7 remote or at the workplace, with a digital tool that installs in minutes, frees up valuable time for other more strategic tasks.
- Pushing messages, like reminders (for holidays, open enrollment, or other deadlines) or notifications (for mask and vaccine policies, workplace changes, etc.), MeBeBot keeps employees informed with accurate and consistent information.
- Surveying employees, with a Yes or No statement, sent via MeBeBot’s Chatbot using Teams or Slack, allows HR and IT to gauge the “pulse” of their employees and see their feedback immediately, within the “flow of work” of collaboration tools.
- By viewing dashboard usage results, HR and IT have access to real-time data to understand the needs of their employees. From the types of questions answered (by categories like benefits, payroll, facilities, IT, etc.) to the results of pulse surveys, valuable people insights can be surfaced to take actions to elevate the employee experience.
Don’t wait until 2022 to get started. With a cost-effective solution, like MeBeBot, your HR and IT teams can afford to drive the hybrid workplace transformation today! It’s as simple as scheduling a demo to see how MeBeBot’s user management feature allows all teams to drive a successful employee experience.
