Spring officially began last weekend, and optimism is in the air. Students are on spring break. Baseball spring training is in full swing in stadiums, hitting the 25 percent attendance capacity, of sun-drenched fans. The NCAA's men's and women's basketball tournaments, commonly called March Madness, have bounced into action and university fans' passions for friendly "bracket" competitions are underway.
The year 2021 marks the second year of significant change for global industries. The gloom and disruption of 2020 are being replaced with the optimism of 2021, as more workers get vaccinated and economic growth predictions are strong. The workforce is longing for the nostalgia of normal times. But "normal" will not be normal.
Employers in 2021 are moving from pandemic crisis management to the new normal of the future of work and the workplace. Employers are considering whom do we bring back to the office? Whom do we allow to continue to work from home? And, how does this change the role of the workplace?
Employers are also facing the reality of the hybrid workforce where teams will have employees working from home and in the office. Research shows that over half of office employees want to continue to work from home two to four days a week. And, many will choose another employer if their wishes are not met, driving up employee turnover and challenging employers to evolve to minimize its impact.
For many companies, this will be the year to improve the employee experience (commonly called EX). EX improves with fewer hassles and frustrations at work, fewer commutes, and investments in digital technology solutions to improve workflows, team collaboration, and to provide employees consistent answers to their questions 24/7 (like Alexa), to support this hybrid workforce.
Josh Bersin, Global HR Industry Analyst and Founder of Bersin Academy, defines employee experience as “a company-wide initiative to help employees stay productive, healthy, engaged, and on track. It is no longer an HR project. It is now an enterprise-wide strategy, often led by the CHRO in partnership with the CIO. And it deals with all the day-to-day issues employees face at work. It has multiple layers. At its core, EX is all about delivering an easy-to-use platform of tools that makes work productive.”
Intelligent assistants, like MeBeBot, are a part of the employee experience solution set, focused on improving employee productivity and lowering costs, utilized like a personal assistant to employees. MeBeBot provides accurate answers for the common questions employees ask of HR and IT, anytime from anywhere. Employees no longer need to go through a call center ticketing system or get frustrated waiting for a return phone call, resulting in a more positive employee experience.
MeBeBot installs in collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack. With a curated database of hundreds of questions (and default answers), it is easy to update and edit, allowing companies to be up and running with an AI-powered chatbot in two to four weeks (not months), providing a rapid time-to-value and exceptional return on investment. MeBeBot customers are saving $250k to $1 million in operational costs within months after launching within the US or globally.
MeBeBot customers report a 75 percent reduction of questions coming into HR and IT, with an answer accuracy rate above 90 percent (reducing employee frustration and improving their work satisfaction). Cloud hosted and managed (with supervised human and machine learning), MeBeBot's AI solution continually “learns” and refines answers, tracks data, and can even alert HR and IT to any issues and opportunities to grow and scale the solution. With MeBeBot's new push technology, companies can schedule messages and reminders to be sent to employees, in Teams or Slack, mimicking instant messages sent between co-workers.
The normal at the end of 2021 will not be the pre-pandemic normal. It will be a new normal of empowered and happier employees and more productive workforces. Have you defined your company’s "new normal", and how you will improve the employee experience and productivity?
Are you ready to catch Spring fever and take the next step to improve your employees' experiences?
Contact us today for a demonstration and price quote.
