Leaders from Paycom and the New England Patriots explain how they use technology to improve the employee experience

• Employers have a responsibility to holistically support employees.
• Executives from Paycom and the New England Patriots (the Kraft Group and Affiliates) shared their thoughts on the role of technology in improving the employee experience.
• The conversation took place at the Insider event "Transforming HR in the Digital Era" on June 15, 2021.

Miranda Blaiklock knows HR teams didn't have a playbook for handling the people and business challenges during the pandemic.

Chief among those challenges is the responsibility to holistically support employees, said Blaiklock who is the director of benefits, compensation, and HR information systems (HRIS) at the New England Patriots (the Kraft Group and Affiliates).

"The blur between working nine-to-five has really changed in this new model," Blaiklock said, speaking at an Insider event on Tuesday.

This goal of holistically supporting workers taught HR teams to invest in technology that can help make employee's lives easier. For example, Blaiklock said the company recently added a tool that allows employees to clock in for work or log PTO from their phones. It works just like consumer technology, she added.

Holly Faurot, chief sales officer at Paycom, noted this trend as well. Over the course of the pandemic, she said "employees had an increased amount of interaction with consumer technology. We were utilizing apps more than ever last year."

This increased use of technology in their personal life may be changing expectations for the tech they use at work.

"Employees are coming back into the workplace now with that same type of expectation," Faurot said. "They want to have the same type of experience that they've had with Amazon or maybe their local pizza place. That's something that companies need to realize. There's a very, very low tolerance of complexity for employees."

Using data and feedback to make decisions

Another way the Patriots monitors employee satisfaction with technology is through a digital experience score provided through Paycom. The experience score is a measure of how their HRIS are performing, she explained.

"It is a little bit like a game, so just after each month we just take it just like the Patriots just won a game," she said, referring to the NFL team whose operations are run by the Kraft Group. "We go and look at our game film and the DDX score and see how we could do it better next month, so it's been a great tool for us and from a process improvement standpoint. It's really been a game changer."

Blaiklock also uses HRIS data to make the business case for different employee decisions, such as changing schedules or offering more flexibility. Data helps Blaiklock make the case to finance when they institute a new workplace policy.

"I think that most HR teams really have to straddle that line of being both the employee, advocate, but also wearing the business hat and I think the challenge with that is being able to speak the same language," she said.

From Faurot's perspective, employee data provides plenty of feedback for business leaders to act on. She recommends employers take the time to look closely at how employees are using the technology and even run focus groups.

"Make it easy, lower the complexity and you're going to see a huge return on that investment," Faurot said.