Making employee experience the heart of HR: 7 ways to put your people first

We all know that customer experience is key to business success. But what about the experience of employees?

Employee experience should sit at the heart of every great HR strategy. It’s all about shifting your focus – from managing staff, to providing your people with the best possible experience at work.

Happy staff are more productive, more innovative, and more loyal. Improving the employee experience is good for employees, good for business, and a fantastic way to show your staff how much you value them.

How to make employee experience the heart of your HR strategy? Here are 7 ways to capitalise on the new generation of HCM cloud solutions to put your people first:

1. Quicker Onboarding
By automating the recruiting process, you can help new employees feel like part of the team straight away. At Oracle, for example, candidates receive an electronic offer, accept with one click, and start the onboarding process immediately. We’re savings ourselves an estimated 16 years of work every year thanks to automated recruiting, and helping new talent feel empowered and productive sooner – setting them up for a highly satisfying, intuitive and digitally-enabled experience at their new job.

2. Creative Collaboration
Employees today are creative and collaborative, and they want more opportunities to drive innovation by working as a team. In order to create an employee experience that encourages cooperation, businesses can capitalise on cloud solutions that make it easier to pool ideas, co-edit projects and presentations, and communicate with colleagues – even if you’re not in the same room, the same office, or even the same country. With less than half of new employees in APAC reporting that they feel like part of a team, HCM solutions that encourage collaboration can mean happier staff who stick around longer.

3. More Mobility
The workplace is no longer just a physical space. Employees are now asking for the freedom to work at any time, from any place, on any mobile device. Whether it’s collaborating with colleagues from home or doing HR administration on the go, improving employee experience means offering modern and responsive mobile applications. Luckily, thanks to cloud computing, it’s now easier than ever for businesses to give their people mobility solutions that enable them to work the way they want.

4. Fair Performance Reviews
Unfortunately, many employees in APAC don’t feel that they’re being fairly reviewed or rewarded at work. A study by Oracle found that amongst new employees, on the job for a year or less, a mere one in three say their last performance review was fair, and 14% feel they aren’t rewarded based on performance. To improve employees’ performance review experience, businesses can make use of a new generation of data solutions that enable HR to collect data from across the organisation, analyse it with ease, then use those data-driven learnings reward employees fairly and transparently.

5. Empowered Self-Management
To help employees feel more empowered on the job, it’s important to offer them opportunities for self-management. Employees want to understand where their skills are lacking; view their progress while working to close the gaps; and feel that the company is supporting them along their development journey. With a new generation of HCM cloud solutions, employees can create and manage their own skills development plans and take charge over their on-the-job growth.

6. Hassle-free HR
New cloud technology is making day-to-day HR hassles disappear. Automated expenses are quicker and easier to compile, chatbots can help employees understand workplace policies, and mobile applications mean employees can update their timesheets and more on the go. These and other modern, streamlined HR processes minimise administrative headaches for everyone – which means employees can focus on the job they’ve been hired to do, and HR managers can spend their time on strategic development rather than paperwork.

7. Constant Innovation
Your employees never sit still, and neither should you. Putting people first and making employee experience the heart of your HR strategy require constant innovation. It’s the reason why Oracle issues updates to our HCM solutions every six months at a minimum; in order to predict and deliver on what employees what next. HR strategies must do the same, because putting employee experience first is not a one-and-done deal. It requires constant evolutions and innovations to meet changing demands. But we think your people are worth it, and we bet you do too.

With employee experience at the heart of HR, any business can capitalise on cloud solutions to improve their bottom line, make the business a better place to work and keep great talent on board.

(Image Credits: Thinkstock)

(About the Author: The article is authored by Yazad Dalal - Head of Human Capital Management Cloud Applications, Asia Pacific)