For companies who want to reduce staff turnover, a positive employee experience is key. Samanage’s Steve Stover has some advice on how to improve this.
In a candidate-driven job market, employees vote with their feet – if a job makes them unhappy, they can pack up and leave.
Happy and productive employees require engagement and support, making broken communication processes one of the easiest ways to lose top talent. When employees feel disengaged in the workplace, they’ll look elsewhere for a more positive employee experience. Therefore, engagement and support must be top priorities in order to reduce turnover rates and attract top candidates.
Prioritising the employee experience includes reevaluating many facets of business, including IT service management offerings. When employees are unable to work because of technology problems, they feel unsupported and unheard, and the employee experience suffers.
To repair broken communication infrastructure, leaders must first look to the capabilities of their IT department and replace ineffective or outdated IT service processes with modern engagement solutions. It becomes critical for leaders to identify where employees experience unnecessary pain points in the service request process and where this interferes with their day-to-day tasks.
Make it easy to submit and track service requests
When employees submit a service request, they should be kept up to date on the status in real time. The more that employees worry about the status of the request and its fulfilment, the less likely they are to be fully productive again before the solution arrives.
A modern employee service portal offers access to the status of help requests as soon as they are submitted, and request forms are optimised to gather all of the pertinent information upfront in order to provide an expedited solution. By optimising how service requests are handled and providing employees with real-time status updates on their request, the portal makes employees feel their time is valued and that their tech issues are being addressed transparently.
Alerts and status updates are critical and must also be accessible from all digital touchpoints. Today’s employees are mobile and require solutions that follow them wherever they decide to work that day. A modern, cloud-based service desk that integrates seamlessly with common communication tools such as Gmail and Slack allows service teams to digitally meet employees wherever necessary.
Speed up responses for quick fixes
When employees are struggling with low-level issues such as locating files, resetting passwords and setting permissions, waiting for a simple solution is frustrating. By adding smart technology such as chatbots and AI-powered suggested solutions to the workplace, leaders can work towards alleviating this pain point entirely.
Chatbots have the capability to respond instantly to queries such as ‘how do I reset my password?’ or ‘how do I edit my email signature?’ The response can come in the form of a direct typed response within the messaging platform or a link to a knowledge base of suggested solutions. This technology is especially helpful for departments that are historically busy, such as HR and IT teams. When common, repeat questions are taken care of, these team members can focus on answering more critical requests and employees are satisfied that their problem was addressed in a timely manner.
Provide a single service platform for the modern workplace
Switching between websites, phone calls and email to receive service is not ideal nor is it conducive to a positive employee experience. In order to reduce frustration when an issue arises, leaders should consider implementing a single service platform to handle any sort of request, from IT to HR and beyond. In addition to submitting requests, the service portal can allow employees to quickly find the services they need across departments and give them access to an enterprise-wide knowledge base for self-service.
Centralising service requests into a single, 24/7 accessible service management platform streamlines the process, offering a single brand and design throughout the employee experience. It also increases collaboration and communication across teams. When there are no longer disparate service management protocols for each department, solutions are streamlined and processes are handled similarly across the enterprise. The communication gap present between departments is closed and employees feel that their needs are supported and heard regardless of who receives and fulfils the request.
Happy employees equal a happy business
Happy and productive employees are those who believe that leaders are invested in helping them do their best work. This means providing easy access to modern service platforms and providing rapid and seamless service as a result. Therefore, it should be a top priority of leadership to invest in these technologies when working to build a more positive workplace.
When service is efficient and transparent, employees feel that they are heard and valued within a supportive communication infrastructure. Providing engagement solutions that help employees overcome pain points that drive them away is a promising solution to developing and retaining happy employees.
By Steve Stover
Currently the senior vice-president of product at Samanage, Steve Stover is an accomplished technical and product leader with more than 20 years of software experience in IT service management, cloud computing and advanced analytics markets.
