As an HR, Operations or Internal Communication professional, you obviously want all your employees to be successful and reach their full potential. To do this, you will need to make sure they are motivated, feel involved, and do their best to help achieve the business goals. This is easier said than done, especially for organizations with many non-desk employees.
About 80% of the workers belong to the deskless workforce. This group of employees is often difficult to reach as they do not sit behind a computer, do not have a business e-mail address, and often work across different locations.
It is obviously difficult to involve and motivate employees who you cannot reach. Furthermore, in many industries a large proportion of the non-desk employees are Gen Z or Millennial. This younger generation of employees highly values experiences that help them develop themselves, such as following good onboarding and having on-the-job training possibilities.
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Why should you invest in Employee Experience?
In order to help you build a business case within your organization and make employee experience an important topic of the business strategy, I’ll share 6 reasons to invest in the employee experience of your non-desk employees today.
1. Higher engagement
It feels a bit like stating the obvious, but having successful employees starts with engagement. Engaged employees are even 87% less likely to leave.
2. Higher productivity and operational excellence
Employee experience has a major impact on the productivity and operational excellence of an organization. It is therefore not surprising that committed employees have a positive influence on the productivity and financial success of your business. Organizations with engaged employees are generally 21% more profitable than organizations with low employee engagement.
3. More innovation and creativity
By offering your employees an employee experience platform, you can ensure that employees from different branches and groups share knowledge with each other. You can also make use of possibilities such as pulse surveys via which you gain valuable insights into points for improvement within the organization. Why not ask your entire team if they have ideas for improving a loyalty program for your hotel or retail organization? There is a good chance that you will receive tons of creative ideas!
4. Higher customer satisfaction
Employees who experience a good onboarding process can get to work quickly and are able to work autonomously. Good onboarding shortens the employee’s ramp-up time and by offering on-the-job training after the onboarding you improve the development and knowledge within your organization. This keeps your team motivated and satisfied. In other words: happy employees make happy customers!
Read more on how to motivate frontline employees.
5. Less absenteeism
If you involve your employees in your organization, it is also less likely that they will call in sick. Poor employee engagement costs a company an average of 7 days per employee per year. You don’t need to be a mathematician to see that that can be quite costly. Suppose you have an organization with 1000 employees. 1000 x 7 = 7000 days per year of sick leave because your employees are not involved and engaged.
6. Lower recruitment costs
Satisfied and committed employees contribute to a positive reputation for your organization. They are more likely to recommend your organization to others, which of course saves you a lot of recruitment costs . In addition, you are assured that they will only recommend people who they would like to work with and of whom they believe they will perfectly fit within the organization. By offering a nice incentive (e.g. a dinner coupon or hotel stay) to employees who successfully recommend someone, you also ensure that they are extra motivated to look for the best people in their network. That’s a win-win situation!
One platform for the entire digital employee experience
These reasons make it clear that a good employee experience is an absolute must for the success of your organization. In order to offer your employees a good experience and to make it as successful as possible, it is important that as an organization you invest in good internal communication, onboarding, and training.
However, the right tools to reach, train, and engage your non-desk workforce are often lacking. To give an example, organizations often still use private communication tools, such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Or old-fashioned means such as intranet, newsletters, or memos on bulletin boards. These means are not suitable for communicating with your non-desk employees.
The solution for this is an Employee Experience Platform (EXP), which contains all parts of the digital employee experience, such as onboarding, internal communication, eLearning, and pulse surveys. An EXP also links existing back-office systems such as HR and WFM software for displaying work schedules and payslips. This way your employees only need to use one platform instead of a jungle of different platforms for HR, internal communication, onboarding, and on-the-job training. And most important of all: everything contributes to the ultimate experience for your employees.
