Are you optimizing the way you leverage technology throughout your employee experience?
The Candidate Experience During Recruiting
An employee’s experience begins with the recruitment stage and the candidates’ impression of your company’s culture and open positions (aka the candidate experience). The employee environment is just as crucial as the job itself, so it’s important that candidates can get a sense of your organization’s values from their research. When attracting individuals to your job postings and website, availability is key.
How easy is it for candidates to find your company and open jobs?
Digital Presence
It’s important that your organization has an engaging company website and a strong presence on Google. An iCIMS report found that 83% of millennials use Google during their job search, compared to 68% of Gen-Xers and only 35% of Baby Boomers. To attract the growing young workforce to your company, employers can optimize their website, career page, job board postings, and social media with a variety of specific keywords. Leveraging keywords, enhance your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to help ensure your organization and job availabilities are appearing in web searches.
Another important piece of your digital presence is the mobile-friendliness of your website and job applications. People are on-the-go more than ever and inclined to do research and job hunting on their phones. Mobile-friendly career pages, shorter applications, and easy-to-navigate websites are important for individuals who may be doing their job searching on the Metro ride home.
ATS & AI
Additionally, utilizing an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the recruitment process can make connecting to candidates quicker and more efficient for both parties. ATS and AI in the recruiting experience can save time reviewing candidate applications and make it simple to update candidates on their status in the recruitment process.
As our fast-paced world grows faster, it’s important that communication between recruiters and candidates is direct and continuous as to not lose out on a star employee. Creating a modern website, application process, and efficient communication with candidates can attract and pull people into the recruiting process easier than before.
New Hire Onboarding
Once a candidate has been selected for hire, they transition to the onboarding phase of their employment experience. During this transition, it’s important that their candidate data flows properly into HR and its systems. Having systems that can be integrated or having one large system that houses both recruiting and HR data can ensure no candidate information is lost during their transition into employment. Similarly, utilizing an onboarding module in your information system can make delivering and signing of employee agreements easier. Here you can push out important documents, track employee onboarding progress, and send out company information a new employee may need to know. Often times you can also ensure and track new hire compliance through your HR Information Systems with training, I9, and E-Verify capabilities. These abilities and efficiencies of HRI Systems allow employees to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time getting integrated into their new company.
Additionally, digital employee onboarding paperwork can help create a paperless HR and facilitate easier collection and updating of employee information. For example, if your Disability Status form is digital, employees can access it themselves if their status changes and HR can send out the forms every few years to ask people to report any changes in their status. These types of digital efficiencies save the employee time, which everyone can appreciate.
Mid-Employment Engagement
Keeping employees engaged throughout their work experience is no easy task. However, technology can assist engagement and is critical to creating a modern workplace. Once the employee is onboarded and partaking in their daily job functions, it’s important for them to keep connected to all that’s happening within the company.
HR Information Systems
HR Information Systems (HRIS) can play a big role in keeping organizations connected, regardless of their business model. HRI Systems can act as employee communication portals which allow team members to share personal announcements, professional milestones, and peer recognition. These capabilities create cohesion amongst employees and facilitate a positive, teamwork-centered experience.
Additionally, HRI systems often have performance management modules which will make setting, hitting, and discussing goals more efficient and meaningful. Development is very important to younger workers. A Gallup poll found that, when applying for a job, 59% of millennials say opportunities to learn and grow are extremely important. Comparatively, 44% of Gen Xers and 41% of baby boomers say the same about these types of opportunities.
Learning Management Systems
Having a modern, user-friendly system demonstrates your commitment to developing and advancing your employees. Another way to combine technology and employee development is through a Learning Management System (LMS). Subscribing to an LMS gives employees access to a variety of classes in all different formats. From technical, job-specific training to general business overviews, and from seven-minute videos to hour-long modules, there’s a class and LMS for every type of learner! Many even have gamification features that can make development competitive and fun. I’d be remiss if I didn’t share Helios offers an LMS which can be modified and customized specifically for your organization.
Another beneficial feature of HR Information Systems is a digital benefits portal and open enrollment process. Many systems have benefits modules, and third-party applications are also available, which allow employees to easily get information about their coverage, make applicable insurance changes, and participate in an open enrollment process that is user-friendly and simple to understand.
Cloud-Based Storage
Today, many organizations use a cloud-based document storage system. Documents such as the handbook, operating procedures, important forms, and client templates can be kept in these cloud-like storage systems with many benefits. Cloud-based storage systems serve as a hub for all important company documents and make accessing the documents easier, whether in the office or on the go. These systems often have collaboration features which allow employees to make edits, leave comments, and have chats about their document in real-time, which facilitates teamwork and new ideas between employees.
Cloud-based storage systems also help create a paperless HR which appeals to those sustainability-conscious employees. A Fast Company survey found that “nearly 40% [of millennial respondents] said that they’ve chosen a job in the past because the company performed better on sustainability than the alternative. Less than a quarter of Gen X respondents said the same, and only 17% of Baby Boomers.”
Engagement Surveys
It’s important that employees can share feedback and concerns about their work experience and environment for their employers. Utilizing HRI Systems or outside providers to initiate digital surveys can ensure employee feelings and needs are captured. These surveys can collect feedback on preferred communication styles, questions from quarterly meetings, ideas for the next team-building event, and employee engagement levels. Helios HR's Engagement Survey is a customizable tool which allows companies to measure barriers to growth and four key components of engagement that drive workforce performance. The dashboard is interactive to allow leadership to create action plans based on the engagement results and it only takes employees an average of seven minutes to complete the survey!
Separation
Lastly in the employee experience is the separation phase. Whether voluntary or involuntary, there are ways to make an employee’s transition out of the organization easy. To initiate the separation process, think about sending departure agreements and information digitally. Many times, this can be done through your HR Information System or via email and sending separation information digitally can serve as evidence in case the situation is sticky or takes a bad turn.
It’s important the departing employees are comfortable receiving these documents digitally and will still have access to them even if their company email or HRIS account is terminated. (Aside from communicating through the company channels, Helios would recommend sending the information to the departing employee's personal email address and retaining signed or finalized documents in the employee file). Additionally, departing employees can easily participate in a digital separation survey which can provide critical and honest feedback to the organization, while also allowing the employee to make any final, official remarks.
All of these technical tools can enhance the full lifecycle employee experience while also housing and collecting important employee data. From an efficient and user-friendly recruiting experience all the way through to a professional and easy separation process, technology can modernize the employee experience.
Furthermore, leadership can stay in touch with their employees and use the employee-friendly systems and programs as a mechanism to track turnover and retention data. As society becomes more advanced and on-the-go, one of the best ways to ensure employees are connected and happy in their jobs is optimizing the use of employee platforms to transform mundane internal experiences, such as signing onboarding agreements and partaking in engagement surveys, into efficient and positive company practices.
