Top tips to sustain a positive employee experience
Technology has enabled organisations to remain operational throughout the pandemic and ensured a smooth transition into remote working. In an exclusive panel session, Amit Patel, general manager at Unit 4 Prosoft shared that one of the top ‘gamechangers’ for HR during the pandemic has been cloud-enabled HR tools and services.
“The pandemic has primarily brought about the acceleration…to migrate to cloud,” Patel said. “It’s been difficult for organisations to keep in touch with their people and [allow] access to HR systems or tools. Even things like appraisal have needed to be cloud based for organisations to continue running them.”
His team has seen a spike in the number of HR leaders inquiring and making investments in cloud-related tools in the past two years. HR has also been able to push their organisations to adopt HR tech tools much quicker than planned in their long-term transformation strategies, as company leaders have come to terms with just how critical the employee experience is to ensure business success. “The pandemic has certainly forced some of the decisions in this,” said Patel.
The experienced leader went on explain how technology will continue to enable organisations to sustain a positive employee experience, especially as workforces remain distanced and adopt diverse work arrangements. “It just enables people to be more connected while working remotely,” Patel said. “It’s not just HR tools; it’s tools across the organisation…accessibility now has become more important than at any point before.”
Employees increasingly desire easy access to work-related platforms from wherever they’re based, be it at home or while they’re on the move. Having cloud-enabled tools that can be used on mobile phones, for instance, can thus make their work experience fuss-free and better fit their daily schedules – something that employees have reprioritised since the crisis.
The high level of accessibility will also benefit HR leaders and managers. “Leaders don’t actually have to sit at their laptops to approve a leave request or claim,” said Patel. “They could be sitting in the garden or going for a walk and pick up their mobile phone and do the approvals.”
Essentially, tech can improve work-life integration for everyone and ensure that there’s no disruptions in the workday, whether they’re doing two days a week at the office or fully remote. “I think the absolute flexibility it gives people is key,” he said. “It allows people to get on with day-to-day stuff as well, rather than having to physically log into an application on your laptop or desktop. Now it gives people the freedom to be able to do their work on the go, on flexible time, or in a multi shift. It just makes work much easier.”
Technology is thus vital to enable a positive and seamless employee experience in our rapidly changing situation. However, Patel reminded leaders that it all starts with choosing the right program or tools for your business and employee needs. He advised HR not to jump on the bandwagon and adopt the most popular tech at the time.
“A lot of [leaders] ask me, ‘What does our competitor use?’” he said. “It doesn’t matter what your competitor uses because you’re a different organisation. Don’t try to follow the river. Always stop and check on your own environment, objectives, and what you as a company are trying to achieve.”
Sometimes, your HR tech needs can be as simple as finding tools that can consolidate existing, multiple systems within the organisation. Other times, it could be investing in solutions that will fundamentally change the way the business operates, he said.
But most of all, when deciding on the best tech for your organisations, HR should get input from employees as they’ll be able to tell you their varied needs and wants at the time. “Involve people from the organisation,” Patel said. “Companies are starting to involve users to know how they feel the organisation or applications should or shouldn’t look like, [so] take the time to assess what [you need].”
Mr. Amit Patel
General Manager
Unit4 Prosoft
Amit has almost two decades of experience across four continents. In the past 12 years he has resided in Singapore covering the Asia Pacific Region, and in the last 8 years, he has focused on HCM, Talent and Payroll. He has been with Unit4 for almost 5 years, where he holds a General Management role covering Asia Pacific, for Unit4 Prosoft. Amit has been instrumental in Unit4's continued growth, helping organisations transform their operations from manual labour intensive HR tasks into truly digital and automated processes. He has a passion for helping organisations visualise the future of work, and through Unit4 Prosoft solutions, providing guidance to help them realise their vision.
