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In the era of intense business competition, organizations need to place a premium on fostering employee engagement and retention. Engaged employees exhibit higher productivity and creativity and align more closely with organizational objectives.
In the past year, lower levels of employee engagement have been considered responsible for the trend toward ‘quiet quitting’, with the Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report 2023 pointing out that almost 59% of employees have been doing that.
One of the most effective ways of ensuring employee engagement is the adoption of HR tech solutions. HR tech platforms have revolutionized the way organizations approach employee engagement strategies and enhance overall employee experience.
In this blog, we will delve deeper into various ways in which organizations can use HR tech to improve employee engagement.
How HR Tech Can Help Improve Employee Engagement?
The journey towards employee disengagement is a gradual process. While HR teams may have put in efforts to establish connections with their employees, they must be open to embracing change for more meaningful employee engagement. A critical part of this transformation involves leveraging HR technology and seamlessly integrating it into operations.
Here’s how HR tech helps enhance employee engagement
1. Cross-Departmental Co-operation
Fostering collaboration among employees is not just pivotal for a company’s success but is also an important driver of employee engagement. This is especially true within departments with interconnected functions such as sales and marketing. Bringing everyone on the same page simplifies processes, enhances efficiency and minimizes errors.
Integrating HR tech can facilitate and streamline this collaboration. Utilizing collaboration platforms, and tools helps employees from different teams to stay informed about project status, receive notifications about tasks requiring immediate attention and even engage in brainstorming sessions. Having a centralized system also mitigates the duplication of processes and saves employee efforts.
2. Onboarding
Despite substantial investments in the hiring process in terms of money, time and resources, many employees leave their jobs within the initial days. Inadequate employee onboarding has been identified as a vital factor contributing to lack of employee engagement among new hires.
HR tech proves invaluable in streamlining the onboarding process, facilitating a smoother welcome for new employees and helping them feel valued. Through the integration of HR tech, new hires can conveniently fill online forms, select their benefits, and gain access to the company’s onboarding portal immediately upon receiving a job offer.
Robust onboarding solutions help new employees adjust better to their roles and increase job satisfaction. Consequently, this results in elevated employee engagement and retention and reduced turnover costs for companies.
3. Overview into Company Working
A major factor contributing to employee disengagement is inadequate visibility into the internal workings of the company. The existence of departmental silos and a lack of equitable access to information can significantly hinder employee engagement. For instance, leaders might share assessments with the HR department without updating team members, leaving employees feeling overlooked and unheard.
To address this issue, HR tech tools prove valuable. HR teams can establish online repositories of resources that help employees carry out their responsibilities. An employee dashboard can aid in tracking objectives and key results (OKRs) tied to key performance indicators (KPIs).
4. Rewards & Recognition
A solid Rewards and Recognition (R&R) program serves as the cornerstone of workplace employee engagement and HR tech is a valuable tool to establish such programs.
An HR tech platform with an R&R module empowers companies to promptly acknowledge employees’ contributions with a simple click, allowing for instant expressions of appreciation through high-fives, likes, comments, and more. These platforms also enable organizations to customize R&R programs for individual employees, cultivating a personalized experience that nurtures loyalty and commitment.
5. Wellness Programs
As perspectives on wellness have reshaped in recent times, especially post-pandemic, for both employers and employees, prioritizing a healthy lifestyle has emerged as one of the most important employee engagement strategies. According to the American Psychological Association, 57% of employees with access to wellness-related benefits report experiencing lower stress levels.
HR tech is instrumental in helping companies establish a comprehensive wellness platform, enabling employees to easily attain their personal wellness objectives. HR tech can offer dedicated wellness programs with activities that focus on employee health and wellbeing. Such initiatives contribute majorly to achieving employee well-being objectives while also fostering increased satisfaction and reducing stress levels.
6. Improved Communication
Oftentimes, miscommunication in the workplace can have a negative impact on employee engagement. Miscommunication can lead to delays in meeting key deadlines, leading to increased tension within the workplace.
To mitigate these challenges, employing an HR tech platform can be beneficial. For instance, utilizing a time clock app with an integrated calendar enables team members to receive real-time reminders for deadlines and team meetings, fostering improved communication and reducing the likelihood of disruptions.
7. Access to Learning and Development
As per a recent Wiley survey, 55% of participants said their organizations lack the necessary skills to optimize operations, and 57% recognized the potential of reskilling or upskilling to bridge this gap.
An effective strategy for addressing skill gaps is training existing employees. Virtual training offers a personalized and tailored learning experience, in turn, improving employee engagement. While group training may be cost-effective, it often adopts a one-size-fits-all approach, which may not align with the diverse needs of all employees.
HR tech offers a solution for this with learning modules where individual employees can access training and development materials. This not only empowers them to gain skills essential for their roles but also makes them feel valued, enhancing the employee engagement process.
8. Personalized Perks
Perks and privileges act as extra rewards, demonstrating appreciation for employees’ contributions, leading to overall employee engagement. HR tech plays a crucial role in streamlining the curation of diverse perks and privileges, including special corporate offers and global discounts, consolidating them within a single platform.
Utilizing AI and ML, HR tech also enables companies to customize perks and privileges for individual employees, creating a personalized experience that cultivates loyalty and commitment. This approach undoubtedly contributes to elevated employee engagement and retention rates.
9. Continuous Feedback
A primary factor often contributing to lesser employee engagement is lack of feedback and acknowledgment from management. When employees feel uncertain about their work, their motivation to contribute diminishes over time.
HR tech is a solution to address this issue, offering interconnected platforms and programs that facilitate real-time feedback from management. It provides user-friendly tools, allowing managers to provide timely feedback even while on the move. Some platforms also enable peers to recognize and appreciate colleagues for successfully completing tasks or projects. Such accolades can be stored within HR tech platforms and shared widely to meet employee engagement objectives.
10. Career Pathing
Another area that helps enhance workplace employee engagement is career development. Many employees experience disengagement in their work due to a lack of visibility into the future prospects of their current position or higher-level roles within the company.
HR tech helps in crafting and executing career pathways for employees at all levels that helps bolster levels of employee engagement. With career pathing, HR teams can provide clearly outlined career trajectories that employees can efficiently use to shape their professional journey.
Wrapping Up
HR tech plays a pivotal role in elevating employee engagement and retention. These tools enable organizations to establish strong programs focusing on rewards and recognition, wellness and more. This comprehensive approach contributes to cultivating a motivated and engaged workforce.
Want to learn more about how you can use HR tech to create an improved employee engagement?
Get in touch with the experts at Akrivia HCM
