How tech can make or break employee experience

Will HR-technology adoption rates meet expectations?

Employers today may be overlooking the chance to deliver the technology-driven solutions and HR services employees need to succeed in their jobs.

If they are, there is a good chance they are making a serious mistake. Improving the employee experience could be the difference between keeping or losing talented employees, especially in the current highly competitive labor market.

If you are attending the upcoming HR Technology Conference & Expo, Oct. 1-4 in Las Vegas, and concerned about this issue, you may want to check out “Every Experience is an Employee Experience,” featuring industry experts Mark Stelzner, founder/managing principal of IA HR, and Mary Faulkner, senior advisor at IA. IA HR is a transformation consultancy helping employers figure out the employee experience and many other HR challenges.

“Despite the promises of prognosticators, technology and the future of work are not alleviating the heightened state of anxiety for most of today’s workers,” Stelzner says, explaining that the constant need to re-skill as work evolves—combined with overscheduled, underproductive days—means workers and companies alike are searching for any solution that offers relief. As a result, the concept of “employee experience” was born.

But how is that any different from all the other magic bullets promised by technology and process improvement over the years?

“Long story short, it isn’t—at least, how most organizations currently apply the concept,” he says.

According to Faulkner, the general failure of employee experience is rooted in the approach—it’s often viewed as an initiative rather than the desired outcome of transformation.

“Think of a single-threaded process such as annual enrollment—the organization sees the process as the employee experience, without taking into account how people actually function in their everyday lives,” she says. “The result is a process that might ensure a person is enrolled in their benefits, yet doesn’t provide a compelling way to help that same person engage with the system and their benefits throughout the year. We think there’s a better way.”

The “Every Experience is an Employee Experience” session will outline the need for organizations to do a better job of identifying WHY they want to transform in the first place (reduction of staff/costs; foundation for growth; increase of global mobility, etc.). It will also explore how to better identify the different workers who will be the audience of that transformation and provide suggestions on actions individual contributors, people leaders, executives and HR leaders can take to help ensure they get the outcome of employee experience they’re looking for.

“While offering a blueprint for action, we will challenge attendees to answer this simple question: Why wait?” Stelzner says.