Oracle HCM Cloud

Workplace 2.0:
The Healthy Option

Using the Cloud for Better Recruiting, Retention, and Compliance

IV.
The Feel-Good Factor

Translating customer-experience
excellence for employees.

We make workplaces better because it’s the right thing to do. But are we doing the right things? Perhaps analytics and adapting the new disciplines of customer experience (CX) point the way to happier, engaged and productive teams.

“If you look after your employees, they’ll look after your customers. If you look after your customers, they’ll look after your shareholders.” It’s a well-established management mantra. But how often is it ignored? And the reason is usually that while we’re getting really good at analysing customer data, many organisations have been less effective at translating employee data in actionable insights.

Quantifying happiness

Engaged employees clearly mean better workplaces, teams and business outcomes. But we also need to measure engagement levels to test their effectiveness, tailor initiatives and uncover new opportunities.

In Oracle’s own research, 68 per cent of employers said they still rely on standard staff surveys to understand engagement levels. Only 37 per cent use advanced data analytics. Similarly, relatively few businesses look to augment staff surveys with additional information, such as customer surveys (51 per cent) and informal channels (34 per cent).

Most of the 1,500 employees sampled by Oracle in 2016 said they would engage better if companies were proactive, took care of their individual needs and treated them as individuals. They also said they needed recognition, a sense of how they actually contributed to the organisation, and the chance to work on the kinds of project they actually found exciting.

And that means they’re starting to behave like customers.

Treat employees like customers.

Employees – like customers – expect an efficient, interactive digital experience at work. They want quick access to information about their salary, benefits, time off, and how they’re progressing towards career-development goals. Employees expect the latest cloud tools so that they can communicate and collaborate with their colleagues from any place, at any time, across any device. When it comes to timesheets, expenses and other HR tasks, employees want efficient, modern processes so they can get back to the work that matters most.¹⁵

So just in the same way that fewer organisations are evaluating CX purely on the basis of a satisfaction survey, workplace sentiment should measure engagement, not just satisfaction. According to the CIPD, “In particular, using social-media platforms potentially marks a major shift from the traditional survey approach, because employees interact with each other as well as management.”¹⁶

CIPD put HR analytics that support proactive
employee-engagement measurement into four categories:

Level 1a – descriptive analytics, such as absences, leave, attrition and recruitment rates. This can reveal trends, but is limited.

Level 1b – descriptive analytics that use multidimensional data. These can uncover interesting relationships between different HR activities and processes – for example, combining leadership capability data with engagement scores to measure leadership effectiveness.

Level 2 – predictive analytics, highlighting future trends and scenarios. Forecasting of this kind is hugely valuable in Workplace 2.0 as the formal chains of command and control weaken.

Level 3 – prescriptive analytics, which suggests decisions in response to predictive analysis.

What matters to employees

Knowing how to measure employee sentiment is one thing. But to what end? Research¹⁷ shows that employees value a range of factors when choosing a job (see chart). While remuneration is still a big factor, it’s the social, cultural and personal-development aspects of an organisation that stand out.

More importantly, when asked about what creates stress, respondents overwhelmingly identified work-related issues (overwork (two-thirds cited this), the nature of their job, lack of guidance, and office politics) above factors in their personal lives.

And the Oracle/LSE study showed employees on average would sacrifice 18 per cent of their salary to receive a balanced package of well-being benefits at work. For any business looking to drive sustainable employee engagement and manage ongoing employment costs, this cannot be underestimated.

Engagement checklist.

Vision – it’s not just millennials; everyone wants to know how their contribution moves the dial. And they want that dial to mean something. Lay out the mission and make it matter.
Goals – increasingly autonomous teams and individuals need clarity in their objectives. And they want those goals to be tailored to their own personal aims, too. Be clear and direct in team goals.
Cadence – annual reviews are too infrequent and raise the stakes too high for both positive and negative feedback. Train managers to offer more frequent, more granular input.
Detail – create a “customer journey” for employees. Feedback should be treated to granular analysis. Don’t argue the details – use them to form a shared platform for positive change

15Yazad Dalal, “Make Employee Experience the Heart of Your HR Strategy”, oracle.com, 14 February 2017, blogs.oracle.com/oraclehcm/make-employee-experience-the-heart-of-your-hr-strategy.
16CIPD, “Employee Engagement and Motivation”, CIPD report, 14 September 2017,cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/engagement/factsheet#.
17M. Skotchko, S. Agrawalla, C. Hu, J. Kim, L. Hey and M. Bueschl, “Wellbeing at Work”, LSE/Oracle, 26 April 2017.

Oracle

Oracle HCM Cloud

Workplace 2.0: The Healthy Option

Using the Cloud for Better Recruiting, Retention, and Compliance

IV. The Feel-Good Factor

Translating customer-experience excellence for employees.