The Technology Transforming the Digital Employee Experience

With more employees looking to change jobs post-Covid, companies need to reimagine how to engage their workforce – and that means borrowing some of the strategies and capabilities of their marketing colleagues

The pandemic has presented business leaders with two major challenges in the form of managing remote working and retaining talent. According to a survey published earlier this year by Microsoft of more than 30,000 workers around the world, 41% said that they were con­sidering leaving their jobs or changing their professions this year.

To manage both elements of this double whammy, business leaders need to improve employee engage­ment and communication. However, worryingly, this is something that many are failing to do. In a recent survey by Gartner, nearly three-quarters of those asked (72%) disagreed with the statement that “HR staff sufficiently involve employees when scoping and identifying business needs.” Another significant finding of the survey is that 79% of those asked still rely on formal, large-scale surveys as a way of under­standing employees while just 6% ticked the “other” box.  

This negative perception of HR and the reliance on traditional surveys are clearly related. Even though company leaders have to work harder than ever before to engage with their employees, many are relying on legacy communica­tions methods and technologies. These systems can potentially create greater disengagement as they’re irrelevant or don’t align with today’s employee expectations. The pandemic has accel­erated digital transformation and now HR and internal communications func­tions need to catch up.

“We find that when you start by asking some basic questions you learn that email is still the primary method of communication,” says Gregg Apirian, chief experience officer of leading workplace experience plat­form Korbyt, whose clients include McDonalds, Toyota and BP. “Not only that, but many companies are sending these emails through Outlook instead of an email platform, which makes the design and delivery challenging. More importantly, without email analytics, communicators have no idea if their emails were received, opened, or if action was taken.”

Apirian argues that employee expe­rience and internal communications professionals need to start using more sophisticated, data-driven commu­nications platforms similar to those used by their marketing colleagues. Marketers know the value of targeting messages and then measuring perfor­mance – did the content reach its tar­geted audience? Did the audience view it or engage further by clicking, liking, commenting on or sharing it?

On average across businesses, there’s only about one communicator to every 10,000 employees, Apirian points out. “These departments are often understaffed and underskilled and they aren’t operating with the modern technology and training they need in order to perform effectively or deliver an exceptional employee experience,” he says. “But, with talent on the move as never before, that’s got to change. Organisations that have done this right have seen the return of investment and now have the oppor­tunity to gain considerable competi­tive advantage.”

He says: “It’s time to look beyond the traditional employee engage­ment methods. Digital workplace experience technology like Korbyt’s platform, Korbyt Anywhere enables communicators to create any type of digital content, target it to specific employee segments, whether it’s job type, department, or location. They can measure the performance of their content by channel, such as email, mobile, desktop or digital signage.”

Communicators or other functional leaders can measure communications in real time and use the reports and insights to optimise the performance of those communications. They can

then begin to share insights with com­pany leadership the same way that marketers do, with the result that the C-suite appreciates the true value of these communications. Modern, data-driven communication meth­ods remove the guesswork and enable internal communicators to under­stand the right content formats to use for the right employee segments, delivered through the right channels and devices.

“Content presented in an article, for instance, might receive higher engage­ment if it were delivered as a short video from a leader’s mobile device,” says Apirian. “Or perhaps it might be the other way around for a particular employee segment. The point is that you need the tools and skills to meas­ure and optimise.”

A growing number of companies are opting for the Korbyt Anywhere plat­form because it meets employees ‘where they’re at’, explains Apirian. “You can personalise the employee experience by giving your employ­ees a choice to receive communica­tions from their preferred screens or devices. As you target that content, as well, you’ll see employee engage­ment increase.”

Internal communications profes­sionals appreciate the fact that Korbyt Anywhere is a single, intelligent plat­form that can be used for publishing a variety of content. Once a communi­cator creates some content, they can then target it either to all employees or specific audiences and ensure that it’s delivered to every screen and channel available to employees. That might be digital signage screens, mobile devices, desktops, web browsers, social media and email, among others. Multiple methods of authentication ensures that the content and information pushed and pulled through the plat­form is secure.

Modernising your employee experi­ence technology is important, but so is having the right content strategy. Many organisations only communicate from a top-down perspective, meaning leaders and communicators convey what they think, rather than what employees think the business needs to be saying.

Korbyt has found that although this communications flow still plays an important role, enabling other employ­ees and leaders to also be commu­nicators is where engagement really stands out because employees receive the essential mix of what the business needs to communicate plus the ‘what’s in it for me?’ that really appeals and engages. That could be a celebration such as a big contract win or an employ­ee’s 20th anniversary with the company. As well as educating employees all year round about their benefits so that by the time annual enrolment comes along everyone knows more about their ben­efits and can complete the process in a timely and efficient manner.

“Just as the pandemic has trans­formed the way in which people work and how they regard their roles,” says Apirian, “the company leaders that transform their internal communica­tions will be those who succeed in this new world of work.”

This article was printed and distributed by Raconteur in association with The Times as part of a special report 'Employee Experience 2021'. Download the Report