Happy employees can give companies a competitive advantage

ServiceNow can help create an environment that fosters employee engagement and growth  

People are a company’s greatest asset. However, maintaining enhanced employee and customer experiences has remained a challenge for organizations, especially those struggling to implement technological changes. With advancements in artificial intelligence to optimize and automate organizational workflows, companies at any stage of their digital transformation journeys can focus on an often-overlooked investment – employees – to gain a competitive edge. 

Promoting a people-first strategy through technology

Happy employees are more productive, and that leads to a wide range of quantifiable benefits across an organization. 

• 59 percent reduction in turnover 
• 41 percent lower absenteeism 
• 21 percent improvement in profitability 
• 20 percent increase in sales 
• 17 percent increase in productivity 
• 10 percent improvement in customer ratings 

Enabling the right technology is a foundation that can be built on to transform a company’s performance culture, allowing it to aim for these types of improvements. However, for many organizations, the employee journey from recruitment to retirement is a disconnected process rather than one that flows without friction. Instead of being proactive in promoting change and making strategic decisions based on data, company leaders often find themselves bogged down by trouble-shooting specific issues.  

A more holistic approach can create an environment that fosters employee engagement and growth. This involves adopting a combination of strategy and culture, technology, and operations that work together to deliver impactful moments and seamless employee experiences. Organizations that already rely on ServiceNow to deliver key business solutions can also use its integrated platform to advance how they manage people and processes quickly and easily.  

Implementing these changes might sound complex; however, Capgemini has a new pre-packaged ServiceNow HRSD product. It’s designed to help companies address everyday challenges, such as absenteeism and productivity, and enable data-driven decision-making to produce positive outcomes and, in turn, boost profitability. We can work collaboratively to identify your company’s points of friction, find opportunities to enhance existing process, and tailor solutions to your specific human resources needs. 

Producing impacts across the employee experience

Integrating technology is an essential element in creating a seamless people experience, from onboarding to offboarding. ServiceNow’s platform supports a number of third-party systems typically used by human resources and IT teams, which can be accessed through a user-friendly employee experience portal.  

Even that seemingly small entry point for employees can make a big impact. Having a single self-service interface immediately promotes autonomy and reduces friction; instead of needing to log in to a number of portals just to access tools for productivity and collaboration, everything is all in one place. Additionally, rather than working in siloed programs, managers can connect jobs and roles to outcomes, providing employees with clear and quantifiable objectives related to their day-to-day work, as well as their career growth potential. 

Consider your organization’s intranet as one type of employee portal. It’s probably populated with all types of information individuals might want to access, from financial results to company events. Having access to a wealth of information, however, doesn’t guarantee an inclusive employee experience. Data intelligence derived from analyzing patterns on intranet portals reveals that a tiny percentage of the information is ever looked at, much less used. Rather than being a resource, these internal pages are difficult to navigate when employees are seeking information and resources to do their jobs. 

Instead, envision how portals and collaborative spaces can be personalized for each employee. Only information relevant to their role’s objectives, the tools and technology they need for their work, and access to key data so they can track individual KPIs and other metrics are surfaced. ServiceNow can facilitate this type of targeted communication and assemble touchstones to drive business outcomes across the employee journey.  

Preparing for the future of work 

Using analytics and insights to continuously improve all aspects of the employee journey is already transforming the future of work. As generative AI technology continues to mature, manual processes can be improved through automation, freeing up staff to work more strategically, while maintaining the “human” in a people-first strategy. It’s accelerating the transformation of the employee experience, allowing people to be much more efficient in the ways they interact within the organization. 

Soon, employees will be able to access a personalized chat bot to find specific policies or learning opportunities. Consider how technology built upon large language models will soon deliver features such as scanning an employee’s list of skills, experience, and even language abilities to recommend new job opportunities or refine their career path within the organization. This also aids in succession planning and adds value to a company’s long-term investment in human capital. 

Such possibilities are already in the works, with generative AI bringing together all this complexity and delivering an end experience in a very simple and accessible way.  This type of environment fosters employee engagement and growth, a valuable resource that brings myriad benefits to an organization, ultimately giving it a competitive edge.