Employee experience is pivotal to the success of any organization, as it determines how dedicated and productive an individual is in their role and eventually affects retention. To enable employees to excel and perform optimally, businesses must have the necessary tools and resources in place to cultivate a motivated team and create positive experiences. Without such measures, there will be issues concerning disengagement and/or low productivity, which may ultimately lead to higher levels of staff turnover.
Using technology-driven workplace solutions becoming commonplace, companies are now able to obtain deep significant insights into their employees’ experiences in the office like never before. This not only aids with dealing with issues but also provides a plethora of benefits, such as streamlining processes, improving communication channels, and bolstering morale, all of which can result in higher job satisfaction levels and lower attrition rates.
So, how do you create a work atmosphere that promotes growth, collaboration and creativity? In this article, we will detail how to empower employees using technology and provide an enhanced workplace experience.
A Day in the Life of Your Employees
Research has shown that happy and engaged workers are more likely to stay with their company longer, act as ambassadors and perform better, going above and beyond to deliver great work.
According to the study conducted by Gemma Robertson-Smith and Carl Markwick (from IES) on Employee Engagement: A Review of Current Thinking, “engaged employees are more likely to stay with the organization, perform 20% better than their colleagues and act as advocates of the business”.
But what exactly is the employee experience, and how can companies ensure that it’s a positive one?
One way to approach the employee experience is to think of it as a journey. Just as a customer journey involves multiple touchpoints and interactions with a company, the employee journey includes all the experiences and interactions that an employee has with the company for their workday.
Below, we look at each step of this journey and how technology can make the experience a good one.
The Pre-Visit Employee Experience
Before visiting the office, planning your day is an important aspect to consider. Enabling employees to interact efficiently with workplace technology tools like the Freespace App – an easy-to-use platform that allows employees to plan their days into work, co-locate with colleagues and collaborate as teams.
The single success factor for the App is adoption. Through value creation and ease of use, the Freespace App is a proven solution for over a hundred thousand employees at different large firms globally.
Employee Experiences on Office Arrival
On arrival, the requirements of your employees change. Here the benefit of easy-to-use digital signage has been proven to be of value to either:
- Understand live availability and undertake spontaneous decisions to use specific available spaces.
- Use wayfinding to locate desks, meeting rooms, amenities or colleagues.
Freespace Signage is an interactive touch-capable technology with search and navigation assistance that enables employees to view across floors, desk spaces, and meeting rooms.
The In-Office Employee Experience
According to the study conducted as part of the research program of the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, “air quality affects productivity in workplaces. And the overall performance of workplace tasks is estimated to increase by 1.9% for every two-fold decrease of the pollution load”.
Freespace PAM Sensors detect essential parameters such as Temperature, Humidity, CO2, Light, and Airborne Particulates, each of which can have a detrimental impact on employee performance when their levels exceed the allowable limits.
PAM can assist Workplace Managers in understanding air quality within a specific area, while providing actionable data to external systems through direct integrations of alerts or thresholds using published APIs.
The Post-Visit Experience
Last but not least is the post-visit experience; using data to understand how employees use their workspaces is essential for improving the employee experience. By collecting real-time and historical data on workspace usage, decision-makers can identify which spaces are in high demand and which spaces are underutilized. This information can help them make informed decisions about how to allocate and design their workspace to meet the needs of their employees.
Freespace Analytics provides in-depth data insights to make data-driven decisions in a highly interactive dashboard that allows you to select periods, locations, types of spaces or measurement settings. Made available over an enterprise portal accessed securely from anywhere over the cloud.
The Power of Workplace Technology
According to A Study on the Role of Technology on Employee Behavior and their Performance, “employees show a positive attitude towards technology as it constrained their work and made it easy and helps them to finish their work in time.”
Today, having the perfect blend of workplace technology is critical for the office environment and ensuring employees remain inspired to come into the workplace. The shift in work patterns and accelerated normalization of hybrid and flexible job models (brought on by the Covid19 pandemic) has forced organizations to rethink and repurpose their office space.
The physical environment employees work in has a powerful impact on their experience. Crafting a space that boosts productivity, creativity, and well-being will profoundly affect employee morale and performance. From being provided with the opportunity to select the best workspace for their activity to pre-booking team meetings or office days, even regulating workplace temperatures makes all the difference.
Freespace’s integrated workplace operating system (IWOS) provides a combination of technology solutions to achieve these elements. It creates a seamless and effortless experience across workspaces and office locations. In its most basic configuration, the IWOS empowers employees to manage their work schedule, connect team members and work together more effectively—even when they are not physically together. For employers, it enables employee behaviors to be guided and significantly improves office utilization according to available workspaces.
Employee experience is a complex and multifaceted concept. To create a positive one, companies need to understand the journey that their employees are on and find ways to support them at every step. By doing so, they can create a work environment that is supportive, collaborative, and rewarding and that helps to foster employee engagement and productivity.
