One of the big questions today’s leaders face is how to meaningfully connect, communicate, and collaborate in a hybrid environment. As companies vie for talent and adapt to new ways of working, technology has become one of the dominant features of the employee experience. With a distributed workforce, it has become more important than ever for employers to provide technology solutions that can reduce barriers to information, increase growth opportunities, and foster employee engagement.
With the Great Reshuffle and the Great Resignation at the forefront of many leaders’ minds, creating new technology categories to enhance the hybrid employee experience is high on the priority list. Engaging and communicating with dispersed employees goes far beyond setting up video conferencing—transformative technological transitions will require business leaders to consider how legacy, existing, and emerging technologies can be leveraged to rebuild organizational culture in a hybrid world.
For all intents and purposes, technology tools have become the new workplace. Yet, many employees are underwhelmed by their current experiences with technology in the hybrid or remote working world. Research by Qualtrics revealed that only 30% of employees feel that their company’s technology exceeds their expectations. This is a massive missed opportunity, especially seeing as employees are 85% more likely to stay beyond three years in their jobs and are 230% more engaged if they feel they have the right technology to support them at work.
So, how should employers use technology to improve the hybrid digital workplace experience?
Listen to what employees need and want
All employees have valuable insights and feedback to share to help improve the collective workplace experience. We use our Voice of the Business (VotB) process to unlock and harness insights from inside your business, and it accomplishes two equally important things. We gain deep insights into the problems people are facing on the job, and we build alignment to the eventual solution for those problems. While building custom training is our core area of expertise, we’ve found that the listening and aligning process can be beneficial in a wide range of business applications. Listening to your people is an important step in uncovering your employees’ needs, the challenges they face, and what’s most important to them. Measuring and understanding how employees feel is essential to building a productive and desirable workplace in this new hybrid era. Building alignment ensures everyone is on the same page, driving toward a common end goal.
Assess current work processes
The hybrid and remote working environment relies on technology to get work done. Key to sustainable business transformation is assessing current work processes and how they can be streamlined to increase efficiency and productivity.
Ask your employees if they have the right tools and technology to do their jobs in the new working environment, and see if other technology can help them be more productive, wherever they may be working from.
Questions to consider:
- Have any of my team’s tasks become redundant?
- How can technology be used to automate tasks?
- How can we collaborate better across various locations?
- Are there any bottlenecks preventing work from getting done?
Ensure people are equipped with the skills they need to be successful
Regardless of where people are working, they require ongoing skill development in order to succeed and grow. Examine your training offerings to ensure they’re meeting current and future needs, and also to ensure that teams are supported regardless of whether they’re co-located or remote.
Studies have shown that opportunities for development are a strong driver of engagement, particularly when the training enables people to develop new skills that help them advance in their careers. A Pew Research Center survey identified “no opportunities for advancement” as one of the top reasons why Americans quit their jobs last year. On the other hand, employees who have access to development opportunities are 15-20% more engaged than those without.
Use technology to create an engaging hybrid learning experience
New learning and development (L&D) technology has a significant role to play in training and engaging a hybrid workforce. In a hybrid world, the impact of L&D is no longer confined to onboarding or professional development, but has the potential to influence all aspects of the employee experience.
Blueline’s ExperienceBUILDERTM digital design platform delivers immersive and engaging collaborative learning activities custom-designed for your organization’s needs. Regardless of location, device, or language, your small teams of learners around the world are given the opportunity to explore ways to solve your company’s most pressing challenges. The team-based learning model is designed to keep hybrid and remote teams of learners communicating and collaborating—interactions that foster a culture of commitment and help to bridge gaps between the dispersed employees.
Contact us to see first-hand how ExperienceBUILDER platform is helping some of the world’s largest global companies adapt and thrive in the new normal.
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