Four powerful ways to utilize data & automation to improve employee experience

Enterprises have access to a vast amount of employee data.

Just consider all the documents and details you collect from your new hires on their first day - education history, family background, health conditions, insurance, marital status, location, etc. All in all, you end up collecting hundreds of data points from your new employees on Day 1 of their job itself.  Over time, multiple rounds of employee surveys, HR feedback sessions, appraisals, and manager reviews add more and more data points to this ever-growing mountain of employee data.

Imagine if all this data was actually customer data. Companies like Netflix or Amazon would automate it effectively to send personalized content, recommended wish lists, curated products that match your previous purchases, discounts, and offers - all tailored to suit you.

However, we aren’t quite there yet with employee data. A lot, if not most of it, lies untouched and unharnessed within enterprises. 

How then can you automate this data - your existing employee data - to improve employee experience?

Here are four powerful ways in which you can get started.

1. Personalize the experience

As consumers, we’ve been pampered with personalized communication, products, content and what not! You listen to music that has been auto-curated to match your taste. You order lunch from an app that suggests cuisines based on your past orders. You buy a couch and the e-commerce platform recommends cushions and throws that’ll go with it. 

Personalization using customer data has made life simpler, faster, and more convenient.

But the moment you walk through the doors of your workplace, you don’t see the same experience being reflected as an employee, despite enterprises having access to all that employee data!

So here’s the first place where your employee data can be put to good use.

Tydy worked with Unilever to make their employee onboarding experience a personalized one for all new hires. And that meant, the experience of a new employee in Malaysia joining the IT team in a senior leadership role was vastly different from that of a new hire in India joining the Operations team at a mid-manager level. By curating these personalized journeys for new hires, Unilever was able to cut their early attrition by 65%.

2. Improve your people processes

Delayed, cumbersome and bureaucratic processes can be disappointing for employees.

In the case of a new hire it means having to wait for a month to receive their new laptop, or an ID card not getting activated on Day 1 leaving them stranded at the security gate.

Seamless processes are a delight! But to get to that level of seamlessness and at scale, you need to put your data to use.

Here’s an example.

For EXL, Tydy was able to automate the delivery of a bouquet to their new hires 5-10 days before joining. 

And you must know, EXL hires in the thousands almost every month. So how did Tydy make that possible at scale?

By using employee data.

Just the communication address of the new hire was automated to be sent to a vendor closest to the employee’s location. And a bouquet would get delivered to them, giving a great headstart to the employee-employer relationship.

3. Transform culture

Data can help you mold and shape your culture. 

Insights from employee surveys can be used to improve your cultural practices. The language employees use to describe your culture can be analyzed to capture the common sentiment about their workplace. Similarly, contextual feedback can be used to see how your people practices and processes are faring.

At ABInBev, Tydy worked closely with the HR team during an acquisition to onboard 1000 employees from the acquired company. In less than 24-36 hours, every employee went through a personalized onboarding experience, from compliance to paperwork and communication. The whole idea was to answer questions quickly, provide information swiftly, and transition them as seamlessly as possibly into their new parent company’s culture.

4. Empower managers

In the new-age workplace, managers shoulder the primary responsibility of ensuring company goals are met, while also taking care of their team members. Anecdotal data about their team can immensely help managers enable every one of their employees to be happy and productive. For example, when a new hire who is completing their onboarding journey via Tydy gets stuck at any stage of the process (as in, hasn’t completed an assessment/submitted a document), a nudge is sent out to the managers which will help them check in on the new hire and give timely assistance. 

Contextual conversations with employees on their performance, well-being, engagement, and day-to-day challenges are a great way to nurture a sense of belonging among them. And while that’s possible for a manager to take care of manually when the team is small, data that translates into automated nudges is the best bet for bigger teams.

Use data to facilitate a better employee-employer relationship

Data doesn’t take away from personal touch or meaningful relationship building. In fact, the right automation of data can enable organizations, HR, and managers to improve employee experience and make your employees feel seen and taken care of. Just the way we are already witnessing on the customer side of things. Imagine if you had to enter your address every time you ordered a meal on the food delivery app. Or, you couldn’t create a wishlist of products you like on that e-commerce app. Or, the travel app didn’t have a way to filter flights based on price or time. Every small process and communication contributes to the ultimate experience that a person has. And when it comes to employees, organizations have a large playing field to enhance the employee experience at every stage. What we’ve shared above is just the tip of the iceberg and hopefully, enough inspiration to get you started.

‍This article is a curation of insights discussed by Kiran Menon, CEO and Co-founder of Tydy at SHRM Tech 2021. Watch the full video here.