Connecting with our employees, company and colleagues is essential. We all know this, but the importance really shows as we head into our third year of remote and hybrid work for many employees. An end-of-year 2021 study by Indeed found that roles mentioning remote work had tripled in their listing since the pandemic began. When we take into account the factor of distance between employee and company, first physical and eventually mental, it becomes paramount that we stay connected with our remote employees to ensure their healthy relationship with their colleagues, company and role.
For the most part, organisations make the effort to connect with their remote employees. With the past 2 years of practice, organisations have had the chance to adopt new approaches and tools to stay connected. However, disconnect does happen, unintentionally or otherwise. It can seem a silent issue, yet it exists for many. With phenomenons like quiet quitting, it's impossible to say something isn't happening to encourage some kind of disconnect. So how can we prevent it? It may seem obvious, but by reaching out to our employees and ensuring they are provided with healthy, positive experiences in their workspace. What isn't obvious is how this can be achieved. It's easy enough to say reach out and connect, but this can become irregular or forgotten if not put to some kind of strategy. Thankfully, this is just the kind of thing that XLAs and DEX tools enable. Let us explain how.
How can XLAs Prevent Disconnect?
At the core of an XLA is understanding how someone feels and why they feel it. We always emphasise during our courses that whilst sentiment is essential to an XLA, understanding the reasons why is just as so. Following the fundamentals of an XLA provides you with the approach to not only ask employees about their connection with the company, and why they're feeling a certain way, but also to continually monitor their experience and predict how it might change over time.
An XLA does this by encouraging you to put yourself in the employees' shoes as you design questions that will gather sentiment. When we combine the questions with our operational data - our SLAs and KPIs, and any technical data - our tool performance metrics, we ideally have this link between sentiment, services and tools, enabling us to quickly understand what aspects of the employee's working environment is causing their bad experience.
XLA sentiment surveying typically occurs monthly, enabling organisations to have regular check-ins with their employees to ensure they are able to work and still feel connected overall, but also with pertinent information to bring in-hand. This proactivity in bringing up the potential concerns an employee has about their experience before they do goes a long way to show you not only want to support your employees, but remain connected with them, even when they're not physically in the same location. What are the benefits of this? Providing employees with a stable workspace and positive experience. Supporting your employees in this manner has the double benefit of encouraging productivity, thereby increase the profitability of your organisation, and encouraging employee retention.
If your employee experience isn't where you currently want it, Bright Horse can help. All of the strategies we mention above, from putting yourself in your employees' shoes and linking sentiment to data points is taught by us. As we enter our third year of remote and hybrid work, appearing to be the reality for many companies, the time to focus on your employees' experience is now. Start your experience journey with Bright Horse and attend a complimentary webinar by following the button below.
How can DEX and Nexthink Prevent Disconnect?
As employees, particularly those of the millenial and gen z generations, come to expect more remote working, maintaining a good digital experience for them becomes vital. Moving away from the disconnect concern, a strong, connected digital experience for all employees is beneficial for ensuring your company stay ahead of competitors and attract people from the previously mentioned generations, according to Forbes.
As a DEX tool, Nexthink's main focus is ensuring the connection between all digital end-points in an organisation, all to ensure that the customer and by turn, employee, is having a good experience. Nexthink enables IT teams to proactively ensure that bottlenecks and issues are sorted before they have a chance to adversely affect employees, across any location.
With Nexthink, you can remain connected to your employees, whether they be working in the office or remotely, and proactively ensure that their digital experience is supported, leaving you one less barrier to ensuring their supported, in-person, working experience. How does it do this? By enabling you to combine technical data at a granular level with direct employee sentiment for across all employees, remote and in-office.
In addition to this, as part of their 'Remote Worker Experience' library, Nexthink put an emphasis on long-distance collaboration by providing insights about audio, video and connectivity quality on collaboration apps such as Microsoft Teams, enabling you to stay in the loop of your employees' connectivity. Being able to see and act upon these insights before they start affecting your employees is prime way to ensure their ability to connect and work with their colleagues remains as stable as possible. If this sounds interesting, follow the button below to see the benefits they can bring to your organisation.
When all is said, winter can prove a challenging time for ensuring strong employee experience. The break over Christmas and New Year is over and returning employees can find it difficult to quickly get back into working mode. Compounding this are the dark and often cold days and weeks yet to come before Spring arrives to lift our collective moods.
Bright Horse helps organisations move from service to experience and reconnect with their employees and what's important to them. See our opportunities above to enhance the connection between you and your employees. With the means available, all that is left to ask:
Sources
Judes, A., Schwellnus, C., Ciminelli, G., Koelle, M., Adrjan, P. and Sinclair, T., (2021). Will Remote Work Persist after the Pandemic? Indeed Hiring Lab.. Available from: https://www.hiringlab.org/2021/12/16/will-remote-work-persist-after-the-pandemic/
YEC, (2023). Council Post: What’s The Future Of Remote Work In 2023? Forbes. Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2023/01/10/whats-the-future-of-remote-work-in-2023/?sh=65bbab8b5864