The hiring market continues to heat up, anxious employees are making retention more challenging, and workers expect more flexibility in their work environments. How can businesses provide the right tools, experiences, and capabilities necessary to create a workplace in which employees can thrive?
In today’s changing world of work, employees expect better experiences – especially when it comes to their learning, development, and growth. However, employees struggle with multiple outdated or inadequate systems and tools that create a fragmented digital experience at work.
The pressure is undoubtedly on executives, organizational leaders, and their HR teams to fill those gaps to create a workplace culture that is motivating, empowering, and fulfilling. They are expected to provide personalized work experiences that include access to individualized learning and growth, guided and simplified technology interfaces, continuous process improvements, embedded listening, and increased productivity and efficiency.
Organizations that deliver on these promises exceptionally well are usually more effective in attracting, retaining, and developing the best talent. However, this is easier said than done because no single definition of an ideal workplace meets everyone’s expectations. To create a truly empowering, engaging, and enriching environment, decision-makers must consider the unique locations, job roles, personal responsibilities, and situations that each employee faces daily.
At SAP SuccessFactors, we understand the importance of fostering an environment where people are thriving, collaborating, and ready to succeed today and tomorrow – no matter where they work. And in virtually every case, that experience begins with technologies that cater to each employee’s whole self even as they evolve, making everyone consistently feel valued, heard, and recognized.
Personalized, Integrated Experience
A good starting point is giving employees the freedom to reimagine their work experience with hyper-personalized, team-centric, and project-focused workspaces created through the SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone solution. This integrated digital experience connects the entire SAP software landscape and third-party applications to help streamline work and intelligently surface relevant content, recommendations, insights, and actions.
By providing employees with a more simplified and unified digital experience tailored to their unique needs, SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone can enable companies to increase employee productivity and efficiency.
For example, AKT Solutions Limited (AKT Global) resolved the presence of inefficient communication and collaboration across borders and time zones to improve productivity and lower employee stress. As a result, its employees work smarter and faster now that they have 24/7 access to everything they need to keep up with changes – no matter where they work, what device they use, or where they are based.
Culture of Continuous and Agile Learning
Employees need on-demand access to individualized and engaging learning programs as part of their everyday experience. With learning established as a priority in the workspace, they are empowered to develop skills at their convenience and participate in opportunities to further develop their expertise and leadership abilities.
SAP SuccessFactors Learning helps to foster a continuous and agile culture with learning that is personalized and relevant for each employee while being embedded into daily activities. Through learning workspaces employees can get access to relevant learning applications, information, collaboration tools, and content from any source – all through a single entry point and embedded into the flow of work – to be able to benefit from a more simplified and contextual way of learning. Organizations can then help ensure their people feel empowered to own their career path and growth while helping them become more engaged and develop the skills that align with current and future business needs.
Rich Products Corporation (Rich’s) is taking advantage of the solution to support a culture of continuous learning. The family-owned food company sought to elevate its training and development program with a modern, consumer-grade learning experience for its associates. By mapping and enabling access to learning content with individualized recommendations, Rich’s offers its associates a customized view of their development plans and objectives and connects them to integrated external content libraries and resources on demand.
Employees Retained with Opportunities They Want
According to joint research from Deloitte Consulting and the MIT Sloan Management Review, making job opportunities visible and accessible in the workforce helps improve retention by aligning employee interests with strategic priorities. But first, most companies require a conscious shift that embraces each employee’s whole self – who they are today, who they are becoming, and the value they bring as individuals.
By adding the SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace solution to their workspace, employees can find short-term assignments, fellowships, learning recommendations, and mentors. The solution can empower everyone across the organization to pursue multiple opportunities for professional development, networking, and project participation.
Meaningful Work Shaped by Real-Time Feedback
Measuring work experiences helps businesses remain agile and strive to give employees what they need to feel supported, productive, and engaged. With Experience Management solutions from SAP and Qualtrics, organizations can evaluate how employees are doing, listen to their feedback, and respond to their concerns quickly and effectively.
To enable a people-centric business transformation, luxury retailer Chalhoub Group combines employee experience data with operational HR data. This approach allows the business to gain new insights, identify areas for improvement, and foster a culture where all employees are engaged and fully equipped to provide exceptional customer service. Chalhoub uses Experience Management solutions from SAP and Qualtrics to actively listen to its workforce and provide the right training, processes, and tools. The company is capturing feedback at every interaction touchpoint and discovering new ways to meet unique employee needs and continuously improve everyday work experiences.
As a result, the company is redesigning and optimizing key aspects of the employee journey. For example, its HR transformation priorities are supported by hard data on the issues that employees really care about, driving greater emphasis on employee well-being and recognition as top strategic goals.
All Wrapped with a Human Experience
HR organizations are constantly challenging their business executives and organizational managers. They know that seemingly adequate access to technology is no guarantee that an employee’s specific needs are met. Meanwhile, it is understood that remote and deskless workers face even more complexity in their experiences, such as limited bandwidth and privacy controls, as they juggle work with their personal circumstances.
With SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone, SAP SuccessFactors Learning, SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace, and Experience Management solutions from SAP and Qualtrics, organizations can deliver engaging, individualized experiences that enable everyone to thrive.
Stephanie Craig is global director of Solution Marketing for SAP SuccessFactors.