Conversation with Shailesh Singhla on Role of Technology in Delivering Exceptional Employee Experience

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Employees are no longer considered as “workers” or “staff”. They are brand ambassadors for their employers and helping to achieve their vision. Employees need to be treated at par with any important customer. Like any customer, potential employees do their research before even applying for a job. So, it becomes pertinent for employers to give complete, seamless, end-to-end experiences to their employees as they would do for their customers. It is important that employers provide their employees the same experience throughout their journey across touch points.

We have the privilege of interacting with Shailesh Singhla, an experienced HR leader with over 18 years of professional experience in Human Resources. Currently he is Country Head – HCM Business, Oracle India.


Q- Why is investing in employee experience so important for employers?

The term “employee engagement” has become omnipresent in the HR industry. The new adage is “The customer is not No. 1. They are No. 2, right behind the employee.”Research on human capital management shows how employees’ satisfaction levels and conditions of engagement in the workplace will determine whether they will thrive or not. According to consulting firm Deloitte in its Global Human Capital Trends 2015 Report, employees are now just like the customer; companies need to consider them as volunteers, not just workers. Organizations that put a premium on loyal employees will start prioritizing their people just like they do their customers.

One does not need any research to understand that satisfied employees are motivated and happy employees. Turns out, pay is still important, but how people feel about their peers and their management is even more important.

Higher pay won’t solve your employee-retention problems. Employees who are happy and engaged at work not only perform better, but they also cost less, as they’re generally healthier employees who miss fewer days of work.  According to the Oracle survey, the benefits of engagement also extend to improved customer service: “30% of employees said they are more inclined to deliver better customer service if they feel engaged. This suggests organizations that get employee engagement right stand to gain a great deal in terms of improved business performance.” There isn’t a scientific correlation between investments in employee engagement techniques and higher revenue, but according to this latest research there could be shareholder value.

Q-How to evolve business ecosystem and what it takes to manage best employee experience?

Candidates and employees want a compelling work environment that provides a great experience, which includes their dealings with human resources. HR has commonly delivered employee services based on standard processes that are accessible only in person or by phone during office hours. HR services weren’t designed to make employees enthusiastic about HR or reward them with an engaging experience.

Instead of a model based on scale and efficiency, modern HR must be designed for effectiveness and convenience so that employees can choose when and how to engage. Employees want to choose the time, place, and channel to interact with HR. Being able to do this makes them enthusiastic about their next HR interaction.

They know they work for an organization that understands how they want to get things done. Modern HR leaders can differentiate their companies in the competition for talent by providing a consumer-grade experience for their candidates and employees.

Q- What are the essential elements of employee experience design?

Having a more supportive environment at work makes employees feel more productive and excel at their jobs. Therefore, the applications are designed to be not only innovative and smart, but also highly adaptable, providing a seamless employee experience. The goal is to empower businesses so that they can tailor the functionality to support their needs and refine it, so they can focus on just the information they need. Thinking beyond just traditional HR transactions, personalized services can now be delivered to employees via a health and safety application in the cloud to reduce incidents and provide a safe workplace.

Here are some of the essentials of a sound employee engagement:
  • Quicker On boarding: By automating the recruiting process, you can help new employees feel like part of the team straight away.
  • Creative Collaboration: To create an employee experience that encourages cooperation, businesses can capitalize on cloud solutions that make it easier to pool ideas, co-edit projects and presentations, and communicate with colleagues – even if you’re not in the same room, the same office, or even the same country.
  • Mobility: The workplace is no longer just a physical space. Employees are now asking for the freedom to work at any time, from any place, on any mobile device. Whether it’s collaborating with colleagues from home or doing HR administration on the go, improving employee experience means offering modern and responsive mobile applications.
  • Fair Performance Reviews: To improve employees’ performance review experience, businesses can make use of a new generation of data solutions that enable HR to collect data from across the organization, analyze it with ease, then use those data-driven learning reward employees fairly and transparently.
  • Constant Innovation: Your employees never sit still, and neither should you. Putting people first and making employee experience the heart of your HR strategy require constant innovation. Putting employee experience first is not a one-and-done deal. It requires constant evolution and innovation to meet changing demand.

Q-What is the role of technology in delivering exceptional employee experience across various touch points?

Today, technology is disrupting the world of work as we know it. New technologies are changing business strategies and creating new work opportunities. But while traditional hierarchical structures are changing, the workforce is transforming as well—into flatter, more agile networks of teams, becoming more mobile, global, and diverse. Additionally, it is helping customers achieve operational excellence and business performance. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, chatbot and conversation UI have transformed the way people live and work. Employees are demanding a new level of simplicity and human-like interactions in their user experience.

Technology is truly valuable as it creates skills, build relationships and develop careers. Technology for employees does not mean flashy gadgets, but they see technology as a mean to advance their growth.

Technology helps employees to understand the direction of their career by giving them regular access to their direct managers and ensuring that those managers are having regular coaching discussions providing feedback and remaining aware of what their employees need at the individual level.HR and other technologies help with employee retention, creating a bond between employees, their colleagues, and ultimately the company.

According to one of our many prestigious customers SBI card, “While hiring and retaining key talent is pertinent, listening to your existing workforce is just as essential. Empowering your employees with tools and technology to simplify their day –to-day work and processes enables them to focus on productivity and meaningful business tasks thereby contributing efficiently to the bottom line.”

Q-What is the role of Oracle cloud solution in leveraging the best employee experience?

Oracle believes that employee experience should sit at the heart of every great HR strategy. It’s all about shifting your focus – from managing staff, to providing your people with the best possible experience at work. Happy staff are more productive, more innovative, and more loyal. Improving the employee experience is good for employees, good for business

Oracle’s new AI-powered recruiting solution matches best-fit candidates out of an overwhelming talent pool to speed up the process. Candidates can complete new hire requirements via the phone before they start, and employees continue to enhance their knowledge with AI recommended learning.

Oracle’s innovation commitment is on keeping the users at the center of the design, enabling them to move seamlessly between devices, with simplified and easy navigation and interactions that are efficient, fast, and easy—which makes work enjoyable and, hence, more engaging.

Many organizations have already embraced deploying some of their applications in the cloud. Oracle offers customers the choice of deploying Fusion HCM on a public, private or hybrid cloud. The world-class Oracle technology stack combined with Oracle’s enterprise cloud delivery helps customers achieve operational excellence and business performance. A complete set of services, from transition through run-and-maintain, ensures customer success before, during, and after implementation. In the words of Abhay Singh, VP Shared Services & HR Technology, Bharti Airtel Limited, “We have completed a project in our transformation journey and the transformation is on-going. Talking about future proofing employee experience, our ambition is to replicate what an employee experiences in her own life outside work, that is as a B2C or as retail customer experiences. For example, if employees want to know about certain policies or process, they can see it online on the mobile screen rather than writing a mail, accepting an answer or reaching out to someone.”

Thank you Shailesh!

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