Leverage Digital Transformation to Improve the Employee Experience

People are wary of change and technology, but when HR professionals oversee digital transformation with grace and forethought, they can enhance the employee experience. Using technology to make business processes - including the employee lifecycle - run smoothly and more efficiently can go a long way to bolstering job satisfaction. It also makes good business sense because it leads to better productivity.

Ajay Mulgaokar, Practice Head - HR & Financial Solutions at Wipro Ltd, recently shared his thoughts with HR Exchange Network. Discover how technology can boost employee engagement and experience:

HREN: Helping people improve the employee experience is a cornerstone of Wipro's message. What are the biggest challenges employers face as they try to improve the employee experience with technology? What are some solutions? 

Mulgaokar: The HR Technology landscape has rapidly evolved. Core HCM platform providers have continuously enhanced features leveraging modern technology. The Integrated HR Service Management product organizations have made significant investments in creating a unified seamless experience for employees. Employers have to determine the key benefits to focus on when making choices of these platforms. Some of the key focus areas that employers would look at are: -

a.     Enhanced Self-service

b.     Employee Service center

c.     Cost Optimization

d.     HR Analytics

e.     Ease of Technology Management

HREN: Take me through the employee life cycle and describe how HR can improve and simplify things in each stage.

Mulgaokar: The various phases in a Hire to Retire employee cycle are: -

a.     Hiring & On-boarding

b.     Goal-setting & Performance Management

c.     Learning & Career Development

d.     Compensation & Benefit Management

e.     Exit Management

Some of the common features across these phases to simplify & enhance the employee experience is providing HR technology that enhances employee self-service by personalized access channels in addition to the traditional access channels as chat, mobile & portals. Availability of contextual HR Knowledge Bases & Case Management solutions help optimize & measure HR Services operations.

Some specific examples within each phase could be as follows: -

a.     Hiring & On-boarding: Technology driven candidate profile evaluation with technology driven evaluation questions based on profile optimizes short-listing of candidates. New hire on-boarding portal provides an enhanced branding opportunity for the organization and ensures new hire to experience a seamless document management process. The new hire can access relevant information prior to on-boarding on relevant information and expectations of the role within the organization. The organization can effectively plan asset management activities & new hire orientation activities.

b.     Promotion of an employee could trigger identification of key competencies essential for the role and appropriate learning development plan built for the employee.

c.     Understanding of the employee’s lifestyle choices could trigger appropriate information to the employee’s portal feed. For example, an employee is interested in running, relevant information is provided.

HREN: Payroll is a big part of the employee experience. What are some ways to engage employees through payroll processing? 

Mulgaokar: Payroll is a key focus area for employee experience. Pro-active communication to specific changes in pay for the month could enhance employee experience…for example, incentive payout computation. During payroll processing, significant difference in pay over previous pay period could trigger validation of pay inputs and prevent erroneous pay computation. This is s a pro-active way to ensure employee experience is not impacted.

HREN: How much of a role should leadership play in the employee experience? What can HR do to help guide leadership?

Mulgaokar: Leadership drives the employee experience within an organization. The war for talent is fierce in the marketplace and the HR group has to guide leadership on how employee experience plays a key role in attracting, developing & retaining high performing talent. Enhanced employee experience has direct impact on the productivity of the organization.

HREN: How can HR maintain a balance between technological solutions and the human element in employee experience?

Mulgaokar: Leveraging HR technology should enable HR teams to focus on the key human interactions that are critical within an organization. We have observed that the broad sphere of HR technology enables the HR transactional aspects to be addressed. This creates the opportunity for HR teams to engage employees in productive career development discussions as well as pro-active measures to enable timely employee recognition.

In the recent conversation with Wipro, we talked about change management in digital transformation. We recognized that it is a challenge to get people to adopt technologies at first. What are some actionable steps HR can do to get people on board and make them comfortable with using new technologies meant to make them more efficient? 
Ajay Comments: HR teams need to approach change management in digital transformation in a sensitive manner. It’s imperative for HR teams to understand the business impact and rationale of the digital transformation.  The HR teams would need to be pro-active in looking at re-skilling employees impacted by the transformation.

Biography

Ajay Mulgaokar is responsible for the overall Human Capital Management business comprising of HR Services ranging from Workforce Administration, Payroll, Talent Management and HR Help Desk services. He is also responsible for the Quality, Transitions & Project Management Office within our HRO practice. He has been responsible for business operations and technology solutions that enable an integrated and seamless experience for Wipro’s clients across the globe.

With over 30 years of experience in the technology space, Ajay has extensive global expertise in leading large software development and deployment solutions groups within the retail financial services and HR solutions domain.

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