But as the end of the year approaches, businesses are continuing to deal with the impacts of the virus, both directly and indirectly. According to the Central Statistics Office, almost half the population over 15 has had their employment situation affected by Covid-19.
Leaning further into digital transformation is one of the main ways we’ve seen businesses tackle the challenges they’re facing this year. And with good reason: businesses that have best weathered the trials of 2020 are often those who were already in the process of digitising their businesses.
But while technology will play a crucial role in recovery, it’s vital businesses don’t allow it to obscure their most priceless asset: their employees.
People over process
Employee experience has been talked about for many years, however conversations have focused on technology and processes rather than incorporating employee experience within a wider business strategy.
Largely, pre-Covid, businesses saw employee experience as a “nice to have” – the added bonus that too often came after customer experience, commercial success and business continuity in the pecking order.
What this crisis has taught us is that people have to come first. The conversation around employee experience has accelerated and organisations are realising that keeping employees engaged, supported and productive is actually the key to driving business success.
Business strategies and digital transformation journeys shouldn’t be designed with processes in mind but instead built to drive the experience that you want to give to your employees.
It's this focus that drove our own business to pivot rapidly, as we moved to a distributed 'work-from-anywhere' model. Through the creation of our new workplace services and safe workplace apps, we have supported both our own employees and those of our customers, helping them to keep people safe and informed while ensuring business continuity.
Moving up the C-suite agenda
Through my conversations with business leaders across EMEA, it’s clear many recognise that employee experience simply must be a key part of the overall business strategy.
Employee experience has expanded to encompass much more than job satisfaction or personal development and organisations are looking at employee experience in a more strategic and visionary way.
They realise that employee experience isn’t a set of processes to be owned by Human Resources, but a strategic approach that must sit on the agenda of every function across the business.
For the CHRO, their priority is about talent: finding and attracting the best people, nurturing them and giving them the best experience, so they remain happy, are productive and stay loyal to the business.
Heads of facilities or workplace services are coming at the subject from the angle of floor plans, desk reservations, meeting rooms, space allocation and social distancing.
The CFO also has a vested interest in the productivity and growth that can be realised through keeping staff safe, supported and motivated.
Underpinning all these various business functions, the CIO sees the opportunity to bring together every process and touchpoint of the employee’s world — from payroll to requesting time off to booking a meeting room — through integrated digital workflows that create great, intuitive experiences.
Critically, what sits at the centre of all these functions is the employee. Organisations need to put people at the centre of the organisation and build digital workflows and processes around them to create seamless experiences.
Back to basics
What’s clear when speaking with organisations is that what they really need help with is how to master getting the basics done in this new distributed ‘work-from-anywhere’ world.
Established processes like onboarding new staff become more complex when you cannot meet them in person. It’s examples like these that have triggered many businesses to think about ways to streamline and digitise processes across the board.
[Register now for The Future of Work UK & Ireland, a free half-day digital conference, to hear from experts across different fields, including employee experience, explore what the future of work looks like in Ireland through 2021 and beyond.]
What started as initial ‘kneejerk’ firefighting at the beginning of the crisis is now turning into thoughts and conversations about long-term planning. Organisations realise they have to transform and, most importantly, build this transformation around the employee experience, not the technology.
This year, ServiceNow has demonstrated the power of this approach, both for our own business but most importantly for our customers. For organisations, it starts by recognising people as the biggest asset and putting them at the centre of their business strategy.
Our job is to enable and support organisations in creating the seamless digital workflows that will deliver amazing experiences. It's the only way.
Margreet Brenkman is area vice president EMEA, Employee Experience – Sales, with ServiceNow.
[ Register now for The Future of Work UK & IrelandOpens in new window ]