Employee engagement: 3 HR levers to ensure your company's long-term success

In the tertiary sector as elsewhere, technological tools are central to workers’ daily activity. In this respect, employee experience and user experience (UX) of these tools are closely linked. Here are 3 strategic levers to transform the employee experience through digital technology. 

In a tight labor market, talent scarcity and their higher expectations mean offering employees tools that support their performance rather than hinder it… Otherwise, you risk seeing them disengage and leave! In this context, your IT system is a true engagement and motivation tool for retaining talent.

Lever No. 1: digital experience and employee engagement, putting an end to fragmented tools

For a large number of companies, the employee experience starts with technology. High-performing, well-suited tools provide employees with a satisfying work environment. On the contrary, a poorly organized and fragmented digital environment slows teams down in their daily work, generates frustration, hurts performance, and inevitably leads to employee disengagement.

How tool fragmentation undermines employee engagement

Nothing is more demotivating for an employee than having to struggle with their tools to access information. In this sense, tool fragmentation (the multiplication of platforms, portals, passwords, and processes) is a real barrier to performance and generates unnecessary frustration within teams.

Leave requests on one tool, expense reports on another, HR documents sent by email, personal data stored in a spreadsheet… Fragmented journeys turn administrative tasks into a true ordeal. This way of working is then often experienced by employees as a lack of consideration for them, and it undermines their engagement. The result? Performance drops and turnover rises.

To retain and build loyalty among your talent, use technology to your advantage.

Unifying tools to reduce friction in everyday work

The single HR portal

An HR portal refers to a single platform that centralizes all functions and data related to human resources management. Concretely, each employee has access to this portal, where they can:

• Submit expense reports, absence requests, leave requests…;

• Update personal data (address, personal situation…);

• Make HR requests;

• Access the company directory;

• Consult legal documentation (contracts, agreements, legal updates…);

• Track their performance in real time (annual reviews, goals…).

For HR, managers, and employees, the HR portal provides a considerable time savings : no more lengthy email exchanges for a simple information request. Thanks to personal access, each employee can directly contribute to the platform and find the information they need.

UX that reflects the employer’s consideration

For employees, user experience (UX) reflects the company’s consideration for them. Give them intuitive, high-performing tools!

Choose a "user-friendly" interface, with a zero-training objective. New hires can thus get to grips with the tools as soon as they arrive in the company, creating an immediate effect: they are autonomous and gain confidence, which strengthens their sense of legitimacy.

This attention paid to your employees’ user experience feeds their sense of being understood and valued by their employer. By giving them tools that truly meet their needs, you enable them to gain efficiency and motivation. This approach directly improves employees’ perception of the employer.

Lever No. 2: transparency and centralized access to information to strengthen employee engagement

Offering employees personal, quick access to the company’s administrative information deeply nurtures their engagement. Indeed, the transparency created by autonomous, seamless access to information strengthens employees’ trust in the company. For this, the single employee file is a formidable tool.

The single employee file as a vector of trust

The single employee file is an ideal tool for ensuring company transparency toward its teams. Directly linked to the HR portal, the single file allows employees to consult HR data that concerns them (payroll, benefits, goals, training).

This model allows teams to:

• Have simple, immediate access to personal, administrative, and legal data;

• Reduce misunderstandings (all employees have the same information);

• Better understand the company’s expectations and possible developments.

Ensuring transparency and access to information autonomously helps build employees’ trust in a lasting way. In the long term, these practices help reduce turnover.

A decisive tool for talent management

But that’s not all! Beyond being a lever for trust, the single employee file is a formidable management tool. Indeed, employees and their managers have direct access to goals and performance indicators for an employee and their team, in real time. HR and managers therefore benefit from a powerful talent management tool.

With an integrated 9-box matrix, HR and managers can:

• Track goals live;

• Consult annual reviews;

• Have a real-time summary of evaluations.

It is the ideal tool for collecting precise data, tracking performance live, and thus aligning it with organizational objectives. This represents a significant time savings for strategic decision-making.

Lever No. 3: administrative simplification to nurture employee engagement

Administrative procedures that are too complex can seriously harm employee engagement. If every information request generates frustration, your employees’ motivation will suffer. However, you can present HR administration as an experience to be transformed rather than endured.

To achieve this, encourage employee autonomy in administrative tasks. This strengthens employee engagement and makes them fully-fledged actors in their journey within the company.

The HR services catalog to make employees actors in their life at the company

The HR services catalog, or HR self-service, gives employees autonomy over:

• Certificate requests;

• Changes to contact details;

• Enrollment in training courses, etc.

Directly integrated into the HR portal, this tool saves Human Resources valuable time: no more email requests, employees make the requests themselves on a clear, structured self-service platform. For employees, this model strengthens their sense of control and encourages their involvement. 

Data crowdsourcing and autonomy: a virtuous circle

The all-in-one HRIS model, including an HR portal, a single employee file, and HR self-service, makes it possible to directly involve employees in updating their personal data. Invite employees to spontaneously update:

• Their contact details;

• Their skills;

• Their certifications;

• Their career development wishes.

The crowdsourcing approach ensures that teams are directly involved in the quality and currency of their personal information. Empowerment strengthens employees’ sense of being valued, and of being drivers of their own development as well as the company’s. Where passivity reinforces disengagement, making employees actors in their own development is a powerful lever for engagement.