5 October, 2023
Blog Series Introduction- What HR Wants: A Wishlist for Employee Engagement Professionals
People are the foundation of business success. Hence the question of ‘What do employees want?’ is crucial and should remain an ongoing dialogue. At the same time, it’s also helpful to spotlight the needs of the people empowering all the other people at work- the Human Resources (HR) community! As we’re nearing the end of the year, we’ve attempted to create a wishlist for Rewards, Benefits, and Engagement professionals who strive to make the candidate/employee experience better every day. In our upcoming blog series, we will cover 4 major areas within which the HR wishlist can be divided, covering common pain points along with possible solutions through HR tech.
- Decision-making- Budget management, goal-setting
The business case for employee engagement has become a strong one in the current work era. However, HR professionals still struggle to justify ROI-based metrics when it comes to monetary investments toward employee rewards and recognition software, spot incentives, and other digital engagement tools. As this People Matters article suggests- there seems to be a mismatch between HR expectations from technology and tangible results.
- Talent management and retention- Incentives, L&D
Attracting and retaining top talent is not a new challenge but certainly has new dimensions considering how the labor market has become more agile than ever. Having a competitive benefits offering that focuses on holistic employee development, upskilling, and mobility is an increasing necessity. HR requires support to constantly iterate, improve, and upgrade development opportunities while incentivizing peak performers. This can also help organizations achieve competence in niche areas.
- Culture Enhancement- Events, Collaboration, Social Learning/Recognition
Given the nature of the modern hybrid workplace, cohesion is the name of the game when it comes to culture-building. Creating a uniform, bias-free, seamless cultural experience for remote, off-roll, and blue-collared employees remains an important priority for HR. This includes digitizing and decentralizing cultural values to blend with employees’ daily workflow. For example- creating value-based awards or spotlighting behaviors that lead to business success on an org-wide employee recognition tool.
- Feedback mechanism- Surveys, Reports & Analytics, Manager Development, Employee Pulse
Feedback is key to helping employee engagement efforts remain relevant and successful. HR needs ‘eyes and ears’ all across the organization in the form of proactive leaders, managers, and culture champions. These leaders can also leverage tools such as polls and pulse surveys to supply rich, actionable data on employee sentiment.
The modern HR professional is responsible for driving business results through effective people management, which is possible only with the combined advocacy of all stakeholders involved- right from the executive leadership, to employees and HR technology vendors. Stay tuned for the upcoming blogs, elaborating on each of the 4 key areas of ‘What HR wants’!
Looking for a comprehensive reward and recognition solution? Request a demo for Gratifi today!