In recent times we have seen a range of solutions come to market that improve employee experience and empower them to work more efficiently. With productivity mining, we can add another impactful capability to the mix; that is personal insights that enable employees to pin point the causes of friction in their daily work and see how to deal with them.
The backdrop to the increasing need for employee empowerment is the skills shortage. It simply stifles growth and is being felt globally. Research from various sources underlines the need for improving the employee experience. According to Thomson Reuters, a survey by Poly Research, published in March this year, reported that 60% of organizations surveyed in Asia-Pacific faced staff attrition combined with not being able to attract new talent, compared with 53% in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and in the Americas. Another survey of 15,000 employees in the US by Gallup, published in June, found that more than 50% said they were “not engaged” and were in effect “quiet quitters”. 18% said they were “actively disengaged” – the highest since 2013. According to Gartner* employees intent to stay in a job drops with each friction point at work, dropping by 35% when friction points reach nine.
Despite the evidence, many enterprises miss the opportunity to improve the employee experience. They continue to burden their staff with tedious lengthy processes and slow disjointed systems that lead to attrition. The more enlightened enterprises are investing in employee empowerment technologies including desktop automation with low or no code features that allow employees to develop and run the automations that they need when they need them, and digital adoption platforms (DAP) that sit on top of other solutions and accelerate proficiency in those technologies. Some are investing in knowledge bases and on-line real-time guidance and advice for employees – something that has been done in contact centers for a while but that could be more widely adopted in other business functions.
There are also health and wellness monitors that measure and notify employees of their system usage such as screen time to help them reduce stress and achieve work/life balance.
Furthermore, a new innovative solution, Knowledge Automator, a joint offering by KYP.ai and XpertRule is available to augment employees with co-bots and help enterprises with increasing multi-skilling in their organizations.
Productivity mining adds a valuable layer of insights to the mix to further empower employees so they can improve their own work experience and become stakeholders in process transformation. Productivity insights make this possible by:
- Providing actionable data that show if the processes and the systems that are part of their every day work could be improved
- Guide employees with process data to choose what they change or automate for themselves
- Build a business case for process, system, workload, or shift pattern reviews that they could present to their managers supported by data
The insights can help drive employee-focused process optimization and digital transformation initiatives that help the workforce achieve flow at work, to increase levels of engagement and job satisfaction to stem the tide of attrition and quiet quitting.
This is important even in these recessionary times when employers might be thinking of letting people go. They risk getting into a vicious circle of a bigger skills shortage resulting in poorer customer satisfaction and business decline. Good skills and talent fuel business growth and should be nurtured not let go.
KYP.ai Communication 
Sarah Burnett 