Empowering Workers and Increasing Effectiveness

HR Automation, Employee Engagement

Over the past two decades, human innovation has fuelled the dramatic increase in productivity, followed closely by the streamlining of processes and the effective application of technology to increase consistency of activity at a lower per transaction cost. However, the greatest technology solutions and most perfect processes are worthless if you have people who don’t care about either of them.

Many forward-thinking companies are turning to pro­cess improvement solutions and realising significant cost savings across a number of business areas, as well as increased employee engagement thanks to the power of automation alongside workers who really want to get the most done with the resources they currently have.

To begin, ask questions like:

• Who works at my company?
• What do I know about the work they do?
• Why do they work here?
• I hired some of these people – why?
• Are the employees in my company equipped to perform their job the best way possible?
• If not, is there an external factor making that standard?

A Dale Carnegie Training program refers to most workers as “highly skilled, technically savvy order-takers”. This is especially true in high-tech environments with a strict pol­icy and procedure adherence.

Is this really what you want in your company? Let’s examine some of the aspects of engagement that are a direct benefit to the customer and the organisation simultaneously.

Trust in the Organisational Setting

Often several phases occur as trust, credibility, and respect are achieved. It’s important to pay attention to them with employees and management alike as interactions occur inside of a company:

Impression

Establishing a basis for trust begins with the earliest interactions, including one’s sociability and professionalism, as well as responsiveness to ques­tions and requests for information. If you’re too busy to respond in a timely or appropriately professional manner, you may have already started to uninten­tionally portray yourself as transactional. Executives make snap first impression based upon the first time one interacts with them. Given this context, it is vital that professionals who want to succeed, dress, act and respond in a “business manner” that is consistent with a “high performer” in the business.

Interaction

Communication and interpersonal skills – so critical at this stage – unfortunately can atro­phy for professionals who don’t consciously work to improve and maintain these abilities. Quite often, a lack of interpersonal skills negatively impacts one’s professional confidence. This lack of confidence is then manifested in ineffective personal interactions. Many modern workers depend on electronic interactions rather than engaging business people in face-to-face interactions which encourage debate, innovation and consensus building. A valued business partner or employee must comfortably adjust to each type of interaction necessary in making a business contribu­tion as opposed to simply offering a technical contri­bution.

Direction

Based on positive impressions and inter­actions, others will begin to reach out for advice and direction in the worker’s area of expertise. Listen­ing is particularly important for these subject-matter experts, since being the expert doesn’t mean talking a lot – it means asking the right questions, listening, and tailoring solutions to the client’s needs.

Consultation

The highest compliment for a technolo­gist is when they are truly consulted for their help and input when a critical business issue arises. As a valued business partner, they participate in strategic discus­sions and are on the ground floor of new initiatives. They may even provide referrals outside their area of expertise to help achieve the organisation’s strategic objectives.

So What is the Problem?

Companies don’t often have chronic hardware problems – those are easy to spot and remove or repair.

Chances are, the people are talented and can do the jobs you are giving them.

So where is the disconnect? Why won’t people stay engaged with the work their doing? Once trust has been built and the interpersonal communication aspects of strong employee relationships are mastered, it’s time to move on to how work is being done in the office itself.

Busy work is the bane of talented and highly engaged employees. Eliminating busy work by going electronic with forms and documents as well as automating routing and enhancing digital security is one of the easiest and most effective ways dollar-for-dollar to increase employee effec­tiveness.

Process Automation and the Benefits

When selecting a solution for your organisation, look for one that offers a proven and quick return-on-investment. Mature solutions are known to deliver an ROI in as little as 6 to 9 months. This can be realised in a number of ways including a fast implementation, smooth integration with other business applications and more –these will be dis­cussed later in this paper.

When evaluating solutions, consider both the direct sav­ings– such as reduced resources and hardware costs–and the “soft dollar” benefits. By increasing productivity from 50% to 500%, organisations can enjoy significant savings by redirecting valuable resources to other critical areas of the business.

“Business and human endeavours are sys­tems… we tend to focus on snapshots of iso­lated parts of the system, and then wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.”

Peter Senge Author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organisation.

Knowledgeable Professional Services Team

When your organisation is evaluating solutions, make sure to choose a provider that will become your partner in success; you don’t just want a technology, you want a partner that will work with you side-by-side to ensure that deployment strategies and product integrations are prop­erly planned and supported. A knowledgeable team with process improvement experience can make all the differ­ence in a smooth implementation.

The best providers will offer complete assessments of your business in order to minimise business disruption and ensure that your employees can get up and running quickly. An experienced partner will create a detailed plan that will move your solution implementation through a clear pro­cess. Proper planning will help you achieve a fast ROI.

HR Automation also Reduces Manual Administration and Monitoring

The right solution will enable your company to sync your people, paper and processes from the start. Look for a solution that offers authorised users instant access to information when and where

it is needed. With the powerful features of process auto­mation, you’ll eliminate time-wasting manual paper pro­cesses and replace them with improved document sharing and collaboration across departments.

HR Automation also Automates and Enforces Business Rules and Processes

Another way to help your company achieve a quick ROI is to take advantage of process automation. across your entire organisation. Auto-indexing features make sure your data is organised according to business rules and pre­vents lost or misfiled documents. Also, look for the ability to add your own business process routing. This enables organisations to set up approval process, routing, audit trails, and adds security to the management of document processing.

• Staff has unnecessary and unsafe access to confiden­tial employee and client information because there is no efficient way to protect this information
• Staff is constantly challenged with the need to share information; this often results in unnecessary emailing, faxing and printing
• Field workers require access to information but have no way to obtain it without redundant emails/phone calls/ trips to and from headquarters

Organisations will skip these steps in a lot of cases because it has simply been set as a strategic vision and the managers are asking for options. This results in insuf­ficient and improper planning, which sets the stage for a failed implementation. Safeguard against failure by doing the necessary research and ensuring the organisation gets the solution it needs, the first time.