Removing Friction with a Digital Workforce Experience Platform

Many organizations impede workforce productivity and stifle the natural flow of work due to a web of disparate systems employed to complete simple tasks. A digital workforce experience platform removes friction and provides direct access to content, transaction tools, and help for a seamless employee experience for completing key processes throughout work-related journeys. 

To build on and deliver valued outcomes, HR needs to orchestrate human-centered design, based on the moments that matter to individual employee experience journeys, including: 

• Candidate experience journey
• Hiring experience journey
• Pre-boarding and onboarding experience journey 
• Becoming a manager for the first time experience journey
• Finding opportunities within the organization/internal mobility experience journey
• International assignment experience journey
• Termination experience journey

What is the difference between a portal / intranet and digital workforce experience platform?

The difference between a portal or an intranet and a digital workforce experience platform is that you plug in virtually anything. A portal or an intranet is a gateway to access different applications and internal systems but they don't deliver a continuous experience. It's a bunch of static experiences that don't connect or are not as intelligent.

An International Assignment Journey

This 12-step process sounds like a pretty good experience for John, and it is. Most organizations struggle with this. Many moving parts need to be orchestrated together to create the frictionless experience described. 

Leveraging a digital workforce experience platform can:

• Provide a single entry point and interface for John to find information, ask questions, and take action, manage cases and search the knowledge base;
• Integrate transactions and data across various systems and trigger notifications and actions;
• Provide process templates that can be personalized based on worker/employment demographics (John’s onboarding experience in the Netherlands would be tailored based on the country, work location, and new job, but still allow Thomas to adjust as needed);
• Orchestrate both online and offline activities; and
• Gather data about the experience from the worker.

Even with a powerful platform, there are still many complex things that happen in what we call “backstage” to make this a great workforce experience. Benefits need to make sure that John is eligible for the right benefits at the right times in the U.S. and the Netherlands. Payroll needs to pay John in the right currency to the right bank (based on John’s preferences) and make the right deductions and withholdings based on where he is domiciled.  

Leapgen employs KCAT (Knowledge, Collaboration, Analytics, Transaction) to evaluate digital workforce solutions. Let’s take a moment to apply KCAT to the concept of a digital employee experience layer:

• Knowledge -- Do employees receive immediate answers to job-related questions through an enterprise contextual-based search engine? 

• Collaboration -- Can individual employees engage with both innovative technologies such as chatbots or instant messaging and humans to gain real-time assistance?

• Analytics -- Utilization and navigation data provides insights into workers' information needs and priorities.
• Transaction -- Are workers able to seamlessly manage job-related tasks, often requiring input from multiple systems, through one central hub?

Example of Leapgen’s KCAT Framework

Authors

Jim Holincheck has more than 25 years of experience in the HCM technology industry and is the Vice President of Advisory Services at Leapgen. Before joining Leapgen, Jim gained experience as a vendor (Workday - Services Strategy and Product Management), an industry analyst (Gartner and Forrester/Giga), and a consultant (Accenture). He has spent his entire career working with customers to strategize, select, implement, support, and optimize their usage of enterprise applications. Helping customers successfully get the most out of their enterprise software investments is something he is very passionate about. Jim graduated from Washington University with a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in 1988.

Jim Scully is a recognized industry expert in the design and optimization of HR service operations. With nearly 25 years of related professional experience, both as a consultant and practitioner, plus extensive practice research as founder of the HR Shared Services Institute, Jim has unparalleled expertise in the field of HR shared services and service operations. In addition, Jim brings operational excellence background, including TQM, Lean, Six Sigma, and Theory of Constraints (TOC) to the realm of HR service delivery to go beyond mere consolidation to create what he calls the “Delivery Center of Excellence.”