Creating a personalized experience by harnessing employee data

Guest post: Thanks to our partnership with Leapgen, we're delighted to have contributions from their team of experts. Thank you to Gail Krieger for sharing her wealth of knowledge in the field of Digital Employee Experience.

These days, employers have access to a plethora of employee data. This ranges from basic employee demographic data to job-related information; gender, age, home/work location, position in the organization, compensation, and tenure. This information serves many useful purposes such as paying employees, applying taxes appropriately, providing access to benefits, creating org charts, and enabling system workflows. But what about the less talked about employee data? This information includes online activities, with whom employees collaborate and time spent on work and non-work activities. Emerging employee data platform software can help employers to manage and analyze this employee information. Popular applications for this information include predictive analytics to identify things like flight risk or 'what if' scenarios for organization design. These are important and powerful ways to use employee data and can help curb unwanted employee turnover and provide data-driven, impactful organizational decisions.

There is also a missed opportunity for employers to leverage this gold mine of data to create a differentiator in employee experience. Consider how powerful it is to know that your recent hire lives in suburban Chicago, is a female, single, recent college graduate, and has been spending time meeting peers, her manager, and buddy. Along with this information, you might also have data that tells you that this employee has not yet enrolled in the company 401(k) or set her performance goals. On top of all this, you have information that tells you that your recent hire is beginning her workday at 6 am and logs off at 6 pm each day. How might this information translate into employee experience opportunities? Perhaps a 'nudge' is in order to encourage her to enroll in the 401(k). A nudge to encourage this behavior might be an invitation to participate in a retirement planning session or a series of emails that demonstrate the employer match dollars left on the table as a result of not being in the plan. A nudge might also take the form of an invitation to a company Slack channel for social activities with co-workers in the Chicago area.

Perhaps a nudge to encourage your new hire to take work breaks including the benefits of meditation, stretching, taking a visual break from your screen so as not to have eye strain would be helpful. A nudge can also take the form of a personalized version of the company portal that places 'goal setting' at the top of the page. What do all of these things have in common? They leverage employee data to provide a personalized employee experience. They take an approach of placing what is important for the individual at the forefront, to encourage behaviors, and help you to provide an employee experience that recognizes the 'whole person' including work and non-work-related information.

Let’s look at an obvious way data is being used in our everyday life. Consider your last Google search. Let’s say you are shopping for a used truck. Your google search might be “Used Ford F-150 near me”. Go ahead – try it out. Your hits most likely include Ford dealerships near your home, used truck value calculators that default to your location, and possibly even local financing options. But wait – you didn’t tell Google where you live. How did it know to provide you local options? Quite simply, as we all know, Google collects data on you. Google knows where you live and Google will remember what sites you go to and where you click. The result is a personalized experience. It’s likely that no two people will have the same google search results unless they demonstrate the exact same online behaviors. It is also likely that after your Google search experiment, your social media feed will change. When you log into Facebook, you might start to see ads for Ford F-150s for sale in your area. That isn’t by accident, of course. Social media uses your online activities to 'nudge' you with information aimed at encouraging certain behaviors.

Employee data gives you information and this information gives you the power to customize the employee experience for every single person. An employee data platform can help you to harness this information in a way that looks at your employee as a whole person. And with some gentle 'nudging' you can ensure that your workforce has unique and satisfying employee experiences that are procured just for them.

About the author.

Prior to joining Leapgen, Gail began her career in Human Resources Operations in various industries including financial services, pharmaceutical, technology, retail, manufacturing, and non-profits. Her passion for enabling efficient processes led her to system deployments including UKG, Ceridian, SAP SuccessFactors, and Workday.

Gail holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from SUNY Oneonta as well as a Master’s degree in Human Resources Management from NY Institute of Technology. Gail is a Certified Global Professional of Human Resources (GPHR) and is a Global Remuneration Professional (GRP). She is a Prosci Certified Professional and is Six Sigma Green Belt Certified.