Engaging Employees in Turbulent Times

Employee engagement has always been a top workforce management priority for human services organizations. Just take a look at any of our State of Workforce Management Reports from the past few years. When the pandemic hit and we suddenly found ourselves pivoting to remote work, our focus might have temporarily shifted to figuring out how to make things work. But after getting past those initial adjustments, we saw that employee engagement was just as important as ever – if not more important given these turbulent times. As human services leaders, we know that taking care of employees is an intentional effort, and one that’s well worth focusing on.

HR Management Strategies Impact the Employee Experience

When we think about employee engagement, we typically think about things like pulse surveys, town halls, collecting feedback, and the likes. But before even diving into those strategies, it’s important to look at the organization more holistically. In particular, the tools and resources you provide your employees with as well as the operational processes put in place that employees follow on a day-to-day basis will shape and influence the employee experience. The surveys, communication, and feedback – as important as they are – will naturally speak to the tools and processes employees are using.

Tools for Effective HR Management

How does your organization enable your employees to do their best work? If you struggle to answer this question, you know where you need to focus your employee engagement efforts first. Throughout the employee lifecycle, there are plenty of opportunities to streamline and automate processes that will improve the employee experience. Let’s explore a few key opportunities from an HR management perspective.

Recruiting and Onboarding

The employee experience begins before the employee has even been hired. Your recruiting process should be standardized across candidates, follow a straightforward process, and allow you to provide the candidate with clear expectations throughout. This feeds directly into your onboarding process as well, which should be structured and focused on the person rather than on paperwork. At DATIS, our unified solution enables a smooth and seamless process, as candidate information from the recruiting process flows directly into the employee file once the individual is hired. This naturally cuts down on paperwork and manual processes, enabling you to focus on creating a positive onboarding experience.

Company News

Keeping employees in the loop about what’s going on at the company is another dimension of the employee experience that’s important to consider. Employees want to feel connected to their organization, understand the direction the organization is headed in, and recognize how their individual work contributes to the organization’s mission. The DATIS platform provides an ideal location to share company-wide, department-specific, or location-specific news about the organization. Since HR and Payroll software is something that every employee already uses, it provides a useful place for information-sharing as well.

Employee Shoutouts & Recognition

Similar to improved communication, employee recognition is another area where technology can help enable solutions. The DATIS platform enables peer-to-peer recognition so that everyone can share in celebrating the contributions, accomplishments, and support that employees provide to make the organization successful. Enabling recognition at all levels of the organization helps improve visibility across teams, boosting morale as well as employee engagement as workers at all levels are encouraged to lift each other up and recognize a job well done.

Employee Self-Service

When employees have questions about their paycheck, want to know how much PTO they’ve accrued, or would like to update their direct deposit information, these are simple tasks that most people would prefer to handle themselves. DATIS empowers employees with self-service tools that enable them to handle these simple tasks on their own. Rather than having to contact the HR department for every little detail, employees can take care of their own personal information and free up HR’s time for larger or more pressing issues. Plus, the convenience of being able to do this anytime and anywhere from our mobile HR and Payroll app provides an even better experience for employees.

Establishing Processes to Enable Better Employee Engagement

Creating processes and providing tools that empower employees can provide the framework for a more robust employee engagement strategy. With a strong foundation in place, you can focus on the smaller details – the results of an employee survey, the methods of communication, or the feedback provided from frontline workers. Software and technology aren’t the obvious first steps when thinking about employee engagement. However, putting the right technology in place to support your mission will enable you to not worry about the smaller details. In short, it allows you to be human first, supporting the human needs of your employees no matter what the future may bring.