In a classic scene during the first season of TV show The Office, the company oddball, Dwight Schrute, receives the task of choosing an inexpensive health plan. After ruthlessly cutting the plan to the minimum requirements and receiving much argument from the rest of the team, Dwight implements a survey where each employee must fill out his or her various ailments in exact detail.
When a handful of made-up diseases frustrate Dwight, awkwardness ensues when each employee is faced with owning up to his or her embarrassing health history, or risk losing the coverage.
While this episode provides ample opportunities for awkwardness, it illuminates the importance of apps or portals in the workforce that allow for the right amount of personalization each employee requires in order to do his or her job to the best of his or her ability.
Creating Consumer Experience in Apps or Portals
It’s all about personalization. For HR communications, it’s about customizing the communication to the end employee and allowing the employee to elect what type of communications his or she wants to receive.
For example, your app or portal may have a “My Recognition” Tab that is stored underneath your login. This section tells your employer who you are and what department you are in. Customizing this section to your preference will give your employer helpful information such as: whether the profile is private or public, which events you want to be recognized for—birthday, anniversaries, etc.
Then the next level of the section explores how you want to be recognized? Do you prefer money? Tickets to the Seahawks? Clothing?
This array of personal requests helps your manager to see what is going to be most meaningful for you. Personalization means creating customized recognition of your work, your successes in hopes of motivating each employee to do more, to do better, to replicate that behavior.
Such an approach varies greatly from the standard approach of sending employees an endless number of e-mails everyday where they have a tendency to tune out.
These apps and portals are about creating a customized filter for information so the items with highest priority get displayed on the dashboard.
People want internal network platforms that feel like Facebook. These platforms function similarly to Facebook, where you can create your own profile and reach out to employees and different departments. These platforms can be used to set up mentorships and to provide additional resources to accomplish goals and tasks.
Capturing the Desires of Employees; Managing Risk
Personalization means a desire for the social aspect in apps and portals. Employees want to be able to communicate with other people within the company about challenges and tasks they are working on. For example, imagine a team working on a communication piece that has to be brand compliant. They need quick access within marketing to get answers about what they can and cannot do in relation to the brand. Quick and accurate access via that resource helps to produce the piece efficiently.
On the other side of personalization, there has been a push toward location-based applications where the application would notify users of events they might be interested in depending on their whereabouts.
Such technology, while reasonable, causes concern among some people. Employees aren’t going to want the company knowing where they are 24/7. Millennials don’t really care about that; it’s the over-30 crowd that really cares.
Opt-in mechanisms potentially could solve this problem, and could open the door for the highest levels of specificity. Before, it was taboo to ask a woman if she plans on having a baby in the next year, even if such information would be helpful in customizing a benefit plan for that employee. Opt-ins allow the organization to track everything, whether you are male or female, how old you are, what your medical needs are, whether you are planning on having a baby, or whether a child has any special needs. Such access provides specialized care focused for those needs. The company can’t help if it doesn’t know. The opt-in can point the person in the right direction.
Where Analytics Enter the Conversation
When it comes to apps and portals, it all goes back to ROI. Analytics tools can be attached to anything from general usage to down-to-the-minute details.
Analytics can say, “These types of benefits questions are trending right now, or this type of employee satisfaction information is popular.” Knowing the trends means you can react a lot quicker to employees’ needs.
To successfully operate in this environment, you need to have a team that is in charge of that information. Leadership also needs to care about it. There’s still a gap between perceived values of employee satisfaction to corporate profitability. The process works best when the company places enough emphasis on keeping its workforce happy.
You can use analytics to track pretty much anything. But you need benchmarking. When a company wants to launch an initiative, it often doesn’t have enough concern about where it wants to be and what needs to be tracked to make sure it is successful. Set your benchmark to know what you are measuring.
Personalization and the ability to measure the information employees are willing to give allows for the best experience. Happy employees mean increased performance. Personalization doesn’t have to mean awkward conversations with employees like Dwight Schrute in The Office.
Chad Langford is founder, partner, and business development manager at Stepframe. Impossible is not in this man’s vocabulary. His only fear is the fact that he doesn’t seem to have any. As a pup, he fulfilled his desire for adventure by joining the Army, where he spent his time flying, guiding, and jumping out of planes. These days, his adrenaline rush comes from providing clients a product that exceeds their expectations. Stepframe provides presentations, applications, communications and video training courses for internal communications, talent acquisition and retention, reward and recognition, training, new employee orientation, benefits open enrollment, events, campaigns, and more. For more information, visit http://www.stepframe.com.
