When you think about how you can improve your employee retention, a good salary, work conditions and benefits may come to mind.
In the modern workplace, however, employees are looking for more than just a decent pay packet when deciding to stay or move on from an organisation.
What a workplace does to ensure employees feel supported, productive, and fulfilled has never been more important in retaining top talent.
Employee expectations of technology in the workplace is rapidly outgrowing what many organisations are currently capable of providing. Unfortunately, this lack of alignment is driving many employees to find employment elsewhere, where modern technology can better support their productivity, wellbeing and career advancement.
With such a strong flow-on effect on the retention of your employees, we urge business leaders across all industries to review and assess how they are currently using internal technology to support their employees.
Here we look at 5 simple ways technology can help retain your top talent.
1. Productivity and Wellness
Driven by the pandemic, employees are experiencing unprecedented levels of burnout and stress, with many employees struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Microsoft reports in its 2021 Work Trend Index that 54 per cent of employees feel overworked and 39 per cent feel exhausted.
The right mix of technology can help your employees gain clarity on what is expected of them, support them to be productive, and even monitor their workdays to suggest breaks and encourage mindfulness activities. Software platforms such as Microsoft Teams can notify managers of their employees’ productivity and wellbeing, opening dialogue of support and time management when needed, and empower employees to better manage their days and prioritise their work-life balance.
Healthy employees lead to happy employees and many organisations are unaware of the features included in technology that they may already have.
2. Automation, Automation, Automation
If your business is not using technology to automate elements of your people and culture strategy, it should be. From streamlining your onboarding processes to supporting a frictionless employee experience, automation tools (such as Microsoft Power Automate) can help you retain talent in endless ways.
Think more efficient training, automated reminders for key events, and internal approval processes such as leave or expense forms – automation technology exists to make both you and your employees lives easier by carrying the load of repetitive and administrative tasks – leaving the important moments in the employee lifecycle to remain human, and technology to take care of the rest.
Automation tools allow you to create workflows to support productivity and efficiency and streamline processes to create a seamless employee experience and lessen the burden of administrative tasks.
3. Learning and Development
The Hays Salary Guide 21/22 found that 25 per cent of those surveyed said poor training and development was a key factor in leaving their current role.
Fostering a culture of continuous learning and career development not only increases in-house expertise, but also acts as a powerful strategy to retain employees
Training Management Technology assists with administering and automating the process behind your employee’s learning, development and training courses, ensuring greater efficiencies and reliability when providing your team with an enjoyable and seamless learning experience.
4. People Analytics
Few organisations realise the sheer amount of employee data available to them to understand turnover rates and employee satisfaction. Data analytics and business intelligence can be used to make an array of informed business decisions and also help identify why an employee may leave and take steps to prevent it.
Technology such as Microsoft Power BI can transform raw employee data into analytics your team can use to enhance your workplace hiring and job retention programs. Only knowing your businesses turnover rate does not deep dive into why employees are leaving. Resignation correlations such as promotion wait time, pay increases, tenure, performance, and training opportunities can be visualised for analysis and satisfaction survey data used to improve the overall employee experience.
When it comes to employee retention, knowledge is certainly power.
5. Work from any location
The pandemic has demonstrated that long-term remote work is possible, and we know that workplaces have fundamentally shifted towards hybrid onsite and offsite work models. When talking to business leaders, we hear time and time again that in terms of supporting remote employees, their technology is fit for purpose and, they’ve ‘got it covered’.
On closer inspection, what experience is your technology creating for your remote employees? Can they receive and make calls seamlessly? Are they supported by inclusive software that connects them to the rest of the business and keeps them informed with important updates? On the most basic level, can they access version controlled files, data and business systems in a way that ensures they are productive and secure?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, then your technology could be attributed to your turnover rate.
How Diamond IT can support your Technology needs
Our Business Technology Managers (BTMs) and Business Technology Consulting team are here to guide you through making the best decisions around technology to support your modern workforce, including how you can drastically reduce friction, frustration, and help retain your employees.
From advice on automation or training management systems to software to support seamless onboarding, and everything in between - our team is here to help. Contact us today on 1300 307 907.
