McKinsey coined the term “war for talent” in 1997 to describe the battle among organizations competing for the best talent. More than 20 years later, it’s safe to say that the war is over and there was an unexpected winner: the talent. Unemployment rates are at historic lows. Organizations everywhere are identifying talent shortages as a primary inhibitor to growth. And developing the leadership bench is a top priority for organizations everywhere. This has shifted the dynamic between employers and job seekers, giving talent leverage they didn’t have before.
Jacob Morgan breaks the evolution of employee experience into four distinct stages: utility, productivity, engagement, and experience. In the experience stage, employers are re-evaluating what drives a best-in-class employee experience. Many are recognizing that perks like ping-pong tables and free food are not primary drivers of experience. Instead, they are searching for new and innovative ways to create a unique employer value proposition.
What Top Talent Wants
Top talent has also recognized the shift in the market, and they have a new set of expectations from their employer.
- Flexible workstyles: Employees don’t want be forced into being in the office from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. In fact, 73 percent of employees said flexible work arrangements increased their satisfaction at work.
- Work that matters: Manual, repetitive, low-value tasks detract from the employee experience. Instead, workers seek opportunities that empower them to use their expertise. From there, they can create outcomes they are proud of that further develop their career.
- Tools they love: Both job seekers and your current employees value having the right tools and technology at their disposal. A company that provides outdated, hard-to-use, or ineffective tools to its workforce may as well give up attempting to attract top talent because all they’ll see in these technology relics are red flags. Jim Link, CHRO at Randstad North America, drove this point home when he said, “Around a year ago, those of us at Randstad who recruit and interview candidates on behalf of our own company and clients started to see a trend. We suddenly noticed we were fielding more and more questions about an employer’s technology stack during interviews.”
Use Technology to Create Great Employee Experiences
Creating memorable, positive employee experiences requires new thoughts and actions for most organizations. For many, this means embracing a consumer-centric mindset and applying it to employee experience. As part of this evolution, business leaders recognize they have to stop mandating that employees commute to an office, sit in an assigned seat for eight or more hours, and use technology from another era. Instead, the companies at the top of the “great employee experience” stack are partnering with their HR and IT teams to intentionally design experiences that are technology-enabled, connected, transparent, personalized, interactive, and fast.
That’s why we built Citrix Workspace.
Citrix Workspace helps organizations deliver superior employee experiences by organizing, guiding, and automating work. Citrix Workspace is secure, available on any device, and provides unified access to the tools employees need, and its intelligent capabilities help employees focus on the work that matters. With Citrix Workspace, your employees get:
Apps and Files in One Place
Best-of-breed apps enable your workforce to do their jobs; but the challenge for employees is that there are a lot of apps. The average employee uses 35 job-critical apps and switches between them more than 1,100 times a day! Additionally, employees can spend up to 20 percent of their time looking for the right information. That’s one day wasted each week. Research also shows constantly switching among tasks can result in a 40 percent loss of productivity. A simple way to increase engagement is to provide a one-stop shop for employees to access all the technology tools and resources they need without having to move from one app to another throughout their day.
Citrix Workspace cuts down on context switching and searching by giving employees unified access to the apps they use regularly and to their files. With single sign-on (SSO), there’s only one set of credentials for users to manage, helping keep your corporate data secure.
Smoother Onboarding
Research shows that up to 30 percent of your new employees will quit within their first 90 days. Add the cost of recruiting and the lost productivity, and this turnover is expensive. A smooth onboarding process can improve new employee retention, drive productivity, and save money.
The best way to reduce new employee anxiety is to show them that they’re welcome and that you’re prepared for them. A new employee will have a disappointing first-day experience if they discover they don’t have access to the tools they need to be productive. With Citrix Workspace with intelligent features, completing onboarding tasks becomes easy and organized for managers. With links into systems that support those tasks like Ariba, Workday, and ServiceNow, straight from a the single entry-point of the Citrix Workspace, managers will know they’ve done their part to optimize their new hire’s experience and accelerate productivity. And new employees will have a one-stop shop to find a complete set of resources designed just for their role: They get the applications they need to do their job, and all the files and folders the team shares. Reaching full productivity faster matters to both the employer and to the employee.
Relevant User Notifications
High employee engagement depends on great internal communications. But, notification overload and overflowing inboxes make cutting through the noise challenging. With Citrix Workspace, human resources and internal communications teams can join forces to deliver high-value, relevant messages. This ensures employees align to company values, mission, and strategy. Those messages integrate with key work tasks, enabling HR to deliver critical information to employees where they are.
The Ability to Speed Through Low-Value Tasks
Before, I mentioned that the average employee uses 35 apps. Here’s the flip side of that stat: We don’t use much of their functionality. For example, as someone in marketing, I can count the number of features I use in our HRIS system on one hand. Because I use it so infrequently, it can make completing even the simplest task challenging. Submitting a PTO request should be simple, but it’s not. I need to remember my credentials, how to navigate to the correct section, check my PTO balance, and submit the request.
Citrix Workspace reduces that cumbersome process into one that takes seconds. It integrates common features and tasks from your apps, reducing context switching and wasted time. Using these intelligent features, I can spend more time doing the work that Citrix hired me to do rather than spending time on necessary, but low-value, administrative tasks.
Employee Development
Attracting and retaining the best talent is critical to the growth of your organization. But developing them further can bring it to new heights. To develop their teams, many organizations have invested in Learning Management Systems (LMS). They’ve also hired trainers to create and deliver education, only to see low consumption. Much of that challenge can be attributed to the visibility of the content; the LMS is yet another place employees need to check, but don’t have time to do it.
With Citrix Workspace, training recommendations are integrated into employees’ workflows. This ensures content gets maximum visibility and increased engagement. With one click straight from within their Workspace, employees can register and enroll.
Deliver a Superior Employee Experience
Giving employees tools that organize, guide, and automate their work can make a real difference, increasing motivation and engagement and helping workers perform at their best. Citrix Workspace enables organizations to deliver that superior employee experience by taking the friction out of getting work done. Ultimately, this helps employees to do more of what they love — deliver the value that sets them apart.
Learn more about Citrix Workspace and how it can help you drive employee engagement.
