By Anand Venkatraman,
Technology has consistently paved the way for employees to do their jobs effectively – facilitating access to workplace tools, helping to improve productivity, increasing the speed of business, and fundamentally changing the way organizations and their workforce interact and carry out transactions.
“Increased employee engagement improves customer satisfaction and overall business results,” says Anand Venkatraman, VP of Global Partnerships at Freshworks, a customer engagement software company. In fact, in a recent Harvard Business Review survey on the critical role of technology in employee engagement, sponsored by Freshworks – 92% of respondents said employee engagement is critical to their organization’s success. More than half (54%) of respondents indicated that better employee engagement results in satisfied customers.
About 53% of respondents also agreed that there are additional benefits: the quality of products or services is better when employees are happier. According to the Gallup Institute, terminated employees cost US companies $450 billion to $550 billion a year in lost productivity. Keeping employees engaged is an everlasting challenge – one that is doubled when they are scattered across remote workplaces due to the global pandemic. The challenge of keeping an increasingly engaged digital workforce is greater as more companies move to telecommuting.
We live in the digital age – 82% of respondents said employee happiness at work is significantly affected by the performance of technology in the workplace. According to the survey, powerful, easy-to-use software contributes to employee satisfaction, enabling a more productive experience. Of course, hard-to-use and inflexible software will have the opposite effect, leaving employees discouraged – it can even drive them to seek better working conditions elsewhere.
In fact, 77% of respondents said good employees will look for a new employer if their current job doesn’t provide the tools, technology or information they need to do their job well. Still, getting the right tools is only part of the solution. Empowering employees to give their input in the selection of tools is equally important. In a “Voice in the Choice” survey commissioned by Freshworks, 96% of employees surveyed said they had little or no involvement in the software purchase decision, and more than half said having the right tools would result in happier customers and better productivity.
“Workplace technology plays a key role in helping employee engagement and the choice of tools and technology must be democratized. Ultimately, we need to focus on results for the employee and for the customer,” concludes Anand Venkatraman.
