Guest AuthorKrish Shankar
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Employee experience rooted in empathy

By | Krish Shankar | Group Head- Human Resources at Infosys, and also Hon President of National HRD Network, India

I am delighted to share with you that Infosys has been recognized as a Top Employer 2021 across Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, and North America by the Top Employers Institute. This acknowledgment from the global authority on recognizing excellence in people practices from among 1,660 organizations worldwide is a testament to our core belief that our people are our most important asset. 

That this recognition should come at a time of great global upheaval, which has tested our resilience and forced us to transform overnight to a remote working model, is no coincidence. For some time now, as part of Infosys’ Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) vision to facilitate best-in-class employee experience, we have started incorporating ‘employee experience’ as key design criteria in all our people-related practices and processes. 

First, we shifted how we created and reviewed our processes and systems, beginning by capturing employee needs and expectations. Second, we included employee experience as part of our employer brand promise to ensure we stay committed to it. And third, we embarked on an ambitious implementation plan to bring to life employees’ expectations and our brand promise for our employees. 

To better understand our employees, we began classifying and modeling them into various personas, grouped by geographies and categories, such as new hires, trainees, tenured employees, employees at client locations, managers, etc. Recognizing that each persona would have a different expectation at each touchpoint and event, we deep dived with every segment, tracing their journey map identifying key interactions/touchpoints or moments that matter. 

What came up from this exercise were the common factors underpinning emotions around the moments that matter:

  • Employees appreciate a cultural imprint that is empathetic, collaborative, and inclusive.
  • Employees feel valued by the display of trust by the company and its processes.
  • Agility is critical for employees as they want to spend less time on non-core processes. Simple, fast, integrated processes and self-service platforms that can free up their time are the cornerstones of a great everyday experience.
  • Flexibility to operate from anywhere, anytime, adds convenience and establishes trust with employees.
  • People appreciate recommendations, insights, and nudges that aid decision-making or enable problem-solving skills.

Based on these insights, we set about transforming employee experience for 250,000+ people, spread across 46 geographies, on the backbone of technology. After all, employees are accustomed to seamless digital experiences in their personal lives, creating similar expectations for their professional lives. If we want our employees to develop a digital future for our clients, they need to experience the same in their work lives.

From the complete digitalization of the joining and onboarding process to a mobile-based self-service platform for all employee transactions and company processes – a learning transformation platform for always-on learning, a one-stop digital platform for all career-related needs including skilling and opportunities exploration, and a remote-first, hyper-productive, AI-driven, anywhere workplace that enhances both personal effectiveness and team collaboration – we are truly navigating the next together with all Infoscions.

As we get ready for a new world of hybrid remote working beyond the pandemic, we are further fine-tuning our employee experience. Infosys is creating a hybrid collaboration workspace for our workforce that will mimic the physical world. We are also digitizing health and wellness initiatives and intelligent automation tools to enhance productivity and revisiting our performance management process to make it more aligned to the new ways of working and engaging.

Infosys is prepared to take on the future with a resilient, engaged workforce and is always learning. We are curating employee experiences that amplify individual potential, inspire our people to deliver at the highest level, and have an enjoyable experience in the process. At the core of all this is a simple premise – empathy.

Republished with permission and originally published at Krish Shankar’s LinkedIn

 

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