How HR teams can start building a new strategy to support them into the future
HR and Employee Success teams have had a tough time during the last number of months. Covid 19 is not something anyone could have predicted, and most were not prepared to deal with. In addition to their day to day business, HR and Employee Success teams now need to figure out how to support remote employees and also, a surge of employee queries around job security and other questions dominating the minds of employees around the world.
Leading employees through an unforeseen change process means organisations need to use what is at their immediate disposal and react in the best way possible in that moment. But it’s also a great opportunity to start thinking about the future. Having a robust employee engagement strategy that’s scalable and dynamic enough to adapt to changing circumstances will be fundamental for organisations to survive and thrive in the coming years.
So how do you start? Well, first you really need to understand the current situation, identify quick fixes and also get to the heart of the matter – your employees and how they feel. Then, it’s about generating ideas, collaborating with peers, and testing and understanding the tools you’ll need to make it all happen.
Let’s take a look at some activities to support your change process.
- Listen, really listen
It all starts with listening and observing. Oftentimes what people need is not always obvious. If you start by getting to the heart of the issue and uncovering the unmet needs of your staff at this time, you can then use that extra time you didn’t use trying to do ‘everything’ and maximise the value of those 1 or 2 activities that will really make an impact. Some tools you can use for capturing information as you listen and observe are – the Customer Journey Map (your employees are your customers too) and the Empathy Map.
The Journey Map helps you get an understanding of how your employees day to day is looking at different points in time and how you might be able to improve it. Empathy Maps can help you understand the inner world of your employees and uncover ways to satisfy their unmet needs. Miro and Mural are great tools for documenting these exercises.
- Map it out
Trying to plan out a new way of doing things is hard at the best of times. Add to that a whole heap of worries and demands swirling around your head (which happens a lot in the middle of a pandemic) and it gets that bit harder.
You no doubt have lots of ideas of how to improve the way your internal engagement teams work and I bet many of them are great, but they do no good sitting in your head. Start jotting down your ideas and the information you are capturing and plot it on a board. Using templates and structures and arranging your ideas and research in a visual way can be a big time saver. It also helps you communicate your ideas with others. Again, Miro and Mural can be used for this and Google Slides/Powerpoint are also great alternatives.
- Collaborate, communicate and learn together
During times of change it’s critical to collaborate and communicate in order to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that all voices are heard. Tools for remote collaboration you’ll probably already be familiar with are Zoom and Google Suite – these provide an easy way to meet virtually and collaborate on shared documents.
Because you may be new to virtual meetings, you could benefit by putting a structure together for the different types of meetings you have throughout the day and make sure you leave each meeting with some sort of next steps.
If there’s no one to take the lead on making remote collaboration and communication work optimally, consider hiring a facilitator to guide you through the process. A little investment can really prove to be valuable if your team’s productivity improves as a result.
- Tool review and optimisation
When you have your action plan together and you’re ready to implement, you might notice that you don’t have the right tools to support the roll out. This could mean a tool review is required (as obvious as it sounds, having some technical staff to help is very much advised).
Remember, think about the tools and technology that will support you both today and also in the future. Always think about scalability, efficiency and user adoption models.
- Central hub/global engagement
A challenge for many HR and Employee Success teams is scaling their processes to support employees all over the world. While you might have local teams, there are times, when the answers sit in HQ, which may be an English only speaking office. So how do you empower the staff in HQ to support worldwide employees in a way that retains your brand voice and your engagement standards?
At KantanMT, we have developed an AI driven translation application called KantanSkynet that plugs into your helpdesk software and provides instant translations for your teams. Employees sending in queries do so in their native language and your HR team can reply in English. Skynet then translates it back to the original language, and then sends the reply to a multilingual expert for review and potential edit before sending the final text to the recipient.
We know that supporting a global workforce is hard and we want to make it affordable for you to do so, while retaining the quality and personal engagement that you aim for. If you’re interested in learning more about creating an internal help desk process with universal language capability, contact the KantanMT team today. We’re always here to help.
KantanMT
KantanMT is a pioneer in neural machine translation solutions. Its market leading platform, KantanMT, enables global organisations to customise, improve and deploy neural MT solutions at scale. Their KantanSkynet platform enables modern enterprises to deliver digital content in native languages, with always-on, AI-enhanced, crowd-sourced translation services. KantanSkynet combines the speed and cost-benefits of machine translation with the authenticity and precision that only a native speaker can deliver.
KantanMT is part of the Keywords Studios Group, the largest provider of global services to the video games and media and entertainment industries. It has offices in over 50 locations and delivers services to 23 of the top 25 games companies.
KantanMT is based in the INVENT Building, DCU Campus, Dublin 9, Ireland.