“Employee experience” is a term that has grown beyond the world of HR managers into the mainstream. In the age of hybrid work models and various, mostly unsuccessful attempts to lure fully remote employees back to the office, the importance of making workspaces comfortable and attractive is more obvious than ever before.
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While the term has no universal, standard definition, employee experience is generally understood to summarize the way employees feel about their job, their career path, and their company as a whole. When employees feel good about their work situation, they are more likely to be engaged and productive. On the other hand, if employees are unhappy with their job, they may become disengaged and less productive.
A large component of employee experience is shaped by the time they spend in the employer’s offices. This can be more of a determining factor than other variables like salary or job duties.
A recent trend has emerged that promotes new approaches to the ways that offices are designed and the tools & services made available to employees to make their time there more comfortable.
From creating safer environments to streamlining processes and more, these solutions can have a big impact on employee satisfaction and productivity. IoT plays a central role in many solutions that improve the employee experience. By collecting data on everything from employee movement to workstation usage, IoT can provide valuable insights that can help organizations optimize the workplace and improve employee satisfaction.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular employee experience solutions and how they can benefit any business.
One of the biggest trends in office design is the move towards flexible workspaces. This means that instead of each employee having their own assigned desk, there are a variety of workspace options that employees can choose from depending on their needs for the day. This could include standing desks, lounge areas, quiet spaces, and more.
The benefits of flexible workspaces are twofold. First, it allows employees to find the type of environment that best suits their mood and work style for maximum productivity. Second, it encourages collaboration and social interaction between employees who might not otherwise interact with one another.
When use patterns can be monitored and archived through data collection by IoT-powered sensors, historical data can show the peaks and valleys that managers can expect for workstations. This makes it easier to ensure they are available when needed and avoid productivity bottlenecks caused by excess demand.
IoT is finding many new applications for the automation of tasks and processes and removes them from the daily “to do” list of office occupants. For example, imagine you work in a office and every morning you have to walk around and turn on all the lights. With IoT-enabled light bulbs, you could automate that task so that the lights turn on at a certain time every day. Or if you work in a warehouse and have to constantly check inventory levels, you could use IoT sensors to track inventory in real-time and send alerts when levels are low. Automating these types of tasks can free up employee time so they can focus on more important things.
One way that businesses are using IoT to improve employee experience is by implementing occupancy sensors. These sensors can be used to automatically adjust lighting and temperature in workspaces based on how many people are present. This not only makes for a more comfortable work environment, but it can also help businesses save on energy costs.
Technology can be applied to track the location of both personnel and assets. They each deliver benefits that improve the employee experience.
Asset tracking eliminates time wasted while searching for the devices and tools employees need to do their jobs. There’s no need to search for anything when everything can be located with room-level accuracy with the touch of a button. This means productivity is boosted and both employee and customer frustration is avoided when customers are part of the equation. Asset tracking is particularly useful in healthcare settings and other contexts where time is of the essence.
Although it’s not part of employee experience, asset tracking solutions are also extremely useful for making more informed decisions about purchasing and controlling unnecessary spending. When you have more accurate information about the actual inventory of a particular item you have on hand, it’s easier to avoid overspending on more inventory you don’t need.
Personnel tracking is achieved through use of wearable technology, usually either on a badge or a lanyard. Real-time insights into personnel locations make a number of useful applications possible:
Although we usually only notice them when they reach uncomfortable extremes, air temperature, humidity and overall air quality are essential to a productive office environment. Keeping them in the comfortable range where we don’t notice them is now much easier with tech solutions.
Indoor environmental monitoring solutions allows you to track:
Indoor environmental monitoring can provide you with real-time information about the quality of the air throughout your buildings. Not only that, it can raise the alarm if levels rise to an unsafe level or provide you with information about how those levels may change over time, which may allow you to create a program that will address those potential challenges and make it easier for you to prevent health hazards throughout your building.
Actively working to improve the employee experience is mission-critical in today’s labor market. Employees enjoy a level of flexibility unknown until quite recently and employers must recognize this new reality if they want a sufficient and productive in-office workforce.
Making the office a place where employees want to work is an absolute must. This is no longer a simple matter of comfortable furniture, healthy food options or fun perks and amenities. The areas listed above show how much further employers can go in providing an even higher level of comfort and ease.
When the office is a place that employees actually enjoy being in, they're more likely to be engaged and productive—which is an obvious win for everyone involved.
Technology has a key role to play in achieving this next level of employee experience. From automating mundane tasks to increasing security, IoT has the potential to make our work lives easier and more efficient. As more and more companies adopt this technology, we will likely see even more ways that it can be used to improve employee experience.
Creating a more comfortable and safe work environment for their employees is easier than ever. If you would like to learn how Kontakt.io can put it within your reach, talk to our Sales team today.
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