Employers are adapting to changing employee expectations by transforming the workplace with contextualized and frictionless technology. Employers that reach this goal will have an edge in recruitment and retention of talent.
During a May 12 virtual roundtable discussion sponsored by NTT DATA Services as part of Becker's Hospital Review 11th Annual Meeting, panelists from NTT DATA shared insights into how healthcare providers are proceeding along the maturity curve to become workplaces of the future. Panelists included:
- Erik Jost, vice president of dynamic workplace
- Keith Hansen, workplace strategist
- Joey Dean, managing director, healthcare
Three insights:
1. The healthcare workplace of the future is evolving, featuring a contextualized and frictionless employee experience enabled by technology. While at work, employees want fewer obstacles to do their jobs and want customized technology solutions to make this possible. Employers are responding. Accelerated by the pandemic, employers are practicing constituent empathy and are borrowing elements from the wider tech experience to use data and machine learning to help solve employees' problems.
The healthcare workplace of the future features cloud-based technology that is secure, connected and flexible. This workplace will enable employees to use a multitude of devices and will pull together different platforms and systems for a personalized, contextualized employee experience. "The best user experience is no experience," because the user doesn't notice it, said Mr. Jost.
2. Organizations must change how IT success is measured to encompass the employee experience. Traditional IT support in an organization has been measured by the length of time it takes to resolve a support desk call. Modern measures must evolve to capture the employee experience. "We want to move from predictable to preventable," Mr. Hansen said. "If I can predict something that is going to happen through data, then I have the ability to prevent that from happening. The best call to a service desk is the call that never happens." The fully mature digital workplace is designed to eliminate problems before they occur.
Workers want "bring your own device" and a consumerized model of IT help. As bots handle simpler questions, the calls that are placed to IT support will be the more complex matters, making time to resolution a poor measure of an employee's experience. Organizations should measure employee engagement, the connection rate for virtual visits and other metrics that more closely capture the experiential outcome.
3. The virtual workplace can improve recruitment and retention of employees, benefiting patients. As companies partner with NTT DATA to build the virtual workplace of the future, they experience many positive outcomes, notably addressing the frequently cited challenge of competing for talent. These employers meet employees' rising expectations for a frictionless technology experience by leveraging automation and allowing AI and machine learning to power the virtual workplace.
Another notable result is reduced clinician stress. Secure technology enables work from anywhere, anytime. "There is a direct link between the employee experience and the patient experience," Mr. Dean said. Clinicians whose technology problems are prevented are more productive and engaged, spending time on patient care.
To learn more about the event, click here.