With Christmas just around the corner, sleigh bells soon to be jing-jing-a-jingling, and excitement in small children (and maybe even some grown-up children!) reaching fever pitch, we’ve been thinking about what we’d really like for Christmas.
And, as another year draws to a close, it’s natural to both reflect on the year that’s been and look forward to the year ahead. Which is fitting, because, what we really want for Christmas, is something we’d like to see all year round, every single year.
We want to create a better life for millions of people by improving their work lives. That’s our purpose and our Christmas wish. We want to see happy employees, happy customers, and happy businesses. We want to see companies who rely on blue collar workers and a flexible workforce putting the employee experience at the forefront in order to deliver incredible customer service and create a profitable business.
In order to make your Christmas wish come true, here’s what you could do:
1. Begin with your purpose
At London’s Workforce Management Day in 2018, keynote speaker Ana Julia Ghirello, part of the founding team of the Brazilian version of Gumtree, said - by knowing what your purpose is, you can then define the context around it and, from there, give your employees autonomy - which in turn will fuel business growth.
With the influx of Millennials into the workplace, having a clear purpose is more important than ever. According to a 2016 study carried out in the US, 76% say they would take a pay cut to work for a socially responsible company and nearly two-thirds wouldn’t take a job if the employer doesn't have strong CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) practices.
Do your employees know what they are working for and do they understand your company’s purpose? It doesn’t have to be elaborate or complicated, in fact, simple statements of purpose are often the most powerful. Take a couple of examples, clothing company Life is Good made it their mission to ‘spread the power of optimism’ while popular meditation app Headspace say their one mission is to ‘improve the health and happiness of the world.’
Defining your purpose also defines your values and beliefs. And, as a recent study showed, two-thirds of customers are more willing to spend money on brands whose values align with theirs.
2. Put your employee experience first
The better an employee’s experience at work, the stronger their performance will be. Great experiences lead to increased engagement and drive performance. And, as a result of this, companies who invest in their employees see four times greater the amount of profit than those who don’t. What’s more, it also significantly reduces employee turnover. This is why the employee experience is absolutely critical.
You can do this through:
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Improved communication
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Creating smart schedules for your employees.
3. Use tech to help you
Cloud-native and mobile first workforce management solutions are part of the technology that can help – and our worker sentiment survey found that nearly a third of workers believe technologies that allow business schedules to be viewed, shared and managed from an app could help their businesses increase flexibility.
Your employees want to know when they are working, they want to be paid on time, they want to be able to swap shifts if they need to, and they want simple ways to communicate. Whether it’s a fully integrated workforce management solution or just an automated scheduling solution, there are tools out there to help empower your workers to be more productive and efficient.
We look forward to being part of your journey in the year to come and hope you’ll join us in leading the Workforce Revolution.
