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The ’employee experience’ is a relatively new concept that is increasingly seen as a contributor to staff engagement and organisational success. A new global study from The Economist Intelligence Unit sponsored by Citrix suggests that this idea is prompting companies in India, like many around the world, to pay closer attention to the working experience they create for employees. The survey reveals that the proportion of Indian firms to have done so is even greater, at 96 per cent and confirms that Indian workers are among the most engaged in Asia-Pacific.
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Different priorities, different outcomes
A couple of decades ago, IT was primarily seen as a support function. However, with recent trends of leveraging technological solutions to drive efficiency and standardising processes, IT has now come into the spotlight. This has come partly at the expense of functions such as HR, even for aspects of the employee experience. According to the survey conducted for this study, 61 per cent of IT respondents in India said their department has the authority to design and select systems to optimise the employee experience. The survey found that 20 per cent of CIOs or CTOs now take the lead for the employee experience in an advanced group of organisations labelled “digitally more mature”.
The mobile experience
Going digital goes hand in hand with going mobile, especially in India, which is known for its ubiquitous and cheap mobile-cellular subscription rates. As a result, Indian respondents rank “technology available to employees” as the number one force that shapes the employee experience. Indians are adopting mobile subscriptions at the second fastest pace in the world.
New ways of working
The study also finds that companies with digital transformation strategies in place for two years or more are also more likely to view technology as a determinant of the employee experience: 40 per cent place technology in their top three factors, compared with just 28 per cent of organisations with no digital transformation under way. Fifty-four per cent of Indian respondents agreed that workplace systems need to change from controlling employees to empowering them.
Highlighting the growing prominence of employee experience in India, Ravindra Kelkar, Area Vice President, Sales & Services, Indian Subcontinent, Citrix said, “With the dynamic and any time/anywhere nature of work, coupled with expectations of having a great digital experience when interacting with enterprise applications that is at par with consumer experience on smart phones in personal lives, digital workspace is becoming an agenda being driven at board level for most companies. Employees are essentially consumers of the workplace and therefore, going forward it is going to be extremely imperative for companies to align employee experience to their purpose, brand and culture and measure how its impacting the business results.”
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