The Significant Stakeholders & Experience - An Enabling Formula!!

As the HR head of my company, when I ask myself a question about the significant stakeholders of a company, the answer I get are these three.

1. The Employees
2. The Customers
3. The Shareholders

While all three are important, I believe that we just need to focus on the first two.  If we are able to create an experience for Employees and the Customers, our shareholders will automatically be taken care of.  Now, let’s try and decodify the formula.

Customer Experience

When I look at our customers, I understand the need for a differentiator experience that ensures customer loyalty in the long run. The differentiator experience is what sets us apart from our competitors and provides us the edge to survive.

A quality product or service is important but not the only thing. We need to ensure a great experience and ecosystem for our customers through the journey of using our products and services. This holds true  irrespective of one being a product company or a services company.

Let's understand this with a couple of examples.  When we look at Apple’s product iPhone, we realise that people buy it for the simplified experience while calling, texting, or using applications.  Every aspect of the product from its design to its user interface and usability is better than most of its competitors.  

A quality product is essential but it is just the foundation of the overall experience that drives user purchase and retention.  Let’s look at this from a different perspective now.  You have to choose between two restaurants: the first restaurant promises great food but is rated low on customer service and ambience. The second restaurant has an equally good menu and is rated very high by customers for service and ambience. Which one would you choose?

Most customers rate a product or service based on the overall quality of the experience. A company cannot excel at one while failing in any of the rest. Overall customer delight drives customer experience and retention.

It is a reality that we live in a world of experience and we want an experience which creates all the positive feelings in us at emotional level. In Dassault Systemes we call ourselves as 3D Experience Company because we understand the importance of experience.

Employee satisfaction

Now moving to the second significant stakeholder (i.e. the Employees).  The formula we used in the customer experience can be similarly applied here. It is all about quality product/services + experience.  

My firm believe is that we can create an engaging journey for an employee when he or she is not only satisfied or engaged at cognitive level but also at an emotional level.  Every company today claims to provide challenging work assignments and ample opportunities to grow with competitive compensation and rewards. While all this is essential at a cognitive level, what results in loyalty or bonding with the company is when the same employee is satisfied or engaged at an emotional level.  

How is he or she feeling in the company? Is he or she feeling valued? Are they recognised appropriately? Do they have an enabling company culture which provides them openness and transparency?

As a HR Professional or leaders of a company, it is critical for us to ensure we provide engagement to our employees at both cognitive as well as emotional level.  In the absence of one, we will never be able to create a wholesome experience.  Employees will be willing to strive only when they have an experience which enables them to go extra mile.  This element is very important for any company because a striving and engaged culture has direct impact on the overall success of the business.  

Despite such an easy formula, not all companies have been successful in leveraging this.  In my opinion, the major reason of failure on this is the mindset of leaders.  This journey is possible only with effective leadership. The culture of experience can be enabled when leaders are committed towards these efforts and work collectively to make it happen, and in the process challenging and overcoming their comfort zones.

Candidate Experience | A Paradigm Shift

Anjali’s decision of joining BeDifferent.com

Saturday 1000 HRS, Prateek Fedora, Anjali’s Home

Taking a sip of the coffee in a cold morning, Anjali tells her husband about the experience she went through with BeDifferent.com on a job opportunity, a mid-sized organisation in the Information Technology sector. She mentions that she could not remember a company that paid so much of attention to her starting from the first touch point of connect to offer release.  At every stage she was welcomed with a smile and also made to feel at ease in the process.  The overall experience from call to connect, docket to schedule, interview to clarity on work profile, welcome to hosting snacks; everything made her feel at ease.  She is convinced that this is the company which can provide her the culture she is looking for, a culture of openness and respect.   She tells her husband that she will send a confirmation on her accepting the offer with BeDifferent.com

Creating Hiring Experience at BeDifferent.com

Monday 1200 HRS, Manoj (Recruitment Lead)

Manoj calls up Anjali and extends his gratitude and thanks to her for accepting the offer.  He also sends a nice Thank You Card to her signed by CEO and HR Head at her residence.  The plan Manoj has worked out to provide an experience to Anjali includes below steps –

1.     Inviting Anjali for a lunch meeting with Hiring Manager within 2 weeks of her accepting the offer

2.     Handing over a small souvenir (A company embossed Coffee Mug & a nice Notepad)

3.     Hiring Manager to have two calls during the notice period to provide updates on project and plans around the role for which Anjali has been hired

4.    Recruiter will have weekly call to check if Anjali is looking for specific help; also provides her with company updates to keep her informed about what is happening in the company

5.    HR to work in background to ensure everything is put in place to welcome Anjali on Day 1 of joining including workstation allocation, laptop and netlogin creation, access and ID card etc.

What Prospective Employees really want?

Employees are the assets of a knowledge industry.  Amid options to join many organisations, the key to attracting and retaining employees is the experience we create at every stage in the lifecycle of employee in the organisation starting from first touch point as prospective employee of the company. Other than a good work and compensation, it is the experience which brings the emotional connect with the organisation. 

Recruitment today has to start creating an experience and engagement at every touch point of the candidate’s interaction.  The impression of the organisation is primarily built through these connect experiences. Recruiters and hiring managers have a big role to play in the process.  They need to create hopes and excitement in the minds of candidates about the company. 

According to a recent Glassdoor survey, 89 percent of job seekers value the employer's perspective during the application process. In other words, they want to hear why you think your company is a great place to work.

Creating experience and engagement in the lifecycle of candidates will also help in reducing drop outs significantly which have really gone up in current market. 

Other Important Hiring Trends

Increased pressure on backfilling positions in short time frames accounting for recent trends in increased offer decline, and strict notice period release from exiting company, hiring right talent in the shortest time frame has made the overall hiring process a big challenge.  The conventional way of hiring will not be scalable in case organisations have to reach out to right talent and expedite the overall hiring process keeping in view time and quality of the resources in mind.  Other than providing a best-of-xperiences at every stages of hiring, some other important hiring trends will continue to act as differentiators in the overall hiring process–

1.    Leveraging Social Hiring Process: Social hiring process consumes time initially but it has a lot of positive results in the long run.  It can be a successful tool of hiring if there is a right mindset of hiring and also when a right process is adopted.  Ability to understand and use the correct boolean operators and Google strings is very essential.  This increases the reach-out to profiles much faster than any other process.  LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitter are good platforms to reach out to candidates.  The advantage of Social Media is that it provides an opportunity to reach out to passive job seekers who can be lured towards job opportunities. This is the most cost effective process of hiring.

2.   Technical Collaborative Platforms: Another important forum which must be leveraged for potential hiring perspective is technical collaborative platforms.  Companies can host technical events, gamification, hackathons etc in such forums where technical experts from across the Industry can participate.  It provides a great opportunity for organisations to build and connect with participants and explore their possibility as potential employees. It’s a slower process, requiring considerable investments in money and time but companies which are looking for quality talent will find this a worthy investment. 

3.  Profiling Based Hiring: Hiring is an art.  As a hiring manager or recruiter, it is important to understand the overall environment and people of the person being interviewed. This helps in identifying potential candidates who may not be active in job portals but can be contacted either through social media connects or through references.  This is a powerful approach and also helps in expediting the overall hiring process

4.  Making Recruiters accountable to hiring: Bringing a sales-based approach to recruitment will become popular in the Industry.  Incentive based compensation where higher share of compensation will be incentive driven with opportunity to double the salary will surely bring a lot of competitiveness and result orientation in the overall recruitment function.

Recruitment is an engine to business.  This engine needs to not only run fast and help an organisation reach its destination in the shortest time frame but it also needs to bring a lot of efficiency to the journey. Also, it has to  create an experience for its stakeholders to remain effective.  Recruitment today is a truly business function.

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