4 ways technology can help your team during the cost of living crisis
Life is stressful at the moment. With a punishing cost-of-living crisis underway in the UK, a deep, dark recession looming and repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic lingering on, many employees need wellbeing support more than ever before.
It’s in employers’ interests to provide this support if they can, as higher employee wellbeing scores have been proven to boost engagement and productivity.
When colleagues are struggling mentally or financially, it affects how they feel about everything, including work – making it much harder to engage and perform to the best of their ability.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that the 2022 edition of the Gallup State of the Global Workplace report revealed that just 9% – or fewer than one in 10 – of UK employees feel engaged at work, down from 11% in 2021.
And as the cost-of-living crisis, coupled with budget changes such as the freezing of tax thresholds, continues to blight both lower and middle income earners, engagement and productivity figures are only likely to continue to fall.
For employers keen to maintain productivity and profitability levels, the question is how they can prevent this in the face of an unremittingly bleak economic situation.
Listening to – and acting on – what people want is going to be an integral part of supporting both employee wellbeing and the overall employee experience throughout the next few years.
Here are four ways you can harness the power of technology to achieve this.
1. Create a centralised reward hub and use it to gather data
The starting point for any data-driven strategy for change has to be information gathering. Annual engagement surveys are a tried and tested way of collecting data on how well you are managing the employee experience.
A lot of organisations are also now taking a hybrid approach, involving both an annual survey and regular polls and pulse surveys checking how people are feeling and why. Others are splitting the annual survey into more easily digestible sections for completion at different times throughout the year.
But whatever way you choose to gather employee experience and wellbeing data, a centralised hub is the best place to persuade people to engage and provide the information you need to make meaningful change.
2. Show people the impact their responses are having via the hub
A central hub is also the best place let colleagues see how their feedback is changing the business and share details of how changes made have affected different individuals, thereby encouraging more people to get involved and make their voices heard.
In this way, you can start an open, adult conversation that more closely resembles the interactions companies have traditionally had with shareholders in the business.
The aim is to create an organisational ecosystem in which each individual feels valued and supported and can clearly see how their wants and needs are being taken on board.
3. Use data to de-clutter your communications strategy
Once you have a store of data on your employees, you can start targeting your messages and initiatives at those they are likely to interest.
The advantages of this are twofold: not only will ensuring colleagues know about schemes and measures that are relevant to them increase engagement rates, taking a more tailored approach to benefits communications should also help to prevent people feeling overwhelmed by the volume of information.
Providing access to solutions at the point of need is a real game changer that switches the organisation’s role in managing and heading off crises from passive to active, making it a far more powerful force for good.
4. Work with partners to create a joined-up wellbeing solution
With so many different benefits providers – from investment managers to salary advance companies – offering wellbeing services, the challenge often isn’t creating a package that offers everything your colleagues need, but rather creating a structured, single voice for your wellbeing solution.
Again, the key to avoiding this is to aggregate your wellbeing and reward services within a central hub. Once this is in place, you can also work with partners to ensure the tone and language used throughout the hub is consistent and does not include too much overlapping – or worse, contradictory – information.
In partnership with Equiniti
Hi we are EQ; some may know us as Equiniti! We provide specialist reward, benefits and payroll solutions.
