Originally posted on http://www.vmware.com by Jennifer Manry

Engage your employees like they are your customer.

As we confront the new reality of not everyone who worked in an office before the pandemic going back 100% of the time, we have to rethink the experiences financial services organizations provide to employees. Here’s why.

Our industry has spent a lot of time and investment on great customer experience, but very little on employee experience. Today, employees interact with far more technology in their personal and consumer lives. And the bar is moving higher and higher for the experience deficit they will tolerate at work compared to their personal lives.

Overcoming Obstacles

Employee grumblings aren’t new—but they’re definitely getting louder:

  • “I can do this at home, why can’t I do it at work?”
  • “How come my work device isn’t as easy as setting up a smartphone?”
  • “What’s with all this email? IM platforms and apps are so much faster.”
  • “Have you tried to order new equipment or download software lately? It’s like no one at work has ever seen an app store.”
  • “I need support. Where’s my genius bar?”

We have to ensure that employees in front and back offices in banks, lending and investment offices, insurance agencies, and everywhere else can be productive and engaged with all the tools and resources they need to do the jobs they were hired to do—from wherever they’re working. And if financial services organizations’ plans don’t include boosting employee experience now, then when?

Getting Started

I have a real affinity for talking about employee experience and employee technology in financial services because I think it’s essential to business success. Now, maybe more than ever.  I spent more than a decade empowering employees with the same sort of capabilities at work as the consumer-grade apps at home—at scale and with enterprise-grade security.

Because I understand that a challenge for many teams is where to start, I’ve outlined four proven employee experience transformation moves that worked for my teams. These tips may help accelerate your own plans:

  1. Understand employee moments that matter
  2. Prioritize change management and adoption
  3. Partner internally instead of going It alone
  4. Address end-user friction and security concerns

Jens Koegler

Jens Koegler is VMware's Healthcare Industry Director in EMEA. He is helping our healthcare customers develop and run modern applications to drive innovation and ensure better patient care through a digital foundation that includes data center, hybrid cloud, mobile, networking and security technologies. VMware plays a strategic role in the healthcare industry. Its leading innovations in enterprise software help ensure consistent patient care and reduce IT access time for healthcare professionals so they can spend more time with their patients. Jens plays a key role in helping customers understand how new applications, devices, the latest IT technologies and digital transformation are driving innovation in healthcare.