Building the future of workforce engagement: 2021 and beyond

The emphasis on experience is more critical today than ever before. Employees shape the everyday experience customers have with companies. Just like customers, employees need to feel known and understood to foster levels of engagement that move the needle. A customer-obsessed culture cannot be achieved without an emphasis on employee experience.  Why? Because work, not just the worker, is changing.

We’ve become accustomed to thinking about innovation as something that responds to the needs of a user, but faced as we are with a complete paradigm shift, rectifying the errors of the past is no longer enough. As an industry, it’s time we reimagine and transform our approach to workforce management, anticipating the needs of our workers, wherever they may be, and arming them with the tools and resources they need to thrive.

Market Rewrite: Time to rethink and challenge our status quo

Change is a constant, but it hasn’t been more evident than in the past year. And while it’s safe to say that paradigms are changing for workforce engagement, it’s more accurate to say that the change is happening in our industry as a whole. We’ve not only seen how focus has shifted from operational optimisation and agent productivity to more human-centric methodologies that bring data, journeys and empathy into play, but we’ve seen how companies need to accelerate their digital transformation to enable new styles of management and deliver real flexibility and true personalisation.

We saw a significant change when COVID-19 forced companies to enable their employees to work from home. But, looking out even further, a new normal will incorporate workers that work from anywhere, using the right tool and systems to create their own meaning of work and life balance. Moving forward, ultimate flexibility and agility will be essential to all businesses. Likewise, we’ve seen an estimated 3X more interactions coming into contact centres without an increase in headcount. That means a good number of these are being handled by self-service technology, leaving more complex inquiries in the hands of human agents.

Ultimately, solutions that power experiences can’t focus solely on customers. To deliver Experience as a ServiceSM, we must provide employees with the technology and resources to connect with customers on a human level, where things like empathy and understanding are the real differentiators.

Tapping into the power of people to achieve super-human service

Unfortunately, traditional workforce management (WFM) and quality management (QM) processes have seen workers as output elements that generate costs. Now more than ever, we know that human capital is an asset—and an invaluable asset, at that. Great experiences are what can positively impact customers and turn them into faithful advocates of your brand, but the same goes for employees. Which is why Genesys is doubling down on Workforce Engagement, to bring out the full potential of employees and agents through technology that’s designed with their needs in mind.

This means taking a good look at what makes employees better at their work and creating a sense of belonging, so that they’re able to truly excel and deliver the kind of super-human service that makes companies not just efficient, but extraordinary.

Lightning strikes twice: Gartner’s take on Genesys WEM

Genesys continues to make important strides in the industry as seen in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Workforce Engagement Management (WEM). We’ve made considerable movement towards the Leaders Quadrant following last year’s transition to the Visionary Quadrant. And Genesys is also the only suite player in the Magic Quadrant, as other vendors offer standalone WEM solutions.

Our focus is on providing a holistic solution to create employee experiences that enable workers. Not just combine a set of point solutions that complexify and hinder their jobs. And with a comprehensive all-in-one solution, we can power both customer and employee experiences with technology that adds value and empathy to outcomes.

Our Vision for Workforce Engagement

Genesys is ushering in the future of work on a basis of empathy and trust, with technology serving to build a work environment where humanity and effect do go hand in hand. As another year went by, we continued our accelerated pace to deliver more robust capabilities and features that respond to a rapidly shifting human-centric work culture. We delivered over 50 WEM capabilities in our three discipline areas (resource management, quality assurance and compliance, and employee performance) last year and continued this momentum with 30 additional features released in the first quarter of 2021.

Likewise, we’ve seen a significant growth in active WEM customers (118% year-over-year) with an average of 3 organisations onboarded onto Genesys Cloud™ Workforce Engagement Management every day in 2020. Customers that understand the importance of engaged employees and efficient processes are swiftly moving over and utilising more workforce engagement capabilities to record interactions, build and modify schedules, elevate quality through transcription and ensure customer and employee satisfaction through surveys. We actively listen to our customers’ feedbacks and requests to help shape our vision of a workforce engagement platform for the future of work.

At Genesys, we recognise that words like “wellbeing,” “motivation” and “fulfillment” aren’t just words anymore. A future where workers, or better yet humans, are recognised and can thrive needs solutions that fully understand and heighten their potential, provide visibility into development and the space to connect with customers on a human level. We’re committed to creating the tools to enable you to face upcoming changes, and even more importantly, shape your own customer and employee experience vision.

 

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Workforce Engagement Management, 29 April 2021, Jim Davies, Jim Robinson, Kim Dans, Mark R. Dauigoy

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.