As the past 16 months have opened an ongoing dialogue as to the fundamental nature of modern workplaces, and employees have become increasingly more assertive in what they expect from a productive working environment, the need for employee experience management tools has become more evident. Salesforce joins other enterprise cloud service companies in adding employee experience management tools to the Work.com platform to align their own services for the hybrid workforce.
Patrick Stokes, Saleforce's executive vice president and general manager of platform services, said that employee experience management is ready for transformation.
"This is a pivotal moment for business leaders to ensure hybrid work is productive and fulfilling for everyone," he said. Those that take the lead will attract the best talent. Those that don’t, won’t."
The announcements from Salesforce focus on three areas of employee experience management: wellbeing, talent, and employee service.
Work.com Wellbeing
All of the employee experience management toolsets have a segment that focuses on employee wellbeing. The wellbeing module at Work.com provides employees with insight into their physical, emotional, social, financial and professional wellbeing.
Workers access Employee Workspace on Work.com and complete wellness checks and personal planning reviews as part of their normal workflow. That data is then used to prompt context-appropriate content from the Wellbeing bot on Work.com, such as tips for reducing stress or reaching out to a financial advisor.
Managers and other organizational leaders receive data from these insights, which they can use to identify trends among their teams around overall wellbeing. Decisions can then be made to address areas of concern or related needs.
Salesforce confirmed that the wellbeing data will be aggregated and anonymized to provide an overview of trends within divisions and departments for manager/supervisor review. This should prevent that data from being directly identifiable to any particular employee.
Work.com Talent
Employee development, whether they work from home or a physical office, is a critical aspect of employee satisfaction and retention. The Talent update for Work.com looks to make that information a one-stop portal for employee experience management.
Each individual in an organization using Work.com will have a single view of critical employee development information, including:
- Skills
- Development goals
- Potential career paths
- Personalized career guidance
- List of internal roles which match their own interests and career goals
Managers and human resource teams get their own unique look into their workforce, with data insights that allow them to:
- Identify employees with skills that could contribute to a specific project or new role
- Identify individuals for new opportunities within the company
- Improve employee engagement and support career development
Work.com Employee Service
The new Work.com Employee Service tool intends to bring employee onboarding processes or existing employee transitional services into a centralized location for smoother access for any employee whether new or already onboard. The presence of this tool anticipates the security concerns a lot of existing human resources apps and services have caused.
This aspect of Work.com employee experience management contains three areas of focus:
- HR Service Center: This brings the wide variety of HR tools and resources into a single pane of glass. It uses quick search for employees to look up HR policy and information on their own, the ability to complete specific HR tasks such as direct deposit information update, corporate credit card inquiries, and other similar HR driven tasks.
- Service Catalog: Employees can access a menu of self-service options for HR products.
- Employee Concierge Bots: These AI-enabled chatbots give employees an avenue to ask questions as they search for information spread across HR knowledge bases, wikis, or other information repositories. The bots can also alert human HR specialists to queries when the employee queries are too complex to be answered by the bot.
Pricing and Availability
HR Service Center and Employee Concierge Bots should reach general availability in July 2021.
The Wellbeing, Talent, and Service Catalog modules on Work.com should reach general availability in November 2021.
Pricing will be released when each of the services is released.
