Workplace tech is the new battleground for the war on talent

With almost three-quarters of Australian workers actively wanting to work across multiple places and spaces, and 45 per cent agreeing that changing attitudes to remote work and benefits will transform the way people work over the next three to five years, new data from Freshworks’ Delight Divide survey reveals some alarming insights.

Despite the global shift to hybrid work igniting the biggest surge in technology investment in history, businesses are facing a potential workplace crisis. This is largely due to inadequate workplace technology that is resulting in decreased employee productivity, poor mental health, and inhibited talent retention.

In Australia, 94 per cent of employees surveyed by Freshworks expressed dissatisfaction with their workplace due to poor workplace technology. In today’s current work landscape, which has been drastically changed in terms of how people work and is dominated by hybrid work, effective technology is essential to productive output. So, what can employers do to get this right?

Can the right technology help you win the war on talent?

Over 90 per cent of Aussie employees surveyed by Freshworks said they will consider looking for a new job if their current employer does not provide access to the tools, technology, or information required to do their jobs well. During the pandemic, as lockdowns began to be enforced, businesses worldwide spent the equivalent of AUD 22 billion extra a week on technology to enable remote working (spending more than their annual IT budget in just three months).

Despite this, as the way we work rapidly changed, employees reported widespread failures from the workplace technology they use every day. Top complaints included slow speeds (51 per cent), extended response times from IT teams (34 per cent), lack of collaboration between departments (30 per cent), missing important features/capabilities (28 per cent) and lack of automation (25 per cent).

Retaining talent is set to become more difficult with 38 per cent of Australians looking at leaving their current employer in the next 12 months. The climbing talent shortage will add additional challenges to recruiting and hiring efforts and companies will need to step it up on all fronts: from employee culture, to pay and benefits, career development, and adoption of easy-to-use technology, in order to compete.

With 9 in 10 Australian business leaders agreeing that good technology is essential to win the war on talent (compared to 7 in 10 globally), technologies that delight employees and boost productivity, such as modernised chat functions, automated IT ticketing systems, streamlined omnichannel CX and EX, and analytical data-driven solutions, take centre stage.

Leveraging AI for business success

Previously, the adoption of “advanced” technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), was considered a futuristic concept. As businesses continue to tackle a huge increase in distributed workforces, it is evident that utilising powerful technology tools to develop IT infrastructure and find new solutions to meet employee needs is critical to business success.

Increasingly, businesses across all industries are leveraging AI to streamline work, automate manual processes and find efficiencies across the entire organisation. Long gone are the days when AI felt foreign and out of reach; at increasingly affordable prices and with easy integration, businesses can gain huge efficiencies and intelligence by tapping into AI-driven solutions.

So, what’s next?

To ensure employees have access to the right technology, companies should complete a “tech review”, showing who and where each employee is, their role in the organisation, what devices, tools, and apps they use, and what level of access they need. This will enable IT to provide a more secure, seamless, and frictionless experience for the end user.

Technology should be designed and implemented to make the lives of employees easier, through automation, collaboration, speed, analytics and insights. Without this, businesses risk putting their employees’ – and their own – mental wellbeing at risk, not to mention business productivity and reputation.

As an underlying principle, seek out IT systems that are customisable, automated, and scalable. Keeping employees satisfied in their work is an eternal challenge; doubly so when remote working has ignited IT frustrations. But the benefits of employee satisfaction, including improvements to productivity and loyalty, make the efforts to drive it worthwhile.

Ben Pluznyk is the director and country manager ANZ for Freshworks