Employee Service Index (ESI): A Modern Benchmark To Measure Employee Service?

Do you know how well your organization supports its employees? How can employee support be measured? Chances are that you might have not even given it too much thought. The companies generally do not have a good grasp of what to do and this why Rezolve.ai wants to address.  

A company's policy should place employees' development at the core of its philosophy. Successful businesses take into account their customers' needs as well as the welfare of their workforce.   

Companies are going through a lot of changes. As more employees started working remotely, there has been a huge shift in implementing technology to keep the business processes running. But within all this chaos employee support/ service has been often neglected, as it is not considered a “priority”.   

To build frictionless enterprises, companies must create world-class processes and services that deliver enhanced productivity, faster time to market, and improved employee experience. Unfortunately, even though employee engagement and support are buzz words in the business, there is no way to measure them across the board. Comparative studies are also complex. Thus, there is no way for people to analyze where they stand and improve compared to industry standards, as there is none.   

Before we discuss how to measure employee support/ service level, let's talk about enterprise friction which, pretty much, is a universal issue.   

What is enterprise friction?

The concept of enterprise friction refers to the resistance that happens throughout normal business processes. It is anything that prevents or hinders employees from getting instant help, access to the right information or services provided by the organization. The enterprise friction can manifest in many ways.   

1. The right information is not readily available
   
   
2. Issues with laptop and software
   
   
3. Lack of technical support
   
   
4. Denied access to the document
   
   
5. High digital complexity of processes
   
   
6. Ineffective employee training  
   
   

How enterprise friction impacts employee experience?

Employee experience is one of the major drawbacks of enterprise fiction. If employees face bottlenecks in every process or task that they are trying to complete, it’s bound to leave employees frustrated and unproductive.   

If employees feel they’re not getting proper support and their experience is bad, they even start looking for better opportunities. And this further results in the loss of trained resources which directly impact the dollar value.   

Reduced workplace friction will result in more satisfied and more productive employees, so it is a no-brainer for companies to focus and invest in making employee support and service as seamless as possible.   

The Forbes report estimates that 45% of employees in the world have difficulty asking basic questions about their benefits or fixing workplace equipment issues.   

Reducing enterprise friction can bring huge changes such as:   

• Enhanced employee retention
  
  
• Increased employee productivity
  
  
• Boost employee satisfaction and engagement
  
  
• Accelerate business ROI
  
  

Now the question arises how to know if an organization has Enterprise Friction? As we said earlier- there is no set industry standard to measure this!   

Employee Service Index (ESI)?

To fix the problem of increasing enterprise friction, Rezolve.ai has come up with the concept of the Employee Service Index (ESI). ESI is an in-depth analysis and measurement of an organization's employee service level. It enables organizations to understand where they stand in their employee service function and identify the bottlenecks that are causing enterprise friction and improve employee service.   

Let’s try to explain ESI in more detail.

Categories of Employee Service Index

Rezolve.ai divides the employee service index (ESI) into three categories that are critical to improving employee experience- Employee support, enterprise knowledge and change management.   

1. Employee Support:
   
   Employee support is essential to reduce enterprise friction. It refers to how quickly an organization offers assistance or support to its employees when they need it.
   
   In the new remote work reality, every day employees require support related to IT, HR, operations, finance and others. For example, an employee may encounter various challenges at his/her workplace – in-office or remotely such as:
   
   - I need to install the software.
   
   - How to fix a laptop that crashed?
   
   - How to fix invalid password errors?
   
   These issues might look trivial, but they constitute majority of the issues that employees waste their time on. To resolve these issues, employees take a lot of time to find the right information to do their work properly. As per the report of McKinsey, employees daily spend up to 1.8 hours finding and collecting information. Imagine the monthly productivity loss due to this.
   
   Today, everyone wants immediate issue resolutions. Employees expect their organization to provide proper instant automated support. And if the support is not good, it prevents them from completing their tasks and this affects business productivity.
   
   One of the most important components of an employee's experience is their onboarding process. The traditional onboarding method is a lengthy process that often creates confusion for the employee. It becomes imperative that organizations have a smooth and better onboarding process. An employee will be satisfied if he/she is effectively, quickly and seamlessly incorporated into the enterprise process.
   
   As per the reports of Happeo, employees' onboarding experience is critical, as 69% of employees likely to stay with the organization for at least three years. Therefore, organizations need to ensure a flexible and quick employee onboarding process.
   
   A good employee support process will hugely impact your employee service index (ESI) and boost your ESI score. Companies with good ESI Scores will reach new business heights with great ROI.
   
   
2. Enterprise Knowledge
   
   In order to provide smooth employee experience, knowledge management plays a key role. To get their work done correctly, employees need to have access to the right information at the right time. If an employee wants to know company policies, product-related information, or anything else, he/she might waste too much time trying to find that information. This is because the knowledge base is not accessible, user-friendly or is complex to use.
   
   Mostly, employees have to search in old document management systems, SharePoint or the intranet, where all the information resides. However, most of the time, it is not easy to access and employees are not even aware of where information can be found. This results in employees wasting a lot of time.
   
   In order to provide smooth employee experience, knowledge management plays a key role. By utilizing enterprise knowledge, the platform can provide solutions to a wide range of employee problems.
   
   
3. Change Management
   
   In every organization, change management plays a significant role. The term "change management" in an organization refers to how an organization develops or modifies one of its critical components, such as policies, rules and regulations, business strategies, adopting new tools, technologies or infrastructures, or altering internal processes.
   
   Why change management is important?
   
   Change is inevitable, especially in an era of artificial intelligence, machine learning, the cloud, and remote working. As per the changes happening around the world, companies have to implement new tools to ensure a smooth collaboration between employees and the company.
   
   The majority of companies implement these changes poorly. Mostly they use official emails or conference meetings to communicate the changes. Most employees do not read emails, so the change does not reach them. Even if they read the email, chances are they’ll not be able to implement the new changes on their own. And the most important reason why implementation fails is that employees don’t have the information handy about the changes when they require it!
   
   Implementing changes can be a complex task. Change management could be at both central and local levels. Change management not just impact on central level and seems to trickle down the local levels.
   
   Example: Change management in a company with 300 branches is no different from a startup with 30 employees. If you want to change the business strategy, how do you go about it, how do you communicate with your employees, and how do you make sure that your employees know what's going on and they follow the changes?
   
   It is always best to create two-way communication strategies for change. Companies need to have a platform to ensure that your new changes have reached the employees and their queries related to them have been resolved.  
   
   

How do you measure Employee Service Index?

Your employees' experience will reshape everything right from your organization's culture to your financial performance. A study conducted by Deloitte University Press states that around 80% of executives rated employee experience and support as the essential part of every business. Moreover, if the companies provide good support, they will be able to get their work done productively. Thus, it is important for companies to calculate the employee service index.

Employee Service Index (ESI) is measured by scoring the company on the three categories mentioned above- employee support, enterprise knowledge and change management. We have divided ESI into 2 parts-   

1. Quick ESI
   
   Quick ESI gives a quick scan of the employee service within an organization. It is meant for executives who want to understand where they stand in terms of employee support instantly. The service desk managers can use this tool on the website directly without taking feedback from anybody else.
   
   This is a quick way to understand how well they measure up to industry standards.
   
   
2. Detailed ESI
   
   It is a detailed survey that focuses on employee and employer perspectives and tries to understand their point of view about the service level.
   
   For example, if the employer says they provide instant support to their employees, is this claim backed by employees as well? Detail ESI provides you the feedback about the service, which is vital for both employers and employees.
   
   It covers a lot of parameters, which may vary from industry to industry. Some of these parameters are- access to knowledge, average response time, mode of communication, employee support, change management, etc.
   
   After we have factored in all the parameters, we develop a score based on the weightage of each parameter. Based on this score, you can determine how effective your employee service is compared to industry standards. A detailed ESI will help you identify the loopholes and fill them. This detailed ESI should be taken quarterly in order to track the progress.
   
   

Conclusion  

The success of an organization depends on its employees, regardless of its industry. Often, employee services go unnoticed or neglected. Providing a better and timely employee support, help business to retain their top performers, increase employee engagement and promote higher performance.   

The employee service index is a revolutionary concept created to help organizations determine where they excel in employee service, find their current position which helps to enhance themselves in the future.   

Employee service index is a huge part of efficient employee support. A good ESI score can help you improve employee productivity and increase ROI. So, the more efficient and productive you are at ESI, the more you save for your company.