Laying the foundation of employee belonging (Guest blog by Accenture)

For many, the word ‘bureaucracy’ creates images of red tape and opaque processes that make sense only to those who created them. However, most people working in the public sector just want to do one thing: have a positive impact on people’s lives. The role of HR should, therefore, be to support people in realising this ambition.

Not only might this improve citizen experience, it could also help motivate and retain existing employees and encourage new ones to join. In a recent blog, our colleague Katie Gillett discussed how creating a sense of belonging could be key to building and maintaining the Civil Service of the future. In it, she highlighted how enabling people to transition between roles more seamlessly could be a major driver in creating this feeling of belonging. We now want to explore how leaders might actually make that a reality.

Getting it right where it matters

In simple terms, it’s all about enabling people to focus less on process and more on a shared purpose to create a greater sense of belonging.

Streamlining and personalising key HR processes to transform the employee experience in those ‘moments that matter’ could play a major role in achieving this goal. These big, decisive career occasions include onboarding, compensation changes, exits, role changes, promotions, transfers to a new department, parental leave and bereavements.

Currently, our Better to Belong research shows that about 25% of government workers don’t feel supported by their employers at these moments. Obviously, any solutions will need to be built with specific organisations and their employees in mind. But, broadly there are two key steps to consider:

1. Move away from one-size-fits-all processes. Make HR services and the way they’re accessed simple, personalised and seamless. This means designing them for people based on their specific needs and then enabling them to self-serve as much as possible when they need support. Doing this will require a deeper understanding of employee needs and behaviours than many organisations currently have, and expertise in answering those needs strategically and digitally.
2. Increase the speed and responsiveness of services. Reduce manual admin and form-filling by automating the processes and the support provided. This should have the added benefit of enabling HR experts to focus on more complex tasks. Doing this effectively will first require operational experts, who understand how to balance speed and efficiency with accessible, sensitive, customer-centric support. Then it will demand technical expertise to build the systems that will give users a single interface with core HR services and platforms.

The secret ingredients: Skills and scale

These changes will mean bringing together a wide range of skills and capabilities.

Creating more responsive systems requires experts who can get to grips with people’s needs at each ‘moment’ and user experience designers who can plan services that meet them. Improving the speed and responsiveness of services will need tech and operations teams to be totally aligned and working closely with one another. And finally, delivering at the scale required by government departments will demand experts who have achieved similar results in comparably-sized organisations.

Acquiring these skills will probably depend on a mix of partnering with the right organisations to support the change and transition, while also developing and/or acquiring experts who can continue to run and improve these new services continuously once they’re operational.

Done right, this could help create an environment where people feel like there are no barriers to exploring new opportunities. A place where they belong irrespective of their skills or aspirations. This sort of diversity could be key to attracting and retaining the Civil Service workforce of the future.

Of course, this isn’t the end of the journey. It’s the foundation to build on as you continue to create employee experiences that help your people thrive.

You can find out why creating the right working environment matters in Accenture’s latest research. Or please feel free to get in touch for a more detailed discussion.