Cohesion 2022, our annual user conference in San Francisco, opened with an inspiring keynote presentation that turned the definition of business success on its ear.
The power of gratitude, how it relates to the employee experience, and how it fuels innovation at Simpplr
Carolyn Clark, VP of Employee Experience and Transformation, described how she had implemented an intranet for 20,000 employees at Yahoo that was, to say the least, not easy. She left the company in 2018, looking for a change. And as though on cue, she received a message on LinkedIn from Dhiraj Sharma, the CEO of Simpplr. At first she thought he was going to “pitch” her on his platform, but instead he actually wanted to pick her brain about her challenges as an internal communications executive. He wanted to incorporate her thoughts into the vision he had to make work better!
Dhiraj’s request turned out to be just the breakthrough that Carolyn was looking for. Carolyn was so impressed with the mission—to make workplace communications, training, and interactions seamless, engaging, and satisfying—she came to work at Simpplr to help shape and articulate Dhiraj’s innovations in employee experience.
A key objective was to address the growing numbers of distributed, hybrid, and remote employees who feel disconnected, unsupported, and not included. At the same time, growing companies are experiencing:
- An ongoing need to connect with distributed teams so they feel like they are in the heart of things.
- Increasing challenges in hiring, and easily onboarding and training
- Retaining great talent and reducing employee burnout.
- Addressing demographic shifts and needs: Generations Y and Z are increasingly the majority of the workforce, with new and different expectations.
These business trends are like shifting sands under the foundation of every company and they can dramatically affect the attitudes and overall productivity and health of the organization.
One way of responding to these business shifts is simple. Keep employees informed, engaged, and provide them with a sense of belonging is a very effective approach to building and supporting a culture where business leaders practice gratitude every day. So often companies focus only on their goals, with revenue numbers, not people, in mind. They’re not fully connecting the dots between employees who are engaged and inspired and revenue growth.
Dhiraj shared one of his favorite quotes:
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” (quote by journalist Melodie Beattie)
How does gratitude relate to employee experience and overall company health and success? A practice of thankfulness helps rewire our brains for optimism, resilience, and the greater good.
Embracing employee experience as a key business driver is not just a “nice to have,” but a mission-critical must-have. That’s why Simpplr is innovating and investing in technologies that enable companies to deliver:
- Timely, consistent knowledge and unity of purpose.
- Welcoming, inclusive, engaging, and supportive corporate cultures.
- Effective internal communications, training compliance, and productivity.
- A more efficient way to access business apps— An improved employee experience should remove the friction caused by bouncing around between apps for surveys, onboarding, employee newsletters, kudos and recognition.
At so many companies, employees must remember and log into dozens of apps every day just to do daily work.
It’s only fair to provide a single platform that makes it easy to access everything they need.
He shared stats demonstrating the business impact of an effective employee engagement platform: up to 250 percent improvement in employee engagement, a 50 percent reduction in employee onboarding, and a 35 percent reduction in employee turnover!
Our passion for delivering a better employee experience is what drives the spirit of innovation at Simpplr.
Certainly, technology doesn’t solve everything. However, employee engagement and positiveemployee experience is more important than ever to keep people happy and companies healthy.
The relevance of “when work is good, life is better” has never been more important and it is here to stay.
