Transform the Big Quit Into the Big Win

Transform the Big Quit Into the Big Win – Boost Employee Engagement in the Talent War

As many organizations continue to grapple with a shortage of qualified staff, attracting and retaining talent has become increasingly difficult. While new models such as remote offices or work from home provide increased flexibility, they also increase the need to connect and engage with employees on every level. Leading with purpose and vision while providing a positive employee experience using collaboration tools, AI, machine learning, and other technologies is crucial to boosting employee engagement and growing your business.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August 2022 that the unemployment rate had declined to 3.5%, as the number of jobs created during the month of July surged to more than half a million — twice as many as expected. Despite rising inflation, job creation across industry sectors has increased, but there still aren’t enough qualified or willing people to fulfill these open positions.

At the beginning of the pandemic, employers introduced flexible work arrangements as a short-term measure to safeguard employee health while maintaining continuity of business operations. Employers now grapple with the reality that the majority of their employees prefer to work in a home office coupled with community days or events where they can report to an office. The shift in the market with a different business working model, a shrinking workforce, and a widening gap between supply and demand has resulted in a greater need to invest in talent and employee engagement to create value for the organization.

Know Your Audience

With a multigenerational workforce, companies need a multifaceted approach to attract and motivate employees. As leaders, it is imperative that we identify ways to connect with employees on every level, understand their motivations, and lead with purpose-driven work. While attrition will always be a fact of life, research indicates that engaged employees are inspired by their leaders, connected to the organizational vision, committed to the organization, and driven to win. A recent McKinsey survey revealed that employees remain with their employers for the flexibility whereas they separate as a result of poor leadership or a lack of career development. Developing and maintaining frequent connections, virtually or in person, helps create a circle of trust in a remote work environment that often makes it easier for competitors to recruit your employees for other opportunities. Over the last two years, a number of remote associates have said they ended the work week with one employer and began with a new employer on the following Monday without any disruptions to their work environment.

Employee Experience

As an undergraduate more than 20 years ago, I had a part-time job manually keying claims data for a company that offers health, dental, pharmacy, and supplemental insurance. Although it was very important to process Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) claim forms for patient care reimbursement, the job itself was unfulfilling due to the monotonous repetition. After one year, I resigned in search of more fulfilling work that let me use my skills in a more meaningful way. My flight from boredom parallels much of the attrition seen during the Great Resignation — a mass exodus of talent via resignations and retirements in the pursuit of happiness.

Symbeo uses machine learning (ML) to extract text, handwriting, and data from scanned medical bills with greater accuracy and speed, thereby eliminating the need for manual data entry. As the machine performs the perfunctory functions of processing documents, employees are freed up to contribute more value to the organization. This Harvard Business Review article emphasizes the importance of purpose-driven work and autonomy (the ability to shape how we work, what we work on, whom we work with, etc.). Automation tools that can cleverly and autonomously perform the repetitive and mundane parts of people’s jobs result in greater employee satisfaction as well as better results.

Symbeo’s suite of intelligent invoice automation products incorporate emerging technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and supervised machine learning, which can deliver results with an accuracy and precision that’s impossible for humans alone to achieve. Additionally, the machine grows smarter and better at predicting outcomes with each transaction and continuously retrains itself without the need for human intervention. This allows our customers to invest their time in value-added activities instead of keying invoices, researching discrepancies, routing documents for approval, or reconciling journal entries for financial closing processes.

Automation is sometimes met with resistance as a perceived replacement for a talented workforce. Within our B2B customer portfolio, customers across industries including healthcare, retail, industrial, and automotive sectors who have adopted our intelligent invoice automation solutions have realized 95% automation rates and reduced time to market by more than 50% while maintaining their headcount. As computer technology accelerates and finance team in enterprise and mid-market companies continue to evolve into strategic business partners within their organizations, those organizations must scale operations reliably to meet their ever-changing business demands.

Capitalize on Digital

In a digital age, where B2C trends are driving B2B practices due to a wider talent pool of digital natives and changing market expectations, traditional ways of managing business operations are becoming obsolete. Historically, organizations have relied on a limited number of subject-matter experts to understand the intricacies of their operations. While their experience and expertise are invaluable, bottlenecks are prevalent and tend to implode during peak performance times or vacation schedules, often leading to burnout.

AI and machine learning are crucial for harnessing the power of technology to solve business problems or create new opportunities while offering greater job satisfaction. Symbeo’s intelligent invoice automation solutions allow our customers to capitalize on the business and process knowledge within their organization. Companies who are able to plan and execute a digital transformation strategy successfully will not only win in the marketplace, but also in the war for talent.