At the beginning of the year 2019, Forbes magazine proclaimed 2018 as ‘The Year of the Employee’, with concepts such as employee experience and employee value proposition starting to supersede conversations around customer experience and customer-centricity.

By Ravi Panthi, human resources head: Africa at Wipro

The thinking is that, in today’s on-demand digital economy, whatever business you’re in, it’s about service, relationships and human connection. Your frontline employees can make or break the customers’ experience, therefore, it’s important to create a right employee experience, in order to achieve great customer experience.

We realise the importance of everything that goes into fostering great employee experience: empathetic and visionary leadership, an autonomy to become a master of one’s craft, fair and motivating incentives, strong focus on career development, and all the tools and technologies that empower great employee performance.

It is important for companies to lead by example and demonstrate to clients the importance of developing a great environment for their people, as an essential step in unlocking greater value from their enterprises’ technology investments.

Fundamentally, everything related to employee experience rests on the foundation of morals, values and ethics. These can be seen in the way a company’s employees are treated, the vision of the management, employee-related policies, and incentive programmes.

Another very important and fundamental area (and certainly a ‘zero-tolerance zone’ for any potential wrongdoing) that companies are focusing is – Inclusion and Diversity. At Wipro, we work with thousands of colleagues, partners and clients across countries, representing several hundreds of cultures. Wherever we may be, our people act with sensitivity and awareness, building on the strength of our diverse insights and experiences, to create the most robust and forward-thinking solutions.

But, just what else goes into creating the best employee experience?

Despite what some people think, to attract and retain the world’s highest-calibre talent, it isn’t just about direct financial rewards. People want to be challenged with interesting opportunities to create a meaningful impact in the work that they do, and in this regard, we encourage all our employees globally to tackle different types of projects, in different regions, working on array of technologies, to develop a well-rounded experience.

It is also important to support employees with dedicated plans to develop skills for the future. Over the past few years, for instance, we’ve been on a massive drive to equip many of our employees working in areas such as support, development and testing roles, with a new set of skills for the modern digital era – everything from Cloud, to artificial intelligence, to blockchain-based development, DevOps, Agile capabilities, and more.

Employees also need real-time feedback on their performance, giving them the opportunity to course-correct and enhance the value they are providing. Gone are the times when annual performance appraisals gave a backward-looking perspective on past performance. Today, it’s about having authentic, brave and transparent conversations with one’s leadership, combined with 360-degree peer reviews, and taking on feedback positively to improve one’s performance in the future.

Today, the success of a business is largely derived from an employee’s ability to work in teams. With such a large workforce around the globe, Wipro truly believes in the power of teamwork. We provide a number of ways for employees to learn from each other, consult with each other for specialist advice, and work fluidly with each other through real-time unified collaboration tools.

Finally, an essential part of creating a great employee experience stems from having compassion and understanding for its people. For instance, employers must recognize that at various times in lives, the employees will have different levels of commitment towards their families and loved ones outside of the company. It is important for organizations to create flexible and personalised employee relationships, so that the employees begin to believe that their employer truly cares for them.

If 2018 was the Year of the Employee, we don’t yet know what 2019 will be. But, whatever catch-phrase is coined, the employee value proposition will be just as important in the years to come.