Can Investing in Employee Experience Actually Save You Money?

The work landscape has seen more than its share of challenges in 2020-2021, but one issue has emerged that could have a big impact in the longer term: The Great Resignation.

If you’re not familiar with this trend, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows upwards of 3 million people have been quitting their jobs every month since April 2021, with the highest quit rates among mid-career employees and in the health care and tech industries, according to Harvard Business Review.

It might not be something you want to think about. After all, if you’re paying employees for their work, shouldn’t they be happy enough? While compensation is obviously important, studies show that employee experience is crucial not only to attracting talent, but to holding on to current talent. So, it’s something to consider, especially in a competitive hiring market.

What else can a good employee experience do for your company? It can boost productivity.

A 2019 Gartner employee survey showed that employees who are happy with their experience at work are 69% more likely to be high performers. And in a shifting economy, when you have no spend to waste, productive employees are particularly valuable.

Here’s how HR professionals can work with their companies to make the case for—and support—improved employee experience.

Plan for remote and hybrid work arrangements

A survey by The Work Trend Index found that while 70% of employees want to continue working remotely, 65% do want to spend more time in person with their co-workers. Meanwhile, 66% of decision-makers are planning to support hybrid work with the view that it’ll become the norm, post-pandemic.

That means businesses need to support a seamless way for workers and teams to collaborate, no matter where they’re working. Manual paper processes are tricky enough to support consistently in-office, but nearly impossible to maintain in a remote or hybrid environment. And without full visibility into spending, it can be difficult to pinpoint where cash flow stands in critical moments.

Make it easier to be productive

Employee experience is shown to be a key driver of business success. A happy employee, as the survey data above shows, is generally a productive employee. Empowering workers and actively supporting their sense of self-determination for their career path and everyday work sets a strong foundation for employee happiness.

Which brings us to one of the main touchpoints of employee experience: managing your data in a way that provides easy access and visibility—at all times. Manual paper processes are famously tedious, especially when it comes to spend management. They are also time-consuming and can throw a major wrench into productivity.

But when you fully automate your finance processes, you let employees devote less time to lower-satisfaction jobs, like manually creating expense reports and entering data, and give them more time to pursue fulfilling work, like data analysis and collaborating on strategies that help the business thrive. (See what automation means for your job.)

How automating spend management can help

New York-based nonprofit Simons Foundation automated its spend management, creating a more efficient, collaborative paperless process—one that’s also conducive to a hybrid work environment.

“We were impressed at how much the solution delivered to the Foundation in terms of the value proposition and overall functionality. Every tool we’ve implemented, from travel bookings to mobile expense submissions to invoice, has saved us time, saved our users time, and has enabled us to effectively scale,” said Nick Sanghvi, accounts payable manager for Simons Foundation.

Giving employees an experience they love is critical to keeping them on board, happy and, ultimately, productive. SAP Concur solutions offer ways to digitize your processes, integrate all of your spend data so you can manage your finances from anywhere and keep your teams connected with a seamless, efficient way to do their jobs.

Check out our solutions for HR leaders for more.