What if your employees could answer their own IT questions, find out about benefits, and more without having to wait for someone else? Employee self-service in the hybrid workplace is an increasingly popular trend that has many advantages. For example, it enables employees to be more productive by giving them access to information on demand. It also makes life easier for IT and HR departments who are often bogged down with requests from staff members.

Employees working from home under COVID-19 restrictions and flexible working arrangements also benefit from this technology. It has enabled them to manage benefits, submit IT requests, and more in a way that works for their schedule.When workplaces are remote it can be difficult to provide the same level of support that staff members in an office receive. With employee self-service, you can empower your employees by giving them access to everything they need when and where they need it most.One important dimension to consider is the experience that employees have of their organisation. It can be difficult for remote workers to engage with an organisation when their support experience is fragmented. a central support portal, employees feel more connected to their organisation and this builds trust and loyalty.

Employee self-service helps organisations to support their employees when they need it most, but there are challenges that must be considered before you can provide a great experience for your staff members.

The first is the availability of information in an online system; if this isn't available at all times or in multiple formats then remote workers may struggle. Knowledge management is a separate topic; however, a streamlined and effective approach federates existing knowledge from around the organisation (often found in Confluence, Sharepoint, Google Docs and other repositories) and makes it all available from a single portal. This avoids complex projects to migrate knowledge into a central repository, which may require significant funding as well as buy-in from owners of current knowledge stores.

Secondly, providing users with a number of different channels to engage with the business is vital. Any one channel (website, Slack, Teams, email) may not suit all users and all corporate cultures. The end result is that staff will default to using the phone - an expensive and inefficient channel. Engaging users "where they live" results in the highest levels of service adoption for central support platforms.

By implementing multi-channel self-service support and empowering your employees, there's a good chance that the phone will be used only as a last resort; freeing up time for you to focus on more important projects.

Finally, it's critical that users don't feel as though they're just another cog in the machine. A fragmented approach to support delivery can be frustrating and make employees feel neglected. You need them to feel as if they are an integral part of your organisation – thus creating engagement, productivity and staff retention.