Enhancing employee experience has become equally important as the ‘given’ challenges of compliance, flexibility and efficiency. Keeping a mobile and global workforce happy and compliant can have a very positive effect and can concurrently bring cost savings and simplicity to some complex processes. Ultimately, the development of employee experience can provide extensive benefits to the company and the bottom line.

How Apps can enhance employee experience

Global EMS was tasked with providing a cross-platform global Expense Management app for a major global telecoms company. In developing an app to help employees keep track of expenses, there were the usual constraints of ‘everything’ for very little cost to the client and constantly changing requirements. During this process we added other capabilities and importantly recognise further improvements to enhance employee experience; hitherto not well catered for in the marketplace.

A simplified process, ‘on the move’

Firstly, the employee experience was improved by being able to quickly add expenses on the App, photograph receipts, then automatically send for approval by the line manager, with payment made within a week.

Reports were instantly retrievable, from anywhere in the world, with agreed FX rates. The employee now has a simplified time-saving process and information on the app that can be used anywhere in the world, ‘on the move’.

Enhancing employee experience through reporting

The App provides payslip and payment information; expatriates also require a pay statement, which whilst not a legal payslip requirement, tells them exactly the monies they have in which accounts and how it was all calculated. Again, the employee experience is enhanced by more information, better presented than just the payslip in a hard copy.

For many employees, the thought of providing a ‘standard’ tax return to the tax providers is both a daunting and very time-consuming task. By holding the global payroll and expense management data, Global EMS can remove 95% of the work required by the employee and supply the data directly to the tax provider – another major improvement which further benefits the employee, who is not normally given the choice of automated feed – in turn, more time saved for the employee and reduced cost for the company.

Increased versatility for the employee

Being able to update HR information (self-service) including bank accounts across a variety of mobile platforms, enables the employee to make fast changes without having to submit forms, boot up a laptop or computer. Increased versatility including an age-old problem of tracking is also part of the improved employee experience, enabling them and the company to remain compliant with minimal effort.

How does the company benefit from improved employee experience?

The advantages of enhancing employee experience cannot be overstated. Furthermore, in this mobile age, the ability to have these capabilities on an App is expected and less automated and paper-based approaches are viewed very negatively.

In addition to the clear advantages in enhancing employee experience, there are tremendous ‘reflective advantages’ to the company, which can fully mitigate the cost of the additional process and save yet more money and time.

A prime example of this are the savings achievable on tax services – not only does an automated process save the time of the employee, but also saves on the cost of supporting the employee which in many cases, could equate to £1000 per employee.

The actual value of enhancing employee experience

The client’s employees told us that this app and new approach has saved them 90 minutes a month compared to using the previous email and paper-based system. Knowing the average employee salary, we were able to calculate this in cash terms.

The money saved in terms of the employee was much greater than the entire cost of the provision of payroll and expense management and some.

How this benefits the CFO

This was without taking into account any further savings, such as the effect on finance by automatically populating the general ledger or indeed any of the company’s systems, which have far-reaching cost efficiencies that greatly exceed any cost incurred. The automation of the process reduced human error and sped up the cycle.

Furthermore, as many companies have separate expenses and payroll teams, this methodology ensured in-country compliance for taxable expenses.

Moreover, it enabled the use of tax efficient payment processes, which in many countries can save thousands per year; a welcome relief for the CFO.

Wasting less and therefore producing more is realised every day

So, with the addition of a straightforward application and process refinements, we can substantially enhance employee experience; the ongoing advantages saves money for the company and ensures compliance.

‘Synergy’ and making more out of less are cliches; however, wasting less and therefore producing more is realised every day and can be very straightforward to implement.

Finally, aside from enhancing employee experience, clear compliance, cost and time savings, there is an increasing need for future-proofing within a rapidly changing workforce and political environment.

If you would like the enhance employee experience of your organisation, get in touch with us today on – enquiries@global-ems.com