Given the number of white-collar workers now working from home at least some of the time, the employee experience has grown increasingly reliant on technology. The pandemic’s wide-ranging impacts on coworker connections, workplace culture, employee wellbeing, and the ability to train new hires effectively, drives the daily experience of an organization’s employees as competition for talent increases.
Technology can shape the employee experience, allowing leaders to maintain communication and collaboration in hybrid-work environments. Workplace tech has grown in scope and efficacy over the past several years, and organizations have an unprecedented opportunity to promote productivity and deliver an experience their people value and appreciate.
Remove What Doesn't Work
Many are unhappy with their current technology experience at work. According to research from Qualtrics, only 30% of employees say their company’s technology offering exceeds expectations. Hybrid work demands higher quality as technology increasingly defines and affects how we work. For companies to retain their best employees in the long term, it’s imperative to provide tools that are useful, intuitive, and facilitate better interactions. The above-mentioned Qualtrics research also found that employees are 230% more engaged and 85% more likely to stay at an organization for more than three years if they have access to technology that effectively supports them at work.
A starting point for discovery is simply asking employees if they have the tools they need to be at their best in a hybrid environment. This might seem obvious, but 46% of employees say their companies don’t assist with expenses related to remote work, which should be a fundamental pillar in ensuring productivity and performance. Regular employee sentiment surveys can uncover what technology is needed to help leaders better understand the wellbeing of their teams, particularly around issues like preventing burnout or promoting healthy work habits. Companies can also use property technology to gather data on operations and experience to get a complex understanding of how (and if) tools or amenities are being used.
Closing the Gap
To ensure employees feel valued and heard, organizations should close any gaps in their digital workplace experience and be transparent about efforts and goals. Experience platforms offer leaders an integrated solution to retool their culture around the needs of their people by supporting their wellbeing. And given the instability of the Covid era, having more opportunities to hear employee concerns and make ongoing adjustments is crucial. By following through on promises to deliver a better digital workplace experience, organizations set themselves up for better hires and increased productivity.
Tons of insight can be gathered from employees through direct feedback and data analysis coupled with a culture that emphasizes their contentment and daily experience. While technology is one component of a broader employee strategy, its importance can’t be overstated. In an increasingly competitive hiring environment, those who emphasize the wellbeing of employees are the most likely to thrive.

Entering the Tween Years of Smart Workspace
Digital Solutions & Strategy Lead
January of every year seems to bring out the crystal ball gazers of every tech industry. A new year – and some would argue (incorrectly, but maybe that’s just me and Seinfeld) a new decade – gives rise to reflection as the last year closes and the annual cycle begins anew.

Education From Afar: Perspectives on Virtual Learning
Communications Lead
Host’s goals of providing increased digital and virtual learning options have been on the agenda for some time. However, with a global pandemic shuttering offices throughout the world, our learning and development professionals have had to expedite these options to ensure that new hires receive the same level of expert training, even if the training isn’t performed in person.

Bringing a New Member onto Your Remote Team
Director, Global Hospitality Operations
New employees join organizations every day, including during this unprecedented time where many are working remotely during the COVID outbreak. While it's a best practice to spend face-to-face time when onboarding, right now that's just not an option most of the time. Employee onboarding lays the foundation for the success of new hires at your company and provides a baseline to make connections going forward.

Leading Virtual Teams
Global Hospitality
Leading virtual teams can become untenable if you expect the virtual world to correlate perfectly with a traditional office environment. According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, 82 percent of virtual teams fell short of their goals. With that said, everything that makes for a strong leader in an office is twice as important in the virtual landscape.

The Leader's Role in Fostering New Social Norms as Workplaces Reopen
By now, almost all organizations around the world are somewhere on their re-opening journey, whether starting to plan, bringing employees back to the workplace, or assessing “what’s next” for the future of their work environments. Companies and organizations are appropriately focused on a range of activities such as resetting the physical work environment to achieve social distancing, installing signage, adjusting building systems, securing sustainable quantities of supplies, and adapting service levels in areas such as cleaning and food service.

Patrick Goes to Work
Global Hospitality Lead
When I’m focused on exciting new projects and things are going well, it’s always a surprise when they go awry unexpectedly. However, surprise doesn’t adequately cover our collective reaction to the rise of a global pandemic.
The Double Shift Juggling Parenting and Working During the Coronavirus
Director, Deployment and Operations
Working parents are facing a particularly challenging time, as the boundaries between work and home have completely broken down, resulting in the need for parents to juggle between parent mode to work mode and back again each day. The “double shift” is now the “double double shift.” Between putting three meals on the table, homeschooling, hosting Zoom meetings and conference calls, doing laundry, cleaning the house and trying to be present as both an employee and a parent, working parents are struggling and facing burnout.

Customer Service Keeps Us Connected, Safe and Well – Let’s Celebrate It!
Global Hospitality Lead
I think it’s worth our time to reflect on what customer service has meant to us in the past, what it means right now as our social lives are stunted by pandemic concerns, and what it will look like once we finally navigate our way through this challenging era of our lives.

The Employee Experience Formula That Inspires Innovation
Host Labs Lead
It will likely come as no surprise that our evolving workspaces, enabled by technology, outfitted with the most coveted amenities and served by hospitality experts, are designed to make employees feel valued, signaling to them that the work they do is important and impactful. But what about when the workspace provided by an employer is removed (even temporarily) and placemaking becomes a virtual endeavor?

Delight in the Workplace: An Opportunity for Limitless Value
Host Labs Lead
As surprising as it may seem coming from a commercial real estate company, the Host team obsesses over enriching lives and creating delight for people who work in the buildings we manage. We consider the daily journey of our customers and map both their current and best experiences in the workplace.

Why Workplace Experience Platforms Need the Human Element

Thoughtful Reads: The Importance of In-Between Moments

The Value of Authenticity
Employee Experience

Thoughtful Reads: Guide to the Hybrid Workplace

What We've Learned: Host Conversations #1

What Is the Workplace Experience Anyway?
Employee Experience

5 Hospitality Skills That Prepare You for the Corporate World

Thoughtful Reads: Tech Tools for Hybrid Work

Small Things: Host Team Recipes #1
Hospitality

Employee Experience Can Make or Break Your Business
Employee Experience

Thoughtful Reads: The Sensitivity Revolution

Host Conversations: Customer Service Week

Three Key Drivers of Employee Wellbeing
Wellness

Thoughtful Reads: Worker Risks Are Paying Off
