Are my employees happy? Are they engaged at work? Are they productive? These are questions any manager asks on a regular basis. But those queries have grown more pressing in an era of hybrid work environments, where employees are engaged less by face-to-face interaction and more by the technology that empowers them.
As Harvard Business Review (HBA) recently put it, “as hybrid work becomes more prevalent … the technology experiences that employers provide will more or less define the employee experience.” In fact, technology is “becoming central in attracting and retaining new talent, fostering workplace culture, [and] creating productivity,” HBR says.
Workplace tools are especially crucial at a time when employee engagement is lower than ever. In 2021, the percentage of engaged U.S. workers dropped for the first time in more than a decade, according to Gallup. Just 34% of employees are now actively engaged, and 16% are actively disengaged.
Yet with the right technology to support them at work, employees are 230% more engaged and 85% more likely to stay in their jobs for more than three years, according to Qualtrics research.
These are the powerful reasons more organizations should turn to no-code application development solutions. No-code tools enable businesses to quickly and cost-effectively create the forms, applications, and workflows that keep employees engaged and help them do their jobs more effectively.
Automating Workflows for Employee Effectiveness
Companies and their teams have long relied on personal productivity suites and communication technologies to keep their businesses running. But to be effective, most of the processes enabled by those tools need to be interconnected. Otherwise, capabilities grow isolated and workflows get interrupted by manual tasks that are error-prone and inefficient.
The traditional fix has been in-house application development. But development projects are slow and expensive. And development pros are difficult and costly to find and keep. By 2024, there will be a 28% shortfall in available developers, according to Evans Data Corp.
No-code software provides a compelling solution. No-code enables non-technical, line-of-business (LoB) employees to quickly and easily create their own online forms, applications, and workflows. “The increased demand for custom software solutions … has sparked the emergence of citizen developers outside of IT,” Gartner reports. Already, 41% of non-IT employees customize or build data or technology solutions, the analyst firm says.
With a no-code app builder, team members can create fully functional applications to integrate and automate workflows. To do so, users simply drag and drop reusable software elements onto a digital canvas. They can select templates to map processes, design user interfaces, enable data inputs, and generate outputs.
Departments and budgets are no longer burdened by the costly and time-consuming coding, testing, reviews, and implementations associated with traditional development. Really, there’s no need for help from the IT department at all. Security is automatically built in, and API integration automatically connects with popular off-the-shelf solutions.
Optimizing Employee Experiences Across Industries
No-code enables employees to construct forms, applications, and workflows across LoBs. In finance, for example, they can build software for customer onboarding, purchase orders, billing and invoicing, capital expenditures, expense reporting, and reimbursement requests. For HR, they can automate job applications, employment contracts, employee onboarding, performance reviews, time and attendance tracking, time-off requests, and employee feedback.
The employee-engaging benefits of no-code extend across industries, including insurance, healthcare, energy, retail, education, and the public sector. For instance:
- Madison National Life Insurance provides policies in nearly all 50 states. Its application approval process was bogged down with manual steps and slow workflows. Madison used no-code to digitize the process and accelerate operations. A smart form can now auto-fill key data. An offline feature lets agents in the field complete forms even if they lack an internet connection. A routing process automatically enters the data into the company’s core systems. And API interfaces can render forms in a variety of file types. Agents are now more engaged and productive. They can focus on delivering excellent service to customers – instead of wading through manual steps and delayed outcomes.
- Trilliant provides metering and communications systems for electric, natural gas, and water utilities. It needed to digitize processes to respond more quickly to customer needs and expand new business opportunities. No-code provided Trilliant with a powerful process-mapping tool. It allows the company’s LoB owners to document workflow steps, identify interaction points, remove bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and better manage investments in time and resources. Employees can now respond to customer needs in a timely fashion. Automated workflows make them more efficient, productive, and fulfilled in their work.
Digitized Today, Engaged Tomorrow
The need for employees to be engaged is hardly new. Studies dating back several years show that workers will even accept lower pay for more rewarding jobs. But younger talent – which makes up more and more of the workforce – especially wants to feel fulfilled. More than half of Zoomers say it’s “very important” for their work to have meaning, and 71% will work harder for less in the right circumstances.
A big part of employee engagement is driven by the experiences workers encounter in their everyday tasks. By empowering team members to streamline their own workflows and by replacing rote, manual tasks with digitized, automated processes, an effective no-code solution can benefit both your employees and your business.
