The acceleration of the home office culture has placed a magnifying glass on your business software

Starting a new role with a new organization can be an experience filled with excitement and anxiety for new hires. Similar to what you may have experienced as a kid on your first day at a new school. Embedded in these emotions is a careful analysis of, well - everything. While each personality gravitates towards different experiences, everything is fair game in evaluating your new employer and professional environment.

Many companies are evaluating their post-pandemic office and remote working strategies. Either way, the economy is now managing the highest number of remote workers ever. As a result, many new hires have been in their new roles for weeks and months without ever having stepped foot in their company office or met any of their colleagues or managers in person.  

Before, the employer had many more tricks up its sleeve to balance the new hire experience. This onboarding experience is now becoming entirely virtual. So what happens when your new employees’ workspace is identical to where they worked during their last role - their home office! These new employees will base their perception of their work environment more than ever before on the technologies they use.

No longer can you get by with aging business software from the early 90s while bragging that your office is in the best downtown location or has a waterfall feature and a barista.

Your portfolio of business software has quietly become the face of your company to your employees. As a result, your new hires will be more attentive than ever before to the technology making up their new working environment. 

A splash of modern and easy-to-navigate software can reinforce your new hires that they made the best career decision to join your organization. They are comforted to learn that their new employer has surpassed their previous employers, or at minimum, matched them in this category. They are confident to know their new employer is investing in the future, and they want to be part of that ride with you. 

As they settle into their day-to-day, they will either find themselves pleasantly surprised by how they can sip coffee and manage their tasks within the mind-relaxing experience provided by modern software. On the contrary, they will be pulling their hair out of their scalps for being forced to use legacy software or getting lost in dozens of folders filled with hundreds of spreadsheet files that no one can make any sense of. 

As you evaluate an investment to modernize your software stack, add the employee experience and company branding to your evaluation criteria. In addition to the promised benefits of automation and increased employee productivity you are being promised by your software vendors, also consider how you are aligning the virtual working experience to your new remote employees. Similar to how e-commerce operators want to carefully analyze and constantly improve the navigation experience of their visitors, you also want to think about which tools and systems your employees are spending 8 hours a day on.   

Mark Gervase with bill.com provides further insight into how to match modern technology to recruiting the best workforce.