ZenNut Cracks the Code for Employee Engagement

Operations executives constantly tell us that employee engagement, retention and levels of attrition are a concern with their service providers. Turnover in outsourcing delivery staff can be pretty high, especially when staff can do an activity well, and there is a competitor “across the road,” looking for staff as well. These moves strip service providers of experienced staff and whatever unwritten context made those employees effective. Another employee can be trained to do the work, but it takes time to recruit, on-board and train. The increasing use of automation in outsourcing is also creating an environment where uncertainty over the viability of roles may be creating greater employee unease as well.

As software absorbs more routine tasks, many staffers take on new, higher-value roles. This higher value level of talent becomes not only more challenging to fulfill but costlier to lose. As such, engaging an employee base to interact and build relationships is a key component to retaining this talent.

We have seen a number of service providers use parties, fitness and community service programs to entice workers to stay because they appreciate the culture, have an identity with the place they work, and enjoy camaraderie with co-workers. HfS came across a solution that is targeted to enable employees to easily set up and coordinate these types of programs on their own—ZenNut, an easily accessible, mobile-enabled tool for supporting employee engagement programs with themes in fitness, nutrition and volunteering. It’s not developed just for service providers looking to increase employee engagement, but it is being tested in this way.

ZenNut is in the cloud with an iOS application. Companies can buy different fitness, nutrition or volunteering programs for their workforce. These are customizable by client administrators to make them fit for company/objective purpose, and then accessible by employees. ZenNut’s aim is to white-label the tool and integrate it within established HCM platforms. The tool is still in its infancy, but the targeted benefits are:

• Increased employee engagement
• Greater social awareness and corporate responsibility
• Improved relationship development between workforce
• Improved wellness of workforce

Additionally, obesity and obesity-related illness are continuing to rise around the world. The knock on effects to enterprises in terms of work days lost and benefits payouts run into the millions. Introducing corporate-wide policies to encourage a healthier lifestyle will go a long way to assist workplace obesity levels and time off from this condition. An application like ZenNut is a small piece of the overall puzzle to manage employee engagement and wellness. But there certainly is value in creating a sense of “team” and “belonging” within a transient and active workforce.

In a very crowded wellness app market, what makes ZenNut unique is the ease with which an employee can launch a program and invite peers to join, whether it is setting up a cycling club or a volunteer activity, for example. Typically, it is someone on an HR team that launches this type of program, but ZenNut enables employees to do it within a framework set up by HR, as an integrated part of the HR system.