Case study: How Maxis created a seamless, digital employee experience

As a leading digital enabler in Malaysia, it’s only natural that the company is viewed in the same way by its employees. Monir Azzouzi, head of performance and development at Maxis reveals how its done.

As a digital enabler for both enterprises and consumers in Malaysia, Maxis has a very clear digital strategy - to help Malaysians do as much as possible digitally and especially through smartphones.

On the HR side, Monir Azzouzi, head of performance and development at Maxis reveals: “We want to create the best employee experience possible. We want HR services and employee information to be accessible anywhere you are and anytime you need it.”

“Your mobile phone is with you all the time. Therefore, mobile first solutions are the way to create a seamless and the greatest employee experience,” he explains.

As such, Maxis’ HR team worked with its sourcing, legal and IT departments to implement mobile and cloud solutions in areas of HR including recruitment, on-boarding, performance management, learning and development, and talent review.

In recruitment, Maxis developed its own mobile apps, and partners with a digital interview solutions provider, HireVue, to make the recruitment process mobile and seamless. This move has shortened the recruitment processing time, removing much of the administrative work. At the same time, it acts as a filter to recruit only those who are comfortable with technology, allowing for a higher quality selection of candidates. Apart from its digital capabilities, the tool is also based on some strong, highly validated psychological understanding of how to get the best and most honest inputs during the interview process.

“That said, we still meet candidates face to face for final interviews to ensure a holistic experience for all candidates, and to show them what the Maxis culture is all about and see if they would be a good fit.”

In terms of learning and development, Maxis believes in the philosophy “learn anytime, anywhere”, especially in an age where new apps and micro-learning are taking L&D to a new level as part of the employee experience. As such, Maxis has made several L&D programmes available to its employees. These include online learning through partnerships with Lynda, HMM, SmartUp as well as sending employees for training through Coursera, Udacity and other online venues; monthly talks conducted by experts from all over the world at physical premises and through webinars; as well as classroom trainings.

“I strongly believe in blended learning and self-learning. We therefore always do our utmost to create an environment that encourages growth in the way our employees find most suitable -  especially online/mobile,” Azzouzi says.

With a digital, paperless culture prevalent in Maxis, gaining the buy-in of stakeholders wasn’t difficult. The one challenge the firm faced was to ensure that its employees used them.

“The innovators and early adopters are always the easiest to convince to jump on the digital bandwagon. The rest requires a little more convincing and marketing effort,” Azzouzi says.

The solution? Having a good user experience and user interface. “Many of the old HR solutions don’t have a compelling user interface, let alone user experience, which makes employees want to log off before they even start looking for information,” he explains.

“We can no longer just look at price and technical specifications. We always put ourselves in our employees shoes and ask ourselves how easy the system is to use and how the employees will experience the tools,” Azzouzi adds.

Maxis also has an internal marketing plan on marketing its HR products to make sure all employees hear about the new HR tools be it by the company intranet, Yammer, town halls or management meetings.

While the initial cost of digitisation might be high, Azzouzi believes that more will be saved than spent by having more satisfied, engaged and efficient employees in the long run. “We are the leading digital enabler in Malaysia, and it's important we’re perceived the same way by our own employees.”

Photo / Maxis