By Gabe Scorgie
5 min read
With the dramatic shift happening in the world of work, digital employee experience (DEX) is no longer a nice-to-have in terms of business growth and development—it's an absolute must. To help you navigate this journey with confidence, we'll take a look at the parts that make up an excellent digital employee experience, from examining its definition to understanding how best to create one that matches your team's unique needs.
Ready? Let’s dive right in!
Digital employee experience (DEX) evaluates how your employees interact with the technology in their workplace, and can help you leverage tech to create an optimal work environment. By assessing factors like usability and engagement, DEX helps ensure that your organization's digital tools are driving productivity while fostering a positive user experience for everyone.
Gone are the days of employees having to make do with whatever digital tools and resources their organization provides. Now, companies have a responsibility to provide an exceptional digital employee experience for team members—from proactively deploying new technology that helps them succeed all the way through creating training sessions tailored towards making sure everyone has what they need to reach business goals.
When your employees have a good digital experience, they become more engaged. When they don’t, they feel like it’s impossible to get work done and start to tune out.
High employee engagement is vital for your company because it leads to:
As you can tell, increasing employee engagement by working on a better digital employee experience will impact almost all facets of your business, from the health and safety of your employees to the customer satisfaction and revenues you get each year.
Having the right technology and support will encourage your employees to collaborate more.
Research conducted by Forrester showed that introducing collaboration platforms in the workplace can increase employee productivity by 10%.
With a good digital employee experience, your teams will have access to the right tools, seamless processes and workflows, and the best tech support. Therefore, communication and collaboration will be made easier and more effective.
Another benefit of a good digital employee experience is increased productivity. By providing your employees with the right technology they need to perform their tasks, they are more likely to feel motivated to do their job.
Think of it this way, if you have a good internet connection in your office, you are more likely to feel motivated to send out important communication than if your Wi-Fi connection keeps cutting off.
With a great digital employee experience, you can provide your employees with the right combination of digital tools to help them complete tasks more effectively. By doing this, you can increase your employees’ productivity by 20 to 25%.
With a strong and improved digital employee experience, you will be in a position to tackle one of the biggest problems for companies: attracting and retaining talent.
In the modern world, employee expectations are changing drastically, making it more difficult to attract the right talent for different roles in your organization. Even after you attract the right people, you still have the responsibility to retain them in your organization. High employee turnover has been proven to lead to lower returns, decreased staff morale, and poor-quality products and services.
An improved digital employee experience will help you avoid these problems by making your organization attractive to potential employees, and keeping current employees highly engaged and happy.
In 2021, about 5% of organizations had a digital employee experience strategy, team, and management tool. By 2025, this number is expected to rise to 50%. As such, you would do well to put in place an effective digital employee experience. But how do you go about it?
Let’s look at 5 tips to help you.
Ease of access and ease of use should be the goal of any technology you introduce to your employees. Keep in mind that the majority of the workforce has grown up using tech devices, as such, they expect these devices to be easy to access and use.
Start by making it easier for your employees to access the tools they need even when they are working remotely. This will boost the general digital employee experience in your company as users feel they can effectively complete their tasks, no matter where they are.
An effective digital employee experience is one where employees can easily complete their tasks, with the least hustle. One way to achieve this is by creating an employee success platform that enhances collaboration and brings people from different departments together.
Such a platform will make it easier for team leaders to assign tasks, and for team members to understand which tasks are assigned to them, making it easier for teams to work together effectively.
Robust communication is critical to creating a positive digital employee experience. For this reason, your internal communication systems should be built using flexible digital tools that help streamline your operations, deepen engagement, and bolster your company culture.
Another vital aspect of an excellent digital employee experience is the ease of accessing information. Your staff members should have quick access to information about guidelines and policies, projects and teams, and different people they can reach out to for help.
With a clear path for accessing information, your employees will be less frustrated, since they know where to get the help they need when they need it.
For you to know how your employees are interacting with technology in the digital workplace, you have to ask them. Using surveys is one of the best ways to gather feedback from your employees.
Regular surveys will help you gather real-time feedback that is honest, relevant, and contextual. This way, you stand a better chance of understanding how your employees experience technology in your organization, and what areas need improvement.
Work closely with your IT department to create surveys with simple questions that pop up when employees are working. For instance, you can ask questions like: 'how easy-to-use do you find this tool' or 'how efficient is this application in helping you complete tasks A, B and C?’
Once you receive feedback, you must incorporate it to enhance all areas of the digital employee experience.
At the core of any successful digital employee experience strategy is a commitment to fostering an environment where employees can succeed. By implementing systems that make life easier for them, you equip your team with the tools they need to excel—while driving company success. Crafting a good digital employee experience is an important step in creating a culture of success in your organization.
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Gabe Scorgie
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