Editorial
Amid the dizzying pace of technological change surrounding us, I've been reflecting on the fundamentals. Returning to the basics reminds me that innovation is built on core principles and simple truths, an understanding that helps me navigate the landscape more effectively.
The Disconnect Between Idealized and Lived Employee Experiences
To start, we need to challenge the myth that experience is everything. This overused phrase promises seamless, end-to-end personalized and relevant interactions within our digital environments. However, our daily experiences as consumers, employees or patients often fall short of these lofty promises. Those experiences are fragmented, impersonal and lack relevance to the task at hand. Despite years of conversation around customer (CX), employee (EX) and patient (PX) experiences, the gap between the ideal and the lived experience suggests that something fundamental is amiss.
During the iPad 2 launch in 2011, Steve Jobs said (at the 01:08:35 mark), "Technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing." That is the signature of a complete experience. Jobs believed that magic happens when you blend cutting-edge tech with creativity and a human touch. It's about how technology fits into our lives and how it makes us feel.
The 2023 American Time Use Survey shows that employed Americans spend approximately 35% to 40% of their weekly time at work. Our workplaces clearly play a significant role in our daily lives, influencing not just our schedules, but also our overall well-being. According to Gallup, employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, highlighting a growing trend of employee detachment, particularly among workers younger than 35.
Given how much time we spend at work, understanding the core principles of the complete employee experience is crucial, particularly in today’s fragmented and siloed workplace. Departments continue to operate in isolation, leading to breakdowns in communication, experience and culture.
5 Core Principles of Digital Employee Experience
Throughout my professional journey, I've found five core principles are essential for creating a complete employee experience. Each principle plays a crucial role in enriching the employee’s digital experience (DEX) and making them feel valued. By focusing on these principles, we can break down silos and create an engaging and supportive work environment.
1. Commit to a Tech Stack and an Approach
When embarking on the employee experience journey, it is important to commit to your tech platform(s) and approach. Selection should be underpinned by a well-defined blueprint, known as a reference architecture. A reference architecture provides a common language, sets expectations, guides compliance and ensures the coveted stakeholder alignment.
However, reference architectures are not static documents. They should evolve alongside your business, adapting to new challenges and opportunities. If these architectures are not integrated into your daily workflows, they risk becoming obsolete and irrelevant.
2. Implement in Context
The lost art of implementation is about turning theory into actionable plans. To achieve this, it's essential to consider the unique aspects of your business and user environment. Understanding the nuances of your context increases the chances of success and significantly impacts your business operation.
Be sure to differentiate between business context and user context. Business context refers to the overall environment in which your company operates, including organizational culture, goals and resources. User context, on the other hand, focuses on the needs, behaviors and preferences of your employees. This crucial distinction affects employee motivation and the overall success of your implementation efforts.
3. Cultivate Workflows
Invest in developing and continually refining business workflows. A workflow is a sequence of activities designed to produce a specific business outcome. To refine workflows, use metrics that measure efficiency like cycle time and effectiveness, such as error rates. Pay particular attention to boundaries that define business workflows.
Like context, it's easy to impose organizational or user-driven constraints, which can lead to a siloed perspective. Unified workflows reveal opportunities to anticipate needs and create delightful experiences with pre-service.
4. Connect Platforms for Humans
To achieve a truly seamless and scalable experience, we need to go beyond rudimentary automation. Platforms must connect beyond just data, whether batch or real-time. It's essential to also integrate authentication, user interface (UI) and workflows across devices.
By incorporating these additional elements, we can create more intuitive, cohesive and frictionless work environments. This holistic approach ensures that users can navigate the environment effortlessly with secure and streamlined authentication processes.
5. Calibrate Experience Consumption Against Value
Systematic and candid adjustments are necessary to maintain high-quality employee experience. Identify and review outlier areas in the workflow, rather than the primary streams, that are consuming time, money and/or energy. Agree on the value metric that is relevant to your business context. This calibration allows all teams to work towards and be incentivized by a common goal.
There is potential for bias and subjectivity to easily creep into the process of agreeing on value metrics. Blind or independent peer reviews can create a more equitable decision-making environment.
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There is so much more to explore on these topics. Stay tuned for future articles where I'll do a deep dive on each of the five topics. Let's create something magical together!
Read more about how to create exceptional digital employee experiences:
- Creating Exceptional Employee Experiences: Where HR, Communications and Technology Unite — Employee experiences cross departmental boundaries. So to create exceptional EX, multiple departments must work together – with internal comms in the lead.
- Where AI Can Enhance Employee Experience: A Digital Workplace Perspective — AI can help build digital workplaces where employees thrive. Success lies in balancing tech innovation with an understanding of employee needs and aspirations.
- Digital Employee Experience Isn't Just About Efficiency — Sure, you can tweak a system for efficiency… but if people really hate the experience, it’s not going to stick.
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