Editorial
Here’s a situation based on a real-life event: Two tickets came into the IT help desk, with both users reporting that their laptops were running extremely slowly. As the IT team investigated, they discovered 800 additional users were actually experiencing the same issue — they just hadn’t reported it yet.
Is this a technology issue or an organizational capacity issue?
The answer? It’s both.
As an IT guy and former system admin, I’m a huge advocate for having the right tools in place. AI-driven tech such as chatbots and self-healing systems deliver huge gains in productivity and efficiency. But if you want to improve the digital employee experience (DEX), tools alone aren’t enough.
The Importance of DEX
A poor digital experience wastes valuable hours, frustrates leadership and is why half of employees have switched jobs or applied for other positions. Employees feel like they’re working at only 60% of their potential productivity, and organizations recognize the pain points, including overwhelmed help desks, OS migrations and the constant pressure to extend hardware life and trim software licenses.
That’s why more organizations are focusing on DEX, with 50% expected to have a DEX strategy and tool by next year, according to Gartner. The problem is that many organizations buy DEX platforms to solve these issues, but never develop the internal capabilities they need to improve the employee experience.
Filling Functional Gaps
It’s easy to spend money on tech, cross your fingers and hope your DEX scores go up. But data alone doesn’t lead to change. All the dashboards in the world won’t make your DEX efforts successful unless you pair them with a cultural shift throughout your organization.
Enterprises struggling with DEX often have the tech in place, but they fall short because they lack proper DEX strategy, structure and accountability. “Seventy-five percent of organizations without a DEX strategy and tool will fail to successfully reduce digital friction,” Gartner noted.
Instead of focusing on device uptime and other IT metrics, look at the bigger picture: how your users feel and function. After all, an employee can still feel frustrated even if their laptop appears to be “healthy.” Long-term DEX success comes from addressing technical and functional gaps.
Here are a few ways to transform your DEX data and insights into meaningful long-term results.
1. Start with Strategy
Think of DEX as a strategic pillar for your organization, not just a collection of IT metrics. This framing helps ensure DEX gets the resources it deserves, and requires people to align DEX with organizational goals. Consider timing and milestones for DEX, including onboarding experiences, which “strongly influence” how employees feel about your organization. While IT should be represented in strategy sessions, make sure you include HR, operations and other units for cross-functional success.
2. Assign a DEX Leader or Team
We’re already seeing the rise of Chief Workplace Experience Officers, whose responsibilities may include DEX. But given the importance of tech in the workplace, go further and assign clear ownership of the digital experience. Without a dedicated person or team, improving the digital experience and getting the most out of your investment in DEX tools is more challenging because nobody is accountable. For your DEX team, choose people with strong communication skills who collaborate across departments and (ideally) have a track record of success in change management.
3. Use Data to Track DEX
Start by measuring baseline DEX metrics, including employee engagement scores and turnover rates. Remember KPIs that serve as a proxy for employee satisfaction, such as mean time to resolution for help desk tickets. You can also use endpoint data to identify the 40% of your employees who are likely “silent sufferers” when it comes to tech problems. Finally, consider combining demographic and survey data to create personas that reveal what different groups of employees really want from their technology, like the fact that Gen Z expects it to work like their favorite social media apps.
4. Recognize the Cost of Change
According to Gartner, “73% of HR leaders say their employees are experiencing change fatigue.” Employees have dealt with unprecedented change during the past five years, including remote work, in-office mandates and the rapid implementation of AI-driven tech. To succeed, you must recognize that “transformative change happens through employees, not to them,” noted Gartner. Give employees plenty of notice and training, especially during onboarding. And look for change influencers throughout your organization to be frontline ambassadors for DEX.
DEX: An Ongoing Discipline
Improving organizational capability isn’t a one-and-done project. People’s attitudes about technology change over time — sometimes slowly, but often quickly. Consistently listen to your employees about their experiences. Newer, less disruptive methods such as passive listening and AI-powered solutions help proactively monitor employee sentiment and morale, so you can make adjustments and stay on track.
When it comes to technology, there are countless factors you can’t control. But when you shift the culture around DEX, you turn technology from “a point of friction” in employees’ lives into a point of pride for your organization.
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Editor's Note: Read more tips on what it takes to deliver strong DEX:
- Make Magic Happen: How Technology Completes the Employee Experience — To build a digital employee experience that delivers for employees and the business, follow these five core principles.
- 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.
- A Comprehensive, Actionable Model for Employee Experience — A common approach to employee experience tells you to improve the "moments that matter." I suggest you should pay attention to the other 90% of employees' time.
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