What Makes a Good Digital Employee Experience?

The Digital Employee Experience (DEX) refers to an employee’s interactions with their digital workplace. It’s how employees engage with their online tools, applications, and software. This includes HR systems, video conferencing tools, and workflow systems. Educational training platforms for employee development also fall under the realm of DEX. By enabling remote work, the pandemic forced almost every organization to deploy new technologies. Employees are at the core of every digital transformation. So, it’s crucial they have seamless access to the right tools and technologies to help them succeed. DEX supports a new era of hybrid work, where employees can work from home, in the office, and everywhere in between.

DEX aims to provide a seamless integration between employees and their tools. Unfortunately, the learning curves involved often create large gaps between the two. Integration can be a challenge when there's a wide variety of products and software. Strong organizations will effectively communicate to keep this gap as narrow as possible. When your employees know when and how to use the software, they become a competitive and adaptable workforce.

With seamless digital experiences in our personal lives, we've come to expect even better experiences at work. According to Salesforce research, 71% of employees want the same level of technology they use in their personal lives. We live in a world where we can easily engage with others and businesses. A DEX that falls short of that standard can be frustrating. An effective DEX allows employees to achieve goals while ensuring their digital work experience matches their personal digital experience.

Employee Satisfaction & Retention: Less friction with digital tools allows for more employee engagement and satisfaction. Research shows 41% of employees left their jobs because of poor collaboration and resources. Employees that suffer from the same slowdowns and connectivity issues have a hard time enjoying their day-to-day tasks. CDW’s Managed Collaboration Anywhere (MCA), is a secure, intelligent platform that manages your hybrid environment. It allows for flexible connectivity, ensuring your employees are always connected.

Enhanced Productivity: A mature DEX enables a more proactive IT department. Addressing tech concerns before they occur minimizes disruptions. Employees have more time to perform critical work if they spend less time troubleshooting IT issues.

Additionally, enhanced productivity is not possible without device accessibility. Device mobility enhances workflow by allowing employees to address customer needs efficiently. CDW helps you meet customer expectations with reliable communication platforms that support your business goals and allow workers to get more done in more places.

Bottom Line Improvement: Increasing both productivity and retention allows your organization to make and save more money. A proactive IT not only improves employees’ perception of IT, but also drives down the cost of IT support. Implementing the right tools allows you to streamline and improve digital workflow. This, in turn, helps organizations gain greater returns on their software investments.

Accelerated Onboarding: Onboarding no longer refers to an employee's first week on the job. It consists of device refreshes, transitioning to WFH, and virtual training. Implementing an interactive and personalized onboarding experience motivates employees to become impactful workers. Aside from high turnover rates, a poor onboarding process can reduce business performance. Without the proper tools to onboard new hires, they’ll feel unsettled at their job. This can result in missed opportunities, lost potential, and demotivation. 

One of the first hurdles is justifying a DEX program's budget. As businesses aim to recover from the pandemic, many are tightening their budgets. Limited resources or even complicated security policies make it difficult to modernize digital communications. But investing in DEX can pay dividends immediately by helping achieve business outcomes. The right tools combined with a more productive and engaged workforce would only boost your bottom line.

Another challenge is understanding who your employees are and what they need to succeed. Many business leaders struggle to answer these questions due to a lack of visibility into individual workflows. Siloed organizations need to reassess collaboration. To develop a holistic view of their DEX, Human Resources, IT, and other relevant departments must work together. Different perspectives enable organizations to pivot and provide employees with an optimized experience.

Nothing worth having comes easy, but communication is key. A lack of communication between teams allows for a disconnected, inefficient work experience. A proper DEX program would bridge that gap. It would allow employees to work cross-functionally in a way that feels fulfilling as well as drives business growth.

According to Harvard Business Review, 91% of organizations that accelerated digital transformation during the pandemic intend to maintain the same speed or move even faster after the pandemic is over. A workplace evolution is happening. Companies who choose to not invest in DEX will fall behind their competitors.

Today's employees consider hybrid capability when searching for a new job. According to Cisco, 64% of employees agree that the ability to work from anywhere affects whether they stay at or leave a job. Organizations will have a hard time retaining employees without a proper hybrid structure in place. Using resources to constantly replace employees instead of investing in them means there’s fewer people performing critical work.

Employees with a negative DEX are less likely to be productive or even satisfied with their jobs. In turn, they'll be less helpful to customers. A negative DEX does not only affect the employee – it affects the customer as well. Outdated technology that lends to a negative DEX will be just as frustrating for customers navigating slow systems with a poor UX. Investing in your employees will only improve your customer experience as well.

It is important to start with an end goal in mind. Assess your organization’s current DEX maturity and define what it is you want to achieve. CDW design and planning workshops help you align your business goals. Our experts can help you create an outcome-based strategy focused on end-user satisfaction.

Measure your current employee productivity. Thoroughly research product and software options that would best meet their needs. With a wide variety of software and workflow systems to choose from, it’s no simple task. It’s a rigorous process of matching your employees’ needs to the most relevant programs.

Communicate your vision with the rest of your company. It's important to illustrate what employee training will look like. A quick transformation is unlikely. But a smooth employee adoption is possible through sufficient training, tools, and demos. CDW helps you create and deploy fully configured solutions. We help guide your efforts to keep internal teams connected.

Even after adoption, continue to measure engagement levels. Monitoring attrition rates will help you determine where to make improvements. Technology adoption does not conclude the process. Organizations should always adapt to the needs of their workers, and CDW can help you do so. CDW’s Amplified Services can help optimize your current digital employee experience. Using data, tools, and over twenty years of expertise, we can help you find the best solution for your needs.