How Does Digital Employee Experience Work?
Digital Employee Experience is the sum of their interactions within the company. These interactions can have a profound impact on whether or not they remain engaged in their work and feel that they belong in an inclusive team culture.
The increasingly relevant nature of the employees’ digital experiences will continue to impact a company’s development and success in ways that we’re just starting to understand. Therefore, it is a good thing to note that an excellent digital employee experience will not only increase efficiency but will also prepare organizations for any future changes.
What is Digital Employee Experience?
The world has changed – we now live in a digitally-driven economy where everything from business transactions to our social interactions take place online. For this reason, it’s crucial for organizations to make sure their employees are equipped with the tools and knowledge they need to excel in today’s digital age.
Digital employee experience is a term that refers to the way employees access and interact with digital services, devices, apps, and websites. It encompasses all of the ways in which an organization provides information to its workforce.
To keep employees comfortable in the digital workspace, you should be aware of these potential issues:
- Slow computer or program startups that may be due to outdated hardware or software
- Apps may suddenly crash
- Issues with the network connection
- Keeping up with office culture and finding time to socialize
- Lack of collaboration between teammates
Digital tools play an increasingly large role in how we connect with our colleagues, get information from our company’s systems, and collaborate on projects – all things that define what it means to be a modern employee.
As technology becomes more integral to the social lives of employees, it’s important for companies to provide work environments where they can thrive. This is essential because it can have a significant impact on how engaged employees are at work. The more they’re engaged at work, the better their performance will be which could save the organization money in the long run.
Differences of Digital Workplace Experience and Employee Experience
The digital workplace is an experience that has been very different from the traditional one, with many changes like communication and collaboration. But how do they compare to each other?
Digital Workplace Experience
A digital workplace experience is an integrated platform where employees can work collaboratively using any device anywhere and simultaneously. This allows employees to focus on necessary digital tools instead of switching to numerous applications across multiple programs.
The digital experience offers the following, which will benefit not only the organization but also ensures employee satisfaction:
- Smoothly allows employees to upload and access data
- Customizes reports based on readily available data
- Automates and efficiently processes any business information
- Boosts transparency within the digital workforce
- Easy communication and collaboration with other team members
Employee Experience
Employee experiences focus mainly on the work environment and how an employee perceives it based on their own observations and experience.
There are various factors that can affect employee experience:
- Are the physical workspace and work environment good?
- Is the company offering a work-life balance?
- Does the technology available get the work done?
When people have a great experience working in an organization, they’re happier and more engaged which will directly lead to better results. However, it’s important to differentiate the experience from employee engagement.
A great and engaging workplace is what all companies want, but building a good experience for the individual employees will get you there.
How to Measure Digital Employee Experience
There are many ways to evaluate employee satisfaction from digital experiences. The simplest way is to ask the workforce experience for their feedback including issues that should be addressed immediately.
As straightforward and quick as it is, getting feedback like this can be subjective, thus making it difficult to quantify and measure. In situations like this, it is best to use digital experience monitoring or DEM.
The DEM gathers vital and end-user data from the endpoint that gives organizations greater visibility into their computing environments in real-time. These details may include the latency time, CPU usage, network saturation, and app performance.
Data gathered from DEM will give IT departments a lot of data points they can use to identify, track, and predict potential problems with the end-user experience. This might include things like the number of timeouts or other performance issues, how frequently devices are used in different parts of your building, and even what sorts of apps the digital workforce tends to open when they first log on at work.
Using these kinds of methods and technology can impact workforce productivity and shows where there may be opportunities for improvement.
How to Improve Digital Employee Experience
To increase employee satisfaction and engagement, improving the digital workforce experience is very crucial. Just a few suggestions, here are ways that organizations can enhance the experiences of their digital workforce:
1. Creating a cross-functional digital workspace team
To encourage collaboration, forming a cross-functional committee can help advocate digital employee experience. This could be as simple as an email list or app that allows employees from different departments to share ideas and collaborate on projects.
While the usual practice is the HR and IT leading the committee, it will be beneficial to bring in people from different departments so they can give feedback about what will work within their specific roles at the company.
2. Attend virtual meetings or events created by HR or IT
Virtual events can provide new knowledge that will help improve employees’ performance. These meetups provide insights into what other organizations have been experiencing when trying out new strategies rather than outsourcing outside of company walls.
3. Collaborate with an established digital workspace team
The best way to achieve a better digital employee experience is by engaging with an established partner. These partners or trusted advisors can guide the organization from planning to implementation in maximizing employee experience.
Other ways to improve digital employee experience:
- Digital adoption of modern digital tools and technology that are easy to use and effective
- Ensure that employees are skilled and productive in using digital tools
- Minimize onboarding conflict by quickly and efficiently adopting new digital tools
Things to consider in improving digital employee experience
Organizations that wish to improve their digital work environment in today’s remote work should consider the following before they do so:
- Costs of digital tools to be used
- Training costs in digital adoption especially during remote work
- Costs in terms of management such as those in change management and employee experience management
- Organizational change costs
Experiencing the Digital Workspace: Final Thoughts
The digital workplace is the new frontier for business. As it continues to evolve, it will be important to stay on top of this trend and make sure that your organization is up to date.
Moreover, there are many aspects to a company’s digital employee experience. The way you manage the digital space, how proficient your employees are, the technology they use every day, their work environment – all of these factors shape an individual’s experience.
If employees don’t feel engaged in what they do, then there will be a negative impact on their productivity and performance. That is why continuously improving and measuring the workforces’ digital experience is so important to achieve higher employee satisfaction.
