In the past, we've spoken about how harmful bad digital employee experience (DEX) can be for your employees and business, as well as the emerging movement of DEX itself. As hybrid working continues to settle in as the norm for many organisations, we rely more and more on tools to enable our remote employees to do their job, not to mention the tools we already use to streamline our work processes. Ensuring a good digital employee experience is now essential for the world of remote workspaces and devices. From drop in revenue to high employee turnover, there are various reasons why poor DEX can be dangerous for your organisation.
But what about the other side? If poor DEX is bad for your business, what are the benefits of ensuring good DEX? Here we'd like to expand upon some of our often-mentioned benefits from our other articles and delve into why exactly they're good for your organisation.
Enhanced Productivity and Improved Employee Wellbeing
Productivity is a key benefit of healthy DEX. Having digital systems that function without frequent latency concerns, crashes, and general distractions, enable employees to carry out their role undistracted and achieve that sense of flow. When employees encounter issues, it can take a considerable amount of time to resolve, assuming it's part of the 50% of IT issues that are actually reported. If you have a tool in place such as Nexthink who assist IT in proactively discovering issues, finding the root cause, and fix them, you can ensure that all employees under your organisational umbrella, regardless of location, can work without interruptions in their digital workspace and not have their productivity affected.
In a survey ran by financial software developer, FloQast, the relationship between accountants and their main workplace technology were measured to see how they affected the accountant's well-being. For context, their were 3 identified relationships between the customer and tool:
Adversarial - where the person actively sees the technology as a hindrance to their job instead of the help it's supposed to be.
Routine - where the person doesn't find the technology helps their job but neither finds it a hindrance.
Synergistic - where the person finds the technology of great benefit to their role.
Of all participants surveyed, the relationship ratio was split 33% across the board. Accountants who experienced a synergistic relationship between them and their workplace technology found that they made less errors and didn't need to reopen it as often. In comparison, those who expressed a routine relationship needed to reopen the technology twice as much as those with a synergistic relationship because of mistakes they'd made. From this, we get the indication that a good relationship with the technology you require can lead to a less stressful, mistake-inducing experience. Moreover, a synergistic experience is therefore more likely to create a good digital experience for your employees.
What are the strengths of this? A good relationship with technology works to prevent burnout and disengagement. In the study above, adversarial relationships with technology led to a reported 79% chance of burnout, compared with 25% for those with a synergistic. As we can surmise, the drop in burnout is because the person with the synergistic relationship is less likely to encounter those discouraging factors such as mistakes caused by frustrations with the technology they use. When we feel more enthused about the tools we work with, we are more likely to perform better at our jobs and become more productive. It is common knowledge by now that high productivity equates to higher company value, as more billable output is assumedly being produced. When employees are provided with a good digital experience, they are more likely to feel supported by their employers and become more productive.
As the era of remote work seems like it's here to stay, these benefits we mention go doubly so for employees working from anywhere. A DEX tool is the prime way to reach out to remote employees, not only to check in on them, but also to prevent them from experiencing any potential IT issues also being faced by other employees. Nexthink allows for your employees' digital experience to be monitored for IT issues, company-wide and regardless of location. By implementing a DEX tool, we can not only support our in-office employees' experience, but also those of our remote employees as well. These strengths lend nicely to our second overall benefit of good DEX.
A Stronger Customer Experience
By supporting your employees' digital experience, you in turn support your customers. This is because of two scenarios enabled with good DEX:
A healthy relationship between employees and their workplace tools, leading to employees being more confident in their use of said tools to assist customer needs e.g. a waiter or shop employee being able to confidently use a ordering or payment system
Good DEX means to be alert and on top of the technical issues that can harm our employees' interactions. A tool like Nexthink can achieve this by alerting IT support of any issues, potential and current, before providing targeted fixes and engagement campaigns to inform employees. This helps to keep digital disruptions to a minimum and employees aware of them.
We can see from here how ensuring good digital experience can benefit customers. It can reduce disruptions, both in the sense of an employee being able to confident use the tool, and use it without worry of hindrance. This may not be apparent from the customer's perspective, but a seamless experience nonetheless is likely to be viewed more highly than one caused by issues and frustrations between the employee and their technical tools. A seamless, productive and synergistic experience is precisely what strong DEX enables.
Also read: Chief Experience Officer (CXO): The Importance of Balance Between CX and EX-focused Practice
In our opening, we spoke of how remote work was likely here to stay. As of the end of 2022, it certainly seems to be the opinion of some outlets, with labour economists in a CNBC article believing remote work will 'be an enduring feature of the employment landscape' . It stands to reason, therefore, that as our remote workforce increases in size, so does the need to support them in the same way that we support our office employees. Technology has assisted us greatly in this demand as we saw with video conferencing technology, but we also need to remain focused on our remote employees' ability to carry out their remote work seamlessly and with sense that they are connected with the company at large. This is how we support their wellbeing and productivity.
The good news is that if bad DEX is affecting your organisation, it doesn't have to stay this way. The benefits we mention and more can be enabled with Nexthink. Named in 2022 as a leader in End-User Experience Management, (EUEM), Nexthink is at the forefront of delivering dedicated EUEM and ensuring strong DEX. Should you wish to get started with them, as a loyal reader who read our article to the end, chat to us about arranging a free Nexthink demo, to see the benefits it can bring to your organisation.
Sources
Iacurci, G., (2022). Why labor economists say the remote work 'revolution' is here to stay. CNBC . Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/01/why-labor-economists-say-the-remote-work-revolution-is-here-to-stay.html
Whitmire, M., (2023). Burnout and Job Satisfaction: Why Technology Could be at the Center.Spiceworks . Available at: https://www.spiceworks.com/hr/employee-experience/guest-article/burnout-and-job-satisfaction/