Part 1: The value of a digital employee experience

What is a digital employee experience?

Let's start by clarifying some concepts. Two trending terms right now are digital workplace and employee experience. Taken together, they add up to digital employee experience – also known in many contexts as digital employee experience or DEX. As if we didn't have enough X abbreviations – CX, UX, CXM, TXD and HyFlex are just a few examples.

The concept of digital employee experience encompasses all the employee's feelings about the digital interaction with their organisation and their work. That is, what you experience from the first recruitment contact (for example, the ad) until the last day at work.

Research shows that over half of employees in companies and organisations say that their organisation fails to meet their expectations of a good digital employee experience.

The value of a digital employee experience

Let's now focus on how you can contribute to better results in your organisation. The foundation is a clear strategy. IT analyst firm Gartner predicted that only 40% of companies and organisations would have strategies in place to work on the digital employee experience by 2023. It should be 100%.

Strategy sounds big, but we'll make it simple. We'll do it by focusing on what value you want to achieve and part two will be about how to achieve it.

So the value of a great digital employee experience is the impact it has: better productivity, better efficiency, more satisfied employees and increased engagement.

Let me explain.

People – engaged employees

Let's start with people – the goal is to engage employees. The value of that is that you will have employees who have positive experiences at work. They will feel more connected to their roles, colleagues and the organisation as a whole. This in turn leads to a reduction in staff turnover, by as much as two percent, according to our study. It also reduces absenteeism. And you will have a stronger employer brand.

Ways of working – more efficient and productive ways of working

Moving on to ways of working – the aim here is to make your work and that of your colleagues more efficient. The value of that will be that you get improved productivity. Because when employees are engaged and motivated, they are not only happier, they also do their job faster. Each of them can save 20 minutes a week just by making your organisation's internal communication easier and more efficient.

And you will provide better service. Happy employees make for happy audiences. Your colleagues will be more proactive in finding opportunities for your customers, clients, members and citizens.

Technology – creativity and innovation

And then we finish with technology where the goal is to enable improvements and new solutions and features. The value there is that you get a creative and innovative workplace. Engaged employees feel more comfortable sharing suggestions, new perspectives and ideas with both colleagues and management. It's old news. But few organisations open up to these opportunities.

And so the need for IT support will decrease. As your business or organisation becomes more efficient and productive, IT will spend less time and money resolving support tickets. Imagine what your IT team could spend their time on instead. Who doesn't want to achieve results like this? But why aren't they doing it?

Because many people often face one or more of the following challenges:

Email is the default communication channel, people working in the field have limited digital access, colleagues in the office spend more time in their business systems, rather than on shared platforms such as the intranet, and it's difficult to get relevant news and information across.

Do you recognise yourself?

You are not alone. Check out Jula Holding who had exactly these challenges and managed to create a really good solution. See the case study on Jula Holding on the Consid website.

But what's next?

In the next blog, you'll get practical tips for creating engagement in the digital workplace and what you can do to achieve it. Then we'll focus on the strategy for creating a great digital employee experience.