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All You Need To Know About Digital Employee Experience (DEX)

Posted On Wednesday, 17 August 2022 20:54
All You Need To Know About Digital Employee Experience (DEX)

The Covid-19 pandemic induced restricted mobility for global workforces. Since then, companies have realigned their workplace policies. Even after the restrictions, and safety protocols, related to Covid-19 were eased, most employees preferred to work for a few days from home or in a remote location. 

A hybrid workplace model where employees work for a few days from a remote location and walk into a physical office for the rest of the days is increasingly gaining importance. It is about the time when corporate adopted a hybrid workplace model, primarily for two reasons; 

  • The acceptance of the employers and employees who embrace a model that gives the best of both in-person work and remote work currently is high.
  • The technology driven by AI tools is in place to help the organization with the digital tools required to ease workflow management. 

An organization has to give equal importance to innovation and deliver an unparalleled experience for both its customers and its employees. Technological upgrades focussing on giving a great consumer experience with unmatched products and service quality are good for operational growth. But neglecting the employee who toils behind the scenes, needs to be looked after as well. Corporates that will invest time, money, and effort in a good digital employee experience will retain and nurture the best talents in the industry in the future. 

The biggest challenge on hands for businesses is to consciously communicate, collaborate and reach out to employees in a hybrid or remote environment. The strategy to face this challenge lies in an effective digital employee experience that can be integrated with existing technology. A digital experience is a set of tools that helps employees engage in a competent and rewarding manner. For instance, with digital tools collaborators create and finish tasks without the exchange of tons of emails, and alerts are automated for projects that are due and deadlines that have to be met. Going forward, entities can retain talent if they offer all the digital tools an employee requires to complete a task efficiently. 

A digital employee experience can be considered to be a product suite of all the digital tools that an employee will need that include but are not limited to :

  • Instant communication systems - Email, internal chat, instant alerts in a project management system
  • Workflow management systems - A collaborative tool that is used to create, assign and complete tasks and submit them, analytics and tools to gauge performance
  • Meeting rooms - Virtual meeting rooms to connect with all remote employees, with features to allow all members to participate and communicate. 
  • HR systems - Tools to access HR policies, apply for leaves, apply for internal job postings, tax information, compensation-related queries, and performance appraisals. 
  • Learning platform - A tool to re-skill and upskill and train employees that can be accessed at different schedules as per the employee’s calendar. 
  • IT tools - intranet and other tools that help the system stay connected. 

Why should organizations invest in a digital employee experience?

Retain and nurture talent

Employees who work for an organization are also consumers of other industries and are aware of the capabilities of AI-driven solutions. They also have friends who work in entities that provide beneficial digital employee experience. If they compare their engagement vis-a-vis other organizations and find something lacking, then it is the beginning of an end of their loyalty towards the organization. It is a known fact that attrition cannot be controlled on the day an employee sends in his papers. The only way to retain talent is to engage them with a meaningful digital employee experience. 

Achieve bigger goals

A champion team is better than a team of champions; the former plays to make their team win and in the latter, everyone is playing to level their score to the top. It is an unwritten rule in the hiring circles that when a team player decides to move out, he leaves with few others. And often the reason to move will not be competitive pay but lower employee engagement and inability to act for employee's interests. But improvising the digital employee experience and programming it with the right questionnaire to gauge employee sentiments, will benefit the organization. With easy-to-operate tools and automation of repetitive tasks, workflow complexities are reduced. Such employees enjoy a professional high with enhanced productivity and can support the business to achieve bigger goals. 

Are there any barriers to a seamless digital employee experience? 

Secure your system

The sooner businesses realize that hybrid workplaces will be as common in an organization as a pizza in a team lunch, the more prepared they will be. But hybrid workplaces come with certain security challenges for the IT team to address through regular communication. Earlier the IT policy of an organization may have restricted the use of external storage systems within the company’s intranet. However, with hybrid and remote working there can be security issues related to multiple connections from all the varied locations employees use. IT teams have to train the rest of the teams in a phased manner and give periodical updates related to security and give guidelines on the safekeeping of their hardware and login credentials. 

What else can be done?

Train the employees

The transition from regular in-person, within line of sight teams to virtual rooms, did seem fancy and employees loved the break. But soon lack of exercise, pandemic-induced fear, lack of social camaraderie with colleagues, and screen fatigue took over. These factors become a train of bombs waiting to explode and become a hiring manager’s worst dream. 

HR managers have to conduct training to sensitize the employees about the new changes and provide guidelines on what, whys, and how's of the process to adjust to the new workplaces. They also need to keep the charge up and motivate their employees with team-building activities periodically.

Conclusion:

This is the purpose of all the AI-driven solutions, that are equipped to not just perform simple tasks but also solve complex problems, with speed and efficiency. When a good digital employee experience empowers people in performing their day-day tasks, then their human side of benevolence is elevated, and meaningful, long-lasting relationships are established.

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