By Jason Coari, VP, Product Marketing & Strategy, Lakeside Software
Having the right tools to support your employees is critical to any organisation, but understanding how your employees interact with the technology they use is paramount to any company’s success.
As talent wars and shortages rage on, a third of employees are contemplating quitting their existing jobs due to technical disruptions. And businesses are learning that losing staff isn’t the only outcome of poor employee experience. In this new era of digital innovation, there is no longer any excuse for businesses being behind when it comes to tech. Better, more adaptive technology is essential for the “work from anywhere” model many companies are employing.
Companies that deploy a digital employee experience (DEX) solution have the insight needed to ensure their employees’ technology is operating at full capacity, and technical bugs can be fixed automatically leading to a reduction in downtime due to IT-related challenges.
Those who adopted new technologies quickly and assisted their employees with remote work issues saw a smoother transition, while those who delayed fell behind. The overall impact on performance left many business owners wondering how they could do better. Investing in the digital employee experience has never been more important—or more clearly tied to revenue and outcomes.
Positively, in our 2022 Digital Workplace Productivity Report companies in the financial services and technology sectors are furthest ahead in digital employee experience.
Poor employee experience leads to major losses
When employees work remotely or in a hybrid environment, they are saddled with tech challenges that fall outside of their job description. Our report revealed that employees are only working at 68% capacity because their work is affected by IT disruptions. Financial sector employees are reported to lose almost an hour of work (34 minutes) each week, which can result in millions of pounds lost in productivity. Those not prioritising and measuring the impact that technology has on employees reportedly lost more than two hours (128 minutes) in productivity per week.
Both digital friction and unoptimised IT resource allocation have massive impacts on this loss of productivity. 62% of financial sector employees stated that technology plays a large or very large role in employee experience when working remotely. No matter where employees work from, the fact that they need adequate technology and support doesn’t change. Instead of viewing hybrid and remote work as a break from the norm, business leaders (and especially IT teams) should take this as an opportunity to improve every aspect of their employees’ digital experience. This includes bolstering IT and empowering the person or team responsible to support employees working at remote locations, especially as 40% of technical issues are not being reported.
Optimise employee experience to boost productivity, performance, and retention
Many leaders are in the dark about how this loss of productivity is actually costing their business, not just financially but also concerning employee satisfaction and retention. More than a third of employees surveyed for our Digital Workplace report said that they were so frustrated by technological disruptions that they plan on quitting, and 14% said they had already quit.
Company leaders must empower their employees with the tools they need to complete their work and with the knowledge that they can (and should) reach out to IT or workplace leaders whenever necessary to flag tech issues as they arise. This includes understanding the disconnect between what IT leaders believe their tech stacks are capable of and what employees are actually experiencing.
If employees are constantly flagging inadequate or lagging tech, it is imperative to the company’s success that those concerns are acknowledged and addressed. Workplace productivity incorporates more than just technology—this level of clear communication and transparent company culture is imperative to team success. Human resources, IT leaders, and executives must work together to deliver the best experience and support possible for their employees if they want to drive revenue, bolster retention, and increase engagement.
