Gone are the days when the only experience that mattered the most for businesses was customer experience. ‘I love this workplace’ is as important as ‘I love this product’. In the age of digital transformation, every digital experience matters—none so more than DEX (Digital Employee Experience).
A Quick DEX Tale for Starters
Damien, a hard-working, high-performing employee, recently quit. Why? The reason isn’t anywhere close to all those social media leadership jargon and the rest of that spiritual jazz. Bizarre as it may sound, Damien had a fallout with an IT admin of the company and resigned out of frustration and lack of support. Ever since remote work, he has faced repeated issues with VPN connectivity and his company-issued laptop.
Despite numerous complaints and a series of phone calls and IT tickets, nothing changed. It affected the work apps and tech Damien used and, ultimately, his productivity (and loyalty). A series of bitter emails between him and the IT admin followed. Rest is obvious. End of story!
But there lies a classic example of a miserable employee experience, which also explains DEX and its importance. In this blog, we will deep dive into DEX and look at some ways in which a unified endpoint management (UEM) solution can help organizations enhance digital employee experience management.
What is Digital Employee Experience (DEX)
A Microsoft-Qualtrics study reveals that employees are 121% more likely to feel valued in the organization when they have a seamless device (digital) experience. That’s a solid case in point for the abovementioned Damien story (rather, apathy)!
Digital employee experience is how employees interact with and feel about the technologies and digital tools in the workplace—remote, hybrid or in-office.
It’s this experience of using digital technologies where the core of DEX lies. It’s all about ensuring that the tools and systems employees use daily are user-friendly, efficient and effective. The central idea is to create a positive employee sentiment for digital tools so they can be more productive and engaged at work. Digital employee experience and digital transformation go hand in hand for modern businesses.
In the current tech era, DEX encompasses the entire lifecycle of an employee. In fact, DEX begins right when a person applies for a job. It’s like the first digital impression of an organization. The ‘careers’ landing page, ease of applying for the relevant position, the digital efficiency of the interview rounds, and of course, a smooth digital employee onboarding experience (process). Any gaps or silos here and organizations will miss out on the stepping stone to a positive DEX.
What Digital Employee Experience Entails
This is the 21st century, folks! Just a job and salary aren’t enough for a high satisfaction and happiness quotient. When employees grapple every day with troublesome workplace technology that is difficult to use and understand, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Here’re some absolute non-negotiable elements for an optimized DEX.
1. UI & UX
All the technologies and apps which employees frequently interact with must be user-friendly. Indeed, most of the tools, if not all, should work perfectly on mobile phones. A steep learning curve of adoption of any new tech can be a deterrent in employees preferring it. The end user experience (UX) has to be suave too. Lack of flexibility or intuitiveness can abate DEX.
2. Accessibility
Having the best technologies and new digital tools is not much of use if employees can’t access them at the right time from the right place. This is where IT teams can play a big part in ensuring no employee is left wandering in the isle. More on that later.
3. Collaboration
An organization’s tech stack, especially with the hybrid and remote work scenario, must include efficient collaboration and communication tools. The dos and don’ts of using these tools also must be clearly defined. When done right, these are the set of tools that can get the ball rolling for a digital-first workplace.
4. Training & Support
Not all employees are technophiles. Not all are technophobes. Thus, the training and support model must be on point for every tool, irrespective of its simplicity or complexity. Organizations will have to promote a learning environment for a pleasing DEX.
5. Wellness & Balance
A good DEX is not just getting work done fast and on time. While work apps hold priority, there should be sufficient room for employee wellness and work-life balance. A nice, fun Friday via video conferencing or an Audible subscription as a winner token of a quiz can go a long way.
Organizations that miss out on the above DEX essentials sooner or later will have burnt-out, disengaged employees. And make no mistake, such employees will seek opportunities with organizations that offer better DEX.
Why is Digital Employee Experience Important
A positive experience in any field of life stays with a person forever. Likewise, a positive digital workplace employee experience can leave a mark on someone’s career.
Let’s look into some of the benefits a positive digital employee experience management can lead to.
1. Enhanced Performance & Productivity
If employees need to get in touch with IT admins day in and day out to fix clumsy and clunky issues, it’s counterproductive. Therefore, a positive DEX involves providing employees with consistent and robust tools or apps. This helps induce a feeling of empowerment, motivating employees to deliver their best.
2. Better Employee Satisfaction & Higher Retention
A great DEX ensures employees love leveraging the suite of tech or apps to accomplish their tasks from anywhere. It also alleviates anxiety related to using new technologies, as employees are confident that the adoption and learning will be smooth. This is key to employee engagement and satisfaction, which, in turn, leads to retention and loyalty.
3. Improved Organizational Culture
A positive DEX means coherent employee collaboration and communications. When collaborations are effective, teams perform the best, ideas foster, and so does innovation. All of these add up to an improved organizational culture and strengthening values.
Challenges in Successful Digital Employee Experience
Essential as it may sound by now, infusing an optimized DEX into a workplace can present challenges to organizations. Here are a few of them.
1. Striking a balance (Security vs. Accessibility)
Employees want easy access to apps and data from anywhere using any device for a positive DEX. Easier said than done because corporate data and device security are uncompromisable. Often, with remote employees accessing corporate data from public networks, the risks of threat actors loom large. Something that gives organizations and IT teams the jitters.
2. Managing and Adopting Change
Change is the only constant, yet managing and adapting to changes isn’t like slicing butter. First, it was adopting and managing the workplace during the pandemic. Now, with the pandemic largely gone, moving back to complete in-office models hasn’t been simple. With all three models (remote, hybrid, in-office) in place, organizations face a whole new kind of uncertainty and challenges with which devices are used and which networks they are connecting to.
3. Diverse Employee Needs and Preferences
With diverse work and team profiles, along with varying needs of preferences, offering a good DEX can be a tough nut to crack. The tech and apps employees need, sometimes even within the same team, are different.
4. Maintaining Consistent Experience
DEX must be consistent for it to be effective. This is where organizations struggle as the nature of devices and their operating systems can’t be the same anymore in modern, digital work environments.
Implementing a Better Digital Employee Experience Strategy with MDM
Despite the obvious challenges mentioned above, a positive DEX remains imperative for organizations. The benefits far outweigh the challenges as well. Among all the technologies that can help organizations implement a digital employee experience strategy and create a positive DEX, UEM is at the fore and core.
Read our blog that briefs up on the DEX scope in the future of UEM.
UEM or unified endpoint management can enhance DEX by addressing the associated challenges and helping organizations reap the benefits. There are no real low-hanging fruits for IT teams with UEM. It’s all on the same height—consistent.
A couple of stats from a survey of IT influencers and decision makers to preheat the vitality of DEX in modern, digital workplaces:
- 75% emphasized DEX as a higher or top priority
- 75% felt that a holistic DEX approach, including monitoring and analysis, is a must
Time to find how UEM can be the ultimate tool for IT teams of organizations to deliver an exceptional DEX.
1. Smooth Onboarding
As mentioned at the beginning, DEX sets in full motion as soon as the onboarding begins. A UEM solution lets IT admins help human resources streamline the digital employee onboarding process with a simplified device enrolment and configuring process. This applies even when multiple employees join on the same day.
For remote or hybrid work settings, IT admins can configure organizational BYOD policies into employee-owned devices as soon as someone gets on board or ship pre-provisioned corporate-owned devices that employees can power up to get started—a complete OOB experience.
Whether corporate or employee devices, an employee experiences seamless onboarding regardless of the type of device or OS and, indeed, location. Brisk enrolment also implies that employees can get on with the other onboarding formalities and be inducted into the organization as soon as possible.
A frictionless onboarding with a UEM solution sets the right tone for a positive DEX from day-1.
2. Secure Access
Employees love anywhere, anytime accessibility. Organizations want comprehensive security. Enter UEM—and there’s such an amicable win-win. Robust security is at the heart of UEM, with plenty of features that IT admin can fall back on.
Passcode policies, multifactor authentication, website and app blocking, conditional exchange (email) settings, and automated patch management (for OS and third-party apps) are a few among many security-boosting offerings of a UEM solution.
All these features safeguard corporate data and devices without affecting the accessibility element of DEX. Once the security posture is uptight, employees can easily access work apps and the required content and not stress about accessibility woes.
3. Personalization
UEM solutions espouse another essential DEX element—personalization. IT teams can customize the configuration of devices employees use for work. This can be based on the department, role, location, and many such factors. UEM is not a one-size-cut solution. UEM offers application and content management options for better personalization, adding to the overall DEX.
With no stopping the popularity of BYOD at new-age workplaces, UEM can help IT admins maintain personalization in employee-owned devices. Work and personal apps are segregated in such devices through containerization. No one from the organization can access the personal apps, folders or data. Employees don’t have to be anxious about IT admins sneaking into their social posts, photos, search history, etc.
BYOD containerization ensures that work and personal spaces never cross paths—another fitting UEM-enabled win-win for DEX. Employees feel comfortable using their personal devices for work. IT admins don’t have to fret about corporate data leaks.
4. Remote Support & Troubleshooting
If the one feature that makes the strongest case for UEM in the DEX strategy, it has to be remote support and troubleshooting. The most prominent element of a positive DEX, again, especially in remote and hybrid workplaces, is how quickly IT can address and resolve device or OS issues so employees can get back to work ASAP.
Remember Damien’s anguish at the start of this blog? It’s a pity his organization’s IT admin didn’t have any UEM dashboard to rely on.
Using a UEM solution, IT admins can provide tech support to employees and troubleshoot issues remotely without end-user intervention. It reduces productivity loss due to device downtime. Also, it takes the anxiety out of employees as they don’t fear missing deadlines. Hence, no needless extra hours to compensate for device downtime or IT unavailability. No mental fatigue, no burnout, no negativity—that’s a fabulous DEX (and a half)!
DEX for IT Teams with UEM
In all of what’s discussed about DEX so far, don’t forget that IT personnel of organizations are also employees. Thus, digital employee experience encompasses how organizational IT leaders (including CIOs, CSOs, and CTOs) and their teams feel about the tech and tools they use at workplaces.
A UEM solution takes care of DEX from the IT perspective too.
1. Remote Monitoring
Digital employee experience monitoring is an influential element for IT admins’ DEX. Keeping a close eye on devices or business endpoints is a key focus area for IT admins. A distributed workforce has today laid a strong foundation for the worthiness of tech at work. A UEM software lets IT teams monitor the entire device fleet of an organization.
IT admins can have all the required vitals and metrics of devices at their fingertips from a UEM dashboard. This is the synchronous element for a great DEX. IT is aware of the device status and vitals. Employees know that IT has their back. Happy place!
2. Reporting & Workflow Management
A UEM software allows IT admins to generate reports and analyze device performance. A handy productivity enhancer so admins are ready with context-aware device details when senior management or CIO wants them.
IT teams can use UEM to manage workflows so that all the requisites—scheduled or compliance—are intact. This is a helpful feature to improve situational DEX. For instance, an employee can get an instant alert from the IT admin if any device action performed is against compliance protocols. In the absence of a UEM solution, such a situation can lead to blame games and communication gaps—DEX in disarray!
3. Training for IT
Tech support teams of UEM providers like Scalefusion offer in-depth training to system administrators of organizations. Onboarding any new tech can be cumbersome for an IT department, but the Scalefusion software is easy to learn. When the learning curve isn’t too steep, tech adoption becomes simple.
UEM, as a tech solution, is reasonably easy to adopt and adapt for IT teams. Organizations appreciate a UEM solution as it assures better IT productivity by automating redundant and mundane tasks. Thus, training and support for IT teams from the UEM provider is the most significant factor in creating a positive DEX for IT departments.
Conclusion: For Better DEX, go for Scalefusion UEM
Investing in a UEM solution presents a lot of RoI avenues for organizations—and an excellent DEX is one premier avenue. In modern business environments, workplaces will keep getting more digitally enabled and connected. Improving DEX should be a constant aspect of organizational growth and success.
A great digital employee experience can sound like a utopia. Still, organizations must include UEM in their tech stack to stay close to perfecting the art of digital employee experience—for both IT and non-IT workforces. It’s high time to realize that DEX is indispensable to organizations.
Scalefusion UEM enables businesses of today and tomorrow to create unparalleled digital employee experiences at scale. Explore the features and optimize DEX with a 14-day free trial.
