The workplace has changed dramatically since the start of the pandemic but people have not. Employees still want to be engaged in the workplace and feel that their company values them.
Improving the employee IT user experience in the workplace provides a way to do that.
Pre-pandemic, it was easier for employees working in the same location to feel connected with their colleagues and valued by the business. The shift to remote working creates pressure on employers to use technology differently to achieve the same thing.
The best employee engagement builds an emotional connection among employees, their co-workers and the business. When this connection is missing, people become disengaged.
With the ongoing war for talent, it’s critical to boost employee engagement. Disengaged employees are less productive and more inclined to move on to another employer. Recent research from Gallup finds that 74 percent of disengaged workers in the US are actively on the hunt for new jobs.
Employees’ experience with technology is now intrinsically linked to broader engagement and job satisfaction. A study by experience management company Qualtrics and Microsoft finds that employers who have modernised their workplaces experience a 15 percent increase in employee engagement.
Employees who have an agile and responsive PC experience are 121 percent more likely to feel valued by their company, and their associated Net Promoter Score increases by 70 points.
Organisations that act on these research findings will demonstrate their commitment to improving their employees’ experience.
DXC Technology can help organisations take steps to do so with our Modern Workplace offerings that create a personalised and consumer-like workplace technology experience. Our solutions make it possible for employees to focus on their work, not IT.
Technology becomes the enabler – not the barrier. We provide employees with the ability to self-service order devices and equipment, so there’s no processing holdups in getting the technology they need when they need it. With digital IT support services, employees can easily and intuitively engage with IT and resolve issues quickly.
Intelligent collaboration services are key to driving the comradery and collaborative equity that define a connected and healthy organisation in which everyone feels their participation is valued and their voices are heard.
Our platform also enables employees to give continuous feedback about their technology experience, and these insights can be used to drive greater engagement, collaboration, productivity and innovation.
The pandemic has also changed the traditional relationship between key business decision makers, especially in the senior IT and human resources leadership roles.
Qualtrics finds that 85 percent of CIOs now collaborate more with their head of HR than before COVID. These partnerships will strengthen as organisations bed down hybrid workplace models where they operate both traditional and virtual workplaces.
IT and HR leaders now have a great opportunity to be intentional about the kinds of working patterns they want to drive for the hybrid workplace, and what tools to create, build or buy to support their goals.
That’s critical as the shift to a hybrid model accelerates. More than 40 per cent of employed people were regularly working from home during the first half of August 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The percentage had been increasing by about a percentage point every two years, but when the Delta variant arrived, it suddenly jumped by 8.4 percent.
Some top employees and job candidates will want to operate remotely, at least part of the time, and they need to feel comfortable that their employer is thoughtfully accommodating their needs.
The challenge to make all employees feel connected and valued means companies will need to provide “inclusion at scale” where remote workers can effectively propose ideas, innovate with colleagues and be considered integral members of their teams regardless of location or personal situation. We at DXC like to call this collaborative equity.
This speaks to the power of new technologies to connect us in exciting new ways. Providing augmented, immersive virtual workplace experiences in the metaverse is one such way to support new ways of working and staying connected.
In fact, virtual reality and mixed reality technology environments can provide the opportunity for employees to have those small but meaningful “water cooler chats” that they had in the real world, and that are so important to making the casual connections that build trust among colleagues.
People will always want to work for an organisation that gives them the feeling that they are valued and important. Creating an employee experience that puts leading-edge technology in their hands is one way of achieving this.
By NATASHA COPLEY*
