What is digital employee experience and why is it important for your organization's performance?

Creating a positive and productive employee experience can do wonders for a company's productivity, staff retention, and profits. While prioritizing it as a whole is a good idea for any business owner or manager, focusing on its components can make it easier to manage and improve.

One of these components is digital employee experience, which describes how effective your company's staff is when interacting with the technology they use for their everyday tasks. Making a conscious effort to improve it can help your business reach new performance levels while also enabling employees to improve professionally.

What is digital employee experience?

Digital employee experience is an umbrella term that describes all the ways in which an organization's personnel interact with the technology they need to do their jobs. A positive digital employee experience means that staff members find it easy to use tech tools to increase their effectiveness and efficiency at work. Some specific elements of an employee's digital experience are:

Reliable technology tools

Those who use technology to do their jobs generally require reliable tech tools. This means that their computers and other devices, such as printers, scanners, and smartphones, function as they're designed to and perform consistently. It also means that they can rely on software to perform specific actions at a reasonable speed and without crashing. Office employees commonly use apps for communication, customer database management, and collaboration between team members.

Well-performing hardware and software

While the bare minimum expectation is to have tools and apps that work as they should, speed and performance are usually necessary to create a digital employee experience that allows your staff to flourish. Besides having the right equipment, configuring all hardware and apps to work well with each other is also essential for achieving this.

Tools for communicating and collaborating effectively

Another significant component of the digital employee experience is providing your personnel with the tech tools they need for effective communication and collaboration. Since many employees work remotely nowadays, having the right platforms in place to collaborate with their colleagues from different geographical locations can be essential for the company's success. Some employees also need to communicate with other parties, such as clients and suppliers. Being able to do so with no technological barriers can also benefit the hiring organization.

"Making a conscious effort to improve digital employee experience can help your business reach new performance levels while also enabling employees to improve professionally."

Why is digital employee experience important for organizations?

Focusing on building a positive digital employee experience for your organization's personnel can improve productivity and therefore boost your profits. Some specific reasons for that are:

It's a major component of employee experience

Employee experience is a term that describes an employee's entire interaction with a hiring organization, from when they apply for the role to the moment they stop working there. Building a positive experience for your employees usually makes them more effective, both individually and as a group. Since technology is a major component in many professions, digital employee experience is an integral part of an employee's relationship with their hiring organization. This is how digital employee experience can enhance the various stages of employee experience:

Recruitment: An effective recruitment process generally involves creating an effective candidate pipeline that minimizes the time spent between an employee's initial interaction with the organization and the moment they start working for you. Since many job applications are submitted electronically, creating a pleasant and effective digital experience can help ensure that the employee's relationship with the company starts off on the right foot.
Onboarding: After getting the job, the next stage in an employee's journey with a hiring company is becoming familiar with the company procedures, office equipment, colleagues, and the job itself. An effective onboarding experience can help them reach optimal productivity in a short amount of time, and having the right tech tools can especially help remote employees and those who perform most of their tasks with the help of technology.
Development: Successful organizations provide their personnel with the tools they need to continuously develop their skill set. Having the technology in place to do so, measuring each employee with relevant criteria, and providing feedback for improvement are essential for this goal.
Retention: No business owner or manager wants to spend time and resources finding and developing an employee just to see them leave for another professional opportunity. Building a positive digital employee experience can encourage key staff members to stay loyal to your organization, as they feel they have the digital tools they need to reach their potential.

It fits the new remote or hybrid work trend

The pandemic forced many employers to think outside the box and find ways for their staff to perform their tasks from home. While the risks of going to the office are largely gone, many employees still relish the enhanced work-life balance that remote work brought them. As a result, employers are now looking to integrate remote work into their staff's schedules, at least for a few days each week.

This obviously requires multiple hardware and software tools. Besides having a device to perform their work tasks on, they may also need to be in constant communication with co-workers, managers, suppliers, clients, and any other parties they interact with at work. Creating a positive digital employee experience can boost both employee satisfaction and company profits as employees can be happier and more productive while working remotely.

It improves relationships with customers

The ultimate goal for any business is to expand its loyal customer base. Having a well-designed and effectively implemented digital infrastructure for your company's employees can provide them with the platform they need to perform their tasks at high standards. This, in turn, is likely to lead to improved performance, which will eventually show up in the company's bottom line.

Improving digital employee experience

Creating the best possible digital experience for your organization's personnel is a journey that usually starts at the top and then expands to other areas of your organization. These are the departments that typically collaborate to achieve this:

Top management: As with any company-wide policy, the desire to improve the digital employee experience starts with the CEO or general manager and other members of the senior management team. They must get the ball rolling and make this priority clear to every member of the organization.
Lower-level management: Team managers and project managers are the interface between the top management team and the organization's employees. They inform and motivate key employees to work on improving digital employee experience, and they're also in charge of monitoring the results.
Human resources department: As with most aspects related to a company's employees, the human resources department is usually in charge of initiating and executing various policies that aim to enhance digital employee experience. In some situations, it may make sense to create a whole new department specifically for this purpose.
IT department: Because digital employee experience is directly related to technology, the IT department is a key component when it comes to helping each employee make the best use of the digital tools they have at their disposal. They're responsible for assessing the company's hardware and software resources and updating them when necessary.

Technology has become such an integral part of our everyday reality that it's difficult to imagine our personal and professional lives without it. Since the tech tools that your staff use to perform their tasks are likely to be essential for their success and professional satisfaction, it makes perfect sense to prioritize digital employee experience for your organization.