Why Digital Employee Experience is Getting Personal
Much like how our phones have become more than gadgets meant for voice calls, our digital employee experience platforms have also become more than virtual newsletters.
Today, digital employee experience platforms are central hubs for information and engagement. It’s where teams congregate to share ideas and collaborate, and it’s the platform employees use to check activities from the human resources department. With hybrid workplace setups quickly becoming the norm, digital employee experience platforms are fast-becoming a critical part of every employee’s work day.
In LiveTiles, we view digital employee experience as the “sum total of digital interactions within the work environment”, as first noted by James Robertson from Australia-based consultancy Step Two. It’s similar to how we define employee experience: a strong connection of an employee towards the organization that allows them to feel the support of colleagues at every level of their workplace journey.
Today, ensuring a healthy workplace culture means having an effective digital employee experience platform. And shaping the latter requires a better understanding of how members of an organization define the employee experience.
What the research says
In our Global Employee Experience Pulse Check 2021 survey, we found one of the key components that makes an employee experience platform effective is when it allows the company’s culture to shine. More specifically, employees said that feeling the workplace has a good culture and makes them feel they belong is one of the most important components of good employee experience.
It echoes what this article by Deloitte says: a high-impact digital employee experience is possible when organizations “look beyond the mere functionality of technology and put people at the center of design.”
Yet currently, this is not the case. In our latest Global Employee Experience Pulse Check survey, we found 47% feel “fed up”, “stressed” or “exhausted” at work. And an astonishing 80% feel disconnected with their organizational culture.
This is why employees now expect their employee experience platforms to be a personalized experience. This means that organizations need “to be where the user is” in the words of LiveTiles Chief Strategy Officer, Simon Tyrrell.
Members of an organization now expect the platform to be a virtual hub that mimics the friendly environment employees once felt in the office.
Accenture, for example, noted how employees want their work experience to be one that allows them to experience “moments that matter”. These moments not only include important achievements at work, like promotions and transfers in a new department. It also includes important life events, like weddings, and births.
This is possible with an employee experience platform that gives members of an organization a chance to share stories to groups at large, send notes to colleagues, and allows them to enjoy various media or be informed around key milestones in a timely manner. Those who manage employee experience platforms can then better generate more relevant content, and deploy features that will spur employees to interact more with the platform, and each other!
In the age of the attention economy, ensuring that an organization spends its time on content that is worthwhile is critical for better efficiency and engagement in the workplace. The workplace is a battleground for attention. Employees are already bombarded with different tasks and tools in the office and at home, so engaging them with material that can help them get better in any aspect of their lives is one of the keys to a better employee experience.
With every member of the organization interacting more frequently and more closely, the platform allows authenticity and inclusion—two crucial factors if great EX is to flourish.
Research shows that people who report having a positive employee experience are 16 times more engaged at work and 8 times more likely to stay in a company than those who reported a negative experience. With great employee engagement, an organization can create an enduring opportunity to attract, inspire, and retain the best talent.
