With ever more companies offering their staff remote or hybrid working options, employee communication must also move into the digital space. When introducing a new digital workplace solution, organizations should pay particular attention to the user experience.
A new digital platform is often greeted with dismay and rejection. “Not another new app!” employees exclaim. And the IT support team spends a lot of time troubleshooting and explaining the new software to reluctant employees.
To avoid this stress, it’s crucial to build the digital workplace solution with the user experience central to the design. We know that user experience is critical to the success or failure of a product – even one that users don’t have an option of rejecting completely, as it is part of their working life.
One of our key UX design principles is to ‘be where the user is’. Essentially, this means that your employees don’t have to chase information or resources, but that the relevant content will find them. Our personalized, and data-driven user experience presents them with the information they need in an easily accessible format, whether they work in an office, on the frontline, or the factory floor.
Going beyond that, let’s look at the seven factors of UX, and see how LiveTiles can help you get your employees on board.
Useful
Obviously, your digital workplace needs to be useful – it’s a place to provide employees with the information they need. LiveTiles works to make this space more useful by enabling you to deliver content related to the employee’s position in the country and geographical location. For example, an employee in the UK doesn’t need to know about on-site training opportunities in Brazil.
Usable
We want employees to achieve their end objective quickly and efficiently. That’s why LiveTiles uses the power of the Microsoft Platform to enable colleagues to answer a Teams message, download a document from OneDrive, fill in a Forms survey, and so much more. We also offer further integrations, such as with Google Drive, Salesforce, Box, or Microsoft Dynamics 365. For customers who want to go beyond the standard, LiveTiles includes a powerful connector framework and a fully documented API, allowing developers to build plug-ins.
Credible
When it comes to a digital workplace solution, credibility is slightly different than for a product aimed at consumers. We are looking here to build credibility – and trust – through empathetic, thoughtful, and motivating communication.
“It requires much more work to create those human connections virtually. The famous violinist, Isaac Stern, said, ‘Music is what happens between the notes.’ Well, at work, trust is what’s built between the meetings,” according to bestselling author Simon Sinek.
Findable
When an employee wants to look up the company policy on unpaid leave, they don’t want to have to comb through dozens of files, or search for the current version. As LiveTiles is based on the Microsoft platform, we can pull results from commonly used enterprise apps such as SharePoint and ServiceNow. Employees don’t have to know WHERE the information is stored to access it. They just need to type ‘unpaid leave policy’ into the search bar, and voila!
Desirable
This is a big one for LiveTiles. Because your employees will have to use the digital workplace, but will they enjoy using it? If the design is reminiscent of a 15-year-old WordPress blog, they aren’t going to get very excited about it. They already identify with your company, so show them the same awesome design experience you offer your customers, with customized branding that strengthens employee advocacy.
Accessible
We want everyone to access their digital workplace. That’s why LiveTiles provides a range of features focusing on improving the accessibility of our products, including our Color Contrast Checker, alt text for images, and a visual focus indicator. We follow the recommendations set out in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (w3.org).
You can increase the digital effectiveness of our team by providing them with a useful, visually-appealing hub for information, knowledge-sharing, and collaborative learning, wherever they are in the world. And it’s not just the recipients of the information that have a great user experience. Your HR and communications team will love the easy-to-use Content Management System and comprehensive analytics.
If you want to provide your employees the same incredible user experience you offer your customers, get in touch to schedule a demo.
Or join us at the Gartner Digital Workplace Summit in London from 15 – 16th May 2023.
