How Effective Tech Can Reduce Employee Downtime and Attrition

In our rapidly evolving work-from-anywhere world, employee downtime and productivity are rising concerns.

Just ask Chetu—the Florida-based company that came under fire for terminating an employee who turned off their webcam (sidenote: wrongful termination laws were not on their side).

While I’m not on board with you watching your employees via webcam all day, the productivity concerns are real and valid.

The important thing to note is that most employees want to be productive. They aren’t shirking responsibilities behind a turned-off webcam; they are trying to get their work done as efficiently as possible—and they’re being slowed down by poor DEX.

What Is DEX?

DEX, or the digital employee experience, is the way employees interact with technology during their workday.

And it’s a key factor in evaluating how an organization stacks up to the rest in the race for effective tech. DEX measures the quality of your workforce’s interaction with the tools they use daily.

These tools help them get their jobs done and your company running. So, why are some companies still behind in adapting to new technologies that can help their employees stay productive?

Many companies are stuck using tech tools that don’t serve the modern workforce. These inefficient tools slow down operations and ultimately make your employees feel unproductive.

In a survey facilitated by Lakeside Software, respondents indicated that they lose about one hour of weekly work time to lousy tech.

Naturally, this leaves them frustrated and feeling less than satisfied with the tools their company provides them, which could ultimately lead to dissatisfaction with the company overall.

Here are a few tips on how companies can better support their employees.

Evaluate Your DEX Maturity.

The first step is to look honestly at your company’s DEX efforts and see how you can improve.

Exploring your DEX maturity helps you evaluate where you’re lacking and be honest about what changes need to be made to benefit your employees and, ultimately, your bottom line.

After all, the two are intrinsically linked—companies with poor turnover rates burn through a lot of cash trying to find new employees, only to have them leave again a year later.

The proof is in the pudding: 14% of the employees surveyed said they’d previously left an organization due to poor DEX, and over 60% said they would consider it.

When looking into DEX, start at the beginning: clearly evaluate where your company is at to see how you can best improve.

A true DEX leader is fully committed to improving the digital employee experience and seeks to make it part of the business's core strategy.

They’re willing to invest in IT resources as part of their proactive approach and closely track the impact of their efforts across functions—whether that’s human resources, finance, operations, or another area.

They know that optimized digital experiences drive better customer experiences and invest in them accordingly.

Quell employee frustrations through comprehensive DEX efforts.

Investing in your employees should seem like an obvious step. Still, many employees aren’t just frustrated with the loss of productivity—they’re also frustrated with the overall IT infrastructure that supports their workplace.

When investing in DEX, enterprises need to consider how they can remove silos between departments and begin to take proactive steps toward improving their tech stack.

Comprehensive DEX efforts take on the following qualities:

• They’re proactive instead of reactive. They don’t just respond to emergencies as they come up. Instead, they create systems to prevent these issues from ever happening in the first place.

• They break down silos and become more integrated. They do away with disparate teams and workflows and see the company from a holistic point of view.

• They go from manual to automated. They adapt to automated systems that can remediate, update, patch, and more.

• They go from being IT-dependent to self-reliant. This doesn’t mean you don’t need IT—it means you have an “always on” IT infrastructure that supports users with self-help remediations instead of limiting their support to when IT is available.

• They use complete data instead of incomplete information. They can gather objective system details to make better decisions with accurate metrics.

• They go from static to predictive analysis. They leverage the power of AI and machine learning to study patterns and trends that could negatively impact their digital environments.

• They go from one-size-fits-all to personalized IT. This one is really important to pay attention to and is perhaps the biggest mindset shift for companies. Personalized IT provides end users with exactly what they need, like specific hardware and software that suit their unique job responsibilities and work styles.

For some companies, the above list will seem like a major change.

But for companies looking to become DEX leaders (rather than webcam spies), this list will be essential moving forward. DEX can reduce employee turnover and frustration, increase your output, and heighten your productivity—this is one investment that’s really a no-brainer.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash