Research identifies seven qualities of organisations delivering good digital employee experience

Lakeside Software has published a new research report  Digital Experience Guide: 7 Qualities of Digital Employee Experience Leadership,  revealing the seven attributes of organisations that are delivering high-quality digital employee experience.

DEX describes the quality of a workforce’s daily interactions with the technology they use for work. The goal of DEX is to drive positive change by analysing how employees interact with the organisation’s computing devices, local and cloud applications, networks, and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs).

The new guide is the first industry report to analyze organizations at every stage of the DEX maturity curve and outline the benefits DEX leaders enjoy over less engaged organizations. Lakeside is able to pinpoint the attributes of successful DEX leadership, where organisations fall on the DEX maturity curve, the business outcomes of improving DEX, and what it takes to bring DEX to the next level. 

The research shows that only 20% of organizations can be classified as DEX leaders with technology and financial services firms leading the way. Healthcare and insurance accounted for the most intermediate organizations while later adopters can be found in the manufacturing and professional services sectors. Larger concerns, with more than $10 billion revenue, represent the largest percentage of DEX leaders. Despite significant proven benefits in employee usability, customer satisfaction, and annual revenue, 58% of companies are still in the intermediate stages of adoption, and 22% are only just getting started. As more jobs become available as remote positions, it’s important to note that as remote and hybrid positions increase, so do the expectation for modern work experiences.  

Greg Dolphin, director of global support at LexisNexis, said, "Lakeside's proactive IT capabilities have significantly enhanced our digital employee experience. The quantity and quality of data collected has let us strategically identify and remediate issues far faster than we otherwise would have. A year after onboarding SysTrack, about 5% of the logged incidents across the local IT support teams were filed proactively. Today, we are solving 50% of issues proactively, purely because of the level of visibility that we have into endpoints."

7 Qualities of Digital Employee Experience Leadership

Proactive IT stance across the entire organization was the top trait of firms that were further along the DEX maturity curve. They shift from solving issues only after they occur to preventing problems in the first place. Think of it like a car heading the wrong way, like a GPS system, this technology tells the driver to turn around and go in the right direction. This is why proactive IT via endpoint management is important - the endpoint in tech affects a user’s ability to continue a task, causing technical difficulties and disruptions. In a car, you would end up at the wrong house. End-point management software constantly scans to predict and repair issues before they become apparent to a user, creating real-time fixes. 

Fully integrated tech suites support IT teams to monitor the full picture. Leaders have a single source of truth that provides a holistic view of the environment to all sub-teams, while DEX laggards will still be relying on disparate tools and workflows.

Complete data collection enables DEX leaders to gather objective system details, device performance, and user behaviour data directly from endpoints, as well as user sentiment and other qualitative metrics. Those who are responsive to change and share data internally, reap the benefits of easier fixes, fewer problems, and enable the ability to gather a broad range of metrics which can provide data history for further analysis. 

Personalized IT unlocks opportunities for optimal performance, enabling leaders to track daily engagement preferences, user ability, and offer the end-user a bespoke experience. DEX leaders have already shifted towards personalization with the help of sentiment data, pulse surveys and questionnaires with emphasis on hard supporting data about user performance, software adoption, and other classifying metrics. 

Self-reliant employees are more prevalent at DEX leaders, and benefit form an environment where support is “always available.” Users have access to self-help remediations, with organizations limiting the cost and time lost to technical difficulties to just thirty minutes a week, four times less than those without. 

Automated fixes for common issues remediate, update, and patch across the IT estate. DEX leaders also make use of data insights  to understand when certain thresholds are met rather than having IT personnel perform these tasks one by one.

Predictive analysis anticipates future failures whereby DEX leaders leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to scan for patterns and trends that may cause disruptions and provide evidence of potential IT problems while recommending solutions. 

DEX leaders benefit from

Reduced downtime and improved performance of workplace technology. Employees of organizations with high DEX maturity see 75% less downtime time per week on average (30 minutes) compared to those employed by organizations with low levels of DEX maturity (128 minutes).

Meeting the needs of the workforce. More than half of employees say digital experience is an important or very important factor when deciding whether to stay with their current employer (54%) or when considering a future employer (61%). Thirty-six per cent of employees also say they have considered leaving their employers due to poor DEX experience — and 14% already have.

Supporting hybrid work. On average, 60% of employees consider workplace technology essential to their success. This is particularly evident among employees in the technology (83%) industries where hybrid and remote work is widespread.

"Leading organizations see digital employee experience as a competitive advantage that powers the entire enterprise, ensuring customer and employee success to the benefit of the bottom line," said David Keil, CEO of Lakeside Software. "Our research shows that leading organizations are seeing greater returns from IT initiatives that focus on the employee experience and conversely, organizations that do not prioritize DEX are falling even further behind."