It’s no secret that the user experience (UX) of a product is important. Yet the employee experience (EX) is equally important for efficiency, productivity, and employee satisfaction. In a world of remote and hybrid work, where BYOD is commonplace, we also have the Digital Employee Experience (DEX) to consider.
So, what is Digital Employee Experience (DEX)? How can it enhance employee engagement and productivity, and how can Splashtop help deliver an excellent DEX? Let’s explore.
What Is Digital Employee Experience (DEX)?
Digital Employee Experience is how employees interact with their digital tools, including technology, software, and processes, and the quality of those interactions.
Buggy software, slow devices, connection hiccups, and other technical issues can lead to poor DEX. This slows down productivity, as employees lose time dealing with technical issues, and leads to lower satisfaction due to the overall frustration. As such, organizations and IT teams that care about a positive DEX want to minimize digital frustrations and technical issues so their end users can work without interruption.
Why Does Digital Employee Experience Matter?
The Digital Employee Experience can make or break your employees’ productivity. A poor experience can cause a sharp drop in efficiency, as slow and buggy technology drags productivity to a crawl.
This isn’t an uncommon occurrence either, as a Gartner survey showed 47% of employees stating “high digital friction hinders their ability to do their job.” Similarly, a survey from Unisys Corp shows that 49% of employees lose anywhere from one to five hours of productivity a week dealing with productivity issues – that’s a significant amount of time lost across a company each week.
On the other hand, a positive DEX can have a beneficial effect across a business. This isn’t just measured in losses prevented, but also in overall improvements. According to Forrester, a good DEX leads to high employee engagement and retention. So high, in fact, that 93% of surveyed employees with a high employee experience index score intend to stay with their company.
The result is clear: providing a positive Digital Employee Experience leads to happier and more effective employees, which leads to better performance and productivity across the company.
Real-World Applications of Digital Employee Experience
This isn’t just theoretical – organizations use digital tools and platforms to provide a positive Digital Employee Experience every day. No one goes looking for a slow, buggy solution for their businesses, after all. But even simple features can improve the DEX and provide a positive impact for a company.
For instance, single sign-on (SSO) systems make it easy for employees to log in to multiple platforms on a single device. This is a simple feature that streamlines how employees use their digital tools. Still, in doing so, it eliminates a recurring annoyance and helps employees access the tools they need more quickly and efficiently.
Similarly, self-service tools can improve the Digital Employee Experience by empowering employees to address problems they encounter. This makes employees more efficient, as they can quickly attend to their technical issues, and saves time that would be spent waiting for IT support.
Key Benefits of Optimizing Digital Employee Experience (DEX)
While we’ve established the digital employee experience definition and its importance, we need to examine its benefits. Fortunately, there are several advantages to optimizing DEX, including:
1. Greater Retention
One of the most notable effects of a good DEX is the impact it has on employee satisfaction. As illustrated earlier, this leads to higher retention rates, so you can maintain top talent and keep employees happy.
2. Improved Collaboration
Tech is a key part of collaboration in today’s work environment, especially remote collaboration for employees on the go. A poor digital experience makes it harder for employees to connect and work together on projects, but a good DEX empowers teams to collaborate from anywhere with ease.
3. Improved Productivity
Employees can accomplish more when their tools work properly. A good DEX requires easy-to-use and efficient digital tools that help employees achieve their goals and finish tasks effectively; when combined with improved employee satisfaction, this leads to significant improvements in efficiency and productivity.
4. Reduced Incidents & Downtime
A good DEX doesn’t just help employees – it also makes life easier for the IT teams that support them. A better Digital Employee Experience means using tools that can detect issues to reduce incidents and downtime, giving employees more time to work and reducing the burden on the IT teams supporting those devices.
5. Better Remote Work
Remote work depends on technology. Without good software that enables remote access and support, employees will have difficulty accessing their projects and tools, not to mention receiving technical support when something goes wrong. A good DEX includes the tools and technology to work efficiently from anywhere, on any device, empowering remote and BYOD workforces.
Rethinking Endpoint Management: How DEX is Redefining the Digital Workplace
As businesses embrace remote and hybrid work, their endpoint environments have grown across distributed locations. Endpoint management solutions help manage and support those remote devices, but that’s only the first step.
Remote endpoint management also needs to factor in the Digital Employee Experience. This means not just supporting remote endpoints, but using an integrated and user-centric approach to provide a user-friendly experience anywhere and everywhere.
For instance, Splashtop AEM (Autonomous Endpoint Management) is designed to help IT teams and organizations effortlessly manage and support endpoints remotely, including proactive alerts, smart fixes for immediate remediation, and automated patch management, all of which create a seamless and convenient DEX.
Top Challenges in Delivering a Seamless Digital Employee Experience
While creating a positive DEX is important, it can be easier said than done. There are several challenges that businesses can face when trying to improve their DEX, including:
Technical challenges: Focusing on DEX can often require implementing and managing new digital tools, which can, ironically, be complex, frustrating, and time-consuming.
Integration and interoperability issues: Integrating new software designed to improve the employee experience can lead to compatibility issues with existing or legacy software.
Employee resistance: Employees can be resistant to change, even if it’s meant to be a positive one. Training and setting clear goals and expectations can help make the process smooth and painless.
Lack of resources: Improving DEX requires a buy-in from leadership, as well as resources to invest in DEX initiatives.
In many of these cases, it’s important to keep employees, IT teams, and leadership alike in the loop and aware of the benefits of a good DEX, including improved efficiency, ease of work, and employee engagement. While there will often be technical hurdles along the way, they can be overcome with proper preparation, and the results will be well worth the effort.
Best Practices for Improving the Digital Employee Experience
So, how can a company improve its Digital Employee Experience? There are a few key steps and best practices you can follow to create a fantastic digital experience for all your employees:
Seamless remote access: Using remote access and support software like Splashtop can provide a seamless experience for remote and hybrid employees, improving the DEX of workers on the go.
User-friendly tools: One of the easiest ways to improve DEX is by ensuring that everyone uses intuitive, user-friendly software that works with minimal difficulty.
Robust IT support: Having a flexible, effective IT team can go a long way towards improving DEX, especially when employees are working remotely. Having the tools in place to help IT teams support end users from anywhere and on any device and to automatically support and troubleshoot endpoints can go a long way towards a great DEX.
Continuous feedback: The best way to be sure you’re creating a positive employee experience is by accepting feedback and making changes accordingly. Listen to your employees and find ways to address the problems they encounter.
Proactive problem-solving: The best time to address a problem is before it becomes a problem. Taking a proactive approach to support helps keep the DEX positive, like you can do with Splashtop AEM’s CVE-based vulnerability insights, as it fixes potential issues before they can disrupt work.
Deliver a Seamless Digital Experience for Your Workforce with Splashtop
If you want to create a fantastic Digital Employee Experience across your organization, you need the right software for the job. Splashtop helps create a great DEX by making it easy to work from anywhere, support users from any device, and manage all your endpoints with ease.
Splashtop supports a mobile environment by providing employees and IT teams the power to work from anywhere, on any device. Employees can use Splashtop’s remote access software to access their work devices, programs, and specialized tools from their favorite device, no matter where they go. With Splashtop’s remote support tools, IT agents can remotely access and support end-users on any device, from any device, whether they’re working at the office or from the comfort of home.
Plus, Splashtop AEM can further improve the employee experience, even across distributed endpoints. Splashtop AEM streamlines IT operations and protects devices with automation tools, proactive alerts, and more. This includes:
Automated patching for OS, third-party, and custom apps, keeping devices up-to-date without manual work.
CVE-based vulnerability insights with intelligent prioritization to protect endpoints from afar..
Customizable policy frameworks that can be enforced throughout your network.
Alerts and remediation to automatically resolve issues before they become problems.
Background actions to access tools like task managers and device managers without interrupting users.
Transform your Digital Employee Experience. Get Started with a Free Trial of Splashtop Now!
Are you ready to provide an amazing DEX to your employees, no matter where they’re working from? Splashtop helps support a connected workforce with the ability to work from anywhere, flexible and efficient IT support, and automated support across all your endpoints, improving productivity and employee satisfaction even in digital-first work environments.
You can experience Splashtop firsthand with a free trial – get started today and see what Splashtop can do for you!
