The last two decades have altered the way organizations manage their employees. In-person interactions have given way to virtual via mobile and other digital collaboration systems, challenging HR teams to successfully handle hybrid working models while providing great experiences. Ensuring a superior Digital Employee Experience (DEX) may be challenging but is critical to organizational growth and success. Technology aids workplace productivity and efficiency via reliability, ease of use, and ability to seamlessly access information. In today’s work-from-anywhere ecosystem, you need to ensure your employees are enabled across the various digital channels they interact on.
Did you know digital transformation can fuel employee motivation levels and increase employee retention?
With a reported 78%1 of workers using anywhere from 6-10 IT tools to communicate each day, digitization heavily influences workplace operations. Your employees deal with a daily onslaught of technical tools, and any negative experience can derail both individual and group output. With a rapidly growing multi-generational workforce, there is also significant pressure on HR to understand and meet the requirements of tech-savvy employees who demand consistently rich digital experiences.
Recent surveys uncover a growing emphasis on boosting employee experience in the digital era.
- Industries where staff noted high levels of DEX had 12% fewer technical disruptions, translating to a 12.1% revenue increase and an 18.1% cost reduction — Lakeside Software global market survey
- At scale, global Fortune 500 companies that implement DEX protocols report a potential revenue upside of $4 Trillion — Lakeside Software global market survey
As hybrid workspaces and a new reliance on innovative technical solutions for employees expand post-pandemic, DEX will be a key factor in the retention and productivity of any workforce. Read on to learn how to improve your DEX strategy and leverage advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) to streamline your employees’ digital satisfaction levels.
Business factors impacting digital employee experiences
Besides the digital aspects of employee engagement, various internal business factors influence how employees stay happy and satisfied.
- Workplace Culture: Factors such as organization-wide training initiatives, educational opportunities, and talent and skills nurturing directly impact employee motivation and retention.
- Internal Communications: How employees connect with other company associates and the leadership in a transparent manner is critical for hybrid and remote workstations of the future.
- Technical Infrastructure: How robust is the technology support offered to every individual member within the organization is crucial to ensure operational efficiency.
- Leadership Engagement: How the C-suite and company leaders interact and communicate with employees impacts organizational DEX scores.
Challenges in delivering superior digital employee experiences
While DEX is fast emerging as a key metric for measuring business success, organizations continue to struggle to deliver compelling digital experiences to employees. There are several reasons for this.
- Budgetary Concerns: Company-wide changes in IT policies surrounding the use of technology may require alterations to complex IT systems, which can lead to significant additional investments and downtime.
- Change Management: Changing to new systems can come with a lengthy series of technical and organizational barriers that may create cost challenges.
- Monitoring Success Metrics: Conventional success metrics may not apply to innovative digital solutions. It can take time to measure the effectiveness of technical tools in guaranteeing employee satisfaction.
- Compliance: Many technical tools involve data collection and are mandated by regulatory restrictions around data security and privacy. The introduction of compliance requirements may create additional complexity and labor costs for HR teams.
- Technology Complexity: Many digital solutions create immediate boosts to company productivity, but the initial setup is complex and requires in-depth technical expertise. The availability of multiple communication and collaboration tools can also lead to confusion and derail productivity. Investing in the right tech stack to ensure seamless employee communication is a complicated endeavor for many organizations.
The business case for Artificial Intelligence in DEX
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help HR devise the best methods to train employees and offer suggestions on how to complete tasks on time and with the desired results. Employee engagement and satisfaction with digital tools is subjective, and that can be tough to quantify with conventional methods. Companies need to consider newer benchmarks to quantify their technical tools, and AI can provide a viable solution.
- AI uses sentiment analysis to track what employees feel (and talk) about your organization
- HR can study trends on new technology utilization compiled by AI solutions from different employee groups
- AI-powered employee engagement strategies enable HR to make data-driven decisions
- AI provides deeper insights into employee behavior by analyzing data from emails, the intranet, biometric systems, etc., allowing HR to create engaging work environments
- Intelligent automation integrates AI with automation to simplify repetitive manual tasks (automation of compliance paperwork in the onboarding process) and make faster decisions, freeing up time for more productive use of human labor (better networking opportunities, team-building and cultural programs for new hires)
Everyday AI for everyday tasks
The future digital workplace will integrate advanced AI algorithms, cognitive systems, and anomaly detection mechanisms to create seamless employee experiences. Everyday AI transforms the way organizations and their employees collaborate, communicate, and search and share information. Virtual assistants and AI-powered smart bots operate 24×7 to quickly resolve employee issues and improve productivity. AI plays a big role in enhancing the digital employee experience by –
- Automating mundane tasks to save time
- Generating data analytics to develop employee-centric business strategies
- Leveraging predictive models to increase employee satisfaction
“Over the next decade, AI will offer employees unprecedented information awareness and insight, freedom from low-value-add activities and the ability to easily use complex technologies” – Gartner
Let us examine three important aspects of digital employee engagement using AI technologies.
- Machine Learning to Boost Productivity: Machine Learning (ML) measures, analyzes, and reports employee engagement levels using advanced algorithms and pulse polls. These insights help HR improve productivity and reduce attrition. ML also takes on routine, mundane, labor-intensive tasks such as data entry, allowing employees to focus on more productive activities. ML can effectively handle the high volumes of employee interactions at different stages of hiring, onboarding, and induction – answering questions and resolving queries instantly.
- AI in Learning & Development: AI has revolutionized organizational learning and development initiatives. HR teams can analyze the ton of enterprise data at their disposal to optimize employee training programs and curriculums. Employee data provides deep insights into learning patterns and helps HR create personalized training programs with intuitive, adaptive, and responsive content that drives enhanced value. AI shortens the learning process by proposing specific training modules an employee requires to improve the skills necessary for a particular task.
- Conversational Bots for Employee Efficiency: Chatbots are AI-powered conversational programs that use Natural language Processing (NLP) to create human-like conversations. Conversational bots provide prompt resolution to employee queries – HR smart bots can conduct employee training programs, guide new hires through the onboarding process, and answer questions regarding company business and IT policies. Chatbots build predictive scripts, handle small tasks, and follow algorithms that free up employee time and effort. Chatbot integration drastically improves employee labor, estimated to cut about $8 Billion2 in business costs by 2022 and 2.5 Billion3 in employee service hours by 2023.
Bridgenext’s end-to-end technology services can help elevate your DEX scores
One of the critical barriers to improving digital employee experiences is the complexity of innovation. Custom tech stacks and robust chatbot solutions with a high level of programming are not easy to create and maintain. Finding a technology partner who can help build these assets allows you to focus on mission-critical operations while still leveraging the benefits of AI to improve DEX.
Bridgnext offers a suite of advanced technology services that help you maximize operational efficiency and provide exceptional employee experiences. Deploy robust AI apps using our comprehensive platform engineering services and take advantage of our custom offerings to maximize business impact. With our personalized digital concierge services, you can improve your employees’ interactions with company technology.
Contact us today if you wish to utilize advanced AI technologies to create consistent, superior digital employee experiences.
References
1 https://socialchorus.com/blog/digital-employee-experience-explained/
2 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/09/chatbots-expected-to-cut-business-costs-by-8-billion-by-2022.html
3 https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.juniperresearch.com/press/chatbots-to-deliver-11bn-cost-savings-2023&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1628637013318424&usg=AOvVaw1LJbRdPu3h-T9U0OG4Vzws
