Have you been keeping an eye on the DEX at your company? In between UX, CX, ROI, HR, PR and B2B, we thought we’d chuck another acronym in the mix just to keep you on your toes.
After all, who doesn’t love a clever-sounding abbreviation to use as a sparring tool over the boardroom table?
All kidding aside though, digital employee experience (DEX) is a thing, and a very important one at that. If a business wants to retain a competitive advantage in today’s rapidly-changing corporate landscape, it has to keep a close eye on employee engagement levels and this is increasingly linked to a workforce’s digital experience, which forms an integral part of the whole shebang.
What on earth is digital employee experience, you may ask. Here’s a sleek little summary to use as reference if it comes up in conversation.
DEX: refers to the tools and technology employees use to do their work, and how this fits into a given company culture.
On the surface, this may seem like a small thing to be concerned about. However, when you stop to consider that almost every interaction today’s employees have with their organisation is digitised in some way, it makes sense that you have to streamline those touchpoints as far as possible if you want keep things on an even keel. Here are a few ways to improve digital employee experience at your workplace in 2019:
4 Ways to improve digital employee experience in 2019:
1. Use tech to find the right folks.
There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all employee. Workers are humans first and foremost. If you want to be sure that the people who form your team will be happy with their employee experience, it pays to find your unicorns where they hang out. Hire for culture fit from the start, and great DEX is likely to follow.
In South Africa alone there are countless digital platforms that are likely to yield exceptional candidates. This includes the obvious ones like LinkedIn, and other more niche spaces like The Resource (a Facebook-based job board exclusively for South African advertising, media, film and PR professionals) and Flexyforce (a cloud platform for onboarding, contracting and paying a network of independent contractors, or small to medium suppliers).
2. Start with on-boarding and work from there.
First impressions last. If you can make a new recruit’s very first digital employee experience a good one, you’re pretty much in it to win it. A high-quality, personalised and informative process that is comfortable and simple to follow can transform something that is seen as a rather annoying, time-consuming form-filling exercise into a swift introduction to your company’s way of working. Mitigate the paperwork deluge and gather them into the fold without the mind-numbing need for countless bouts of name, surname, ID number, residential address, next of kin, bla-di-bla-di-bla.
3. Gather data and make it work for you.
If you’re in the process of driving employee engagement at your place of business, chances are you have a reward and recognition platform in place. This kind of thing yields loads of super juicy data on the way that your people experience their workplace – exactly the type of thing you need if you want to streamline the way everyone works together. Pulse surveys are exceptionally useful in this regard. Gather your data, refine your plans, add insights and use it all to refresh your company’s experience strategy from the inside out.
4. Remain nimble and adaptable.
Enable employees to have input in terms of their own workplace architecture. Today’s multi-generational workforces make for a far more complex corporate ecosystem than ever before. Accept that the tech that works for your top-level executives may not do the trick for your interns or junior recruits. Stay nimble and adaptable in this regard by working with your employees to find systems that hit the sweet spot for each demographic. There will be some trial and error involved, but the effort will be worth it in the end.
There you have it – a few important ways in which you can improve digital employee experience at your place of work in 2019.
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