We’ve spoken before about the five elements of work and the employee experience: work-life balance, sense of belonging, work-related stress, employee satisfaction, and productivity. Now, with more of us than ever before embracing hybrid working—and, in some cases, even the newly introduced four day work week—making sure employees remain satisfied and productive is essential. And for those hybrid and flexible employees, their devices are essential tools and windows into their work. This means that monitoring and ensuring the optimal condition of these endpoints has become an important focus for IT teams: an employee is only as productive as their digital workplace permits.

Prioritizing employee productivity

So, why should we be prioritizing employee productivity? In short, improving employee experience (EX) and productivity is imperative because an organization's goals can only be delivered through engaged and productive employees. It’s no secret that happy and engaged employees equate to happy and engaged customers.

For organizations looking to focus on improving employee productivity in the new digital workplace, the starting point should be digital employee experience (DEX) – a strategy that focuses on improving the overall employee experience through using technology within a business.

Designing and implementing a strong DEX strategy can benefit your business in multiple ways, from operational efficiency to revenue. DEX can empower employees to adapt to modern working paradigms, thrive in remote or hybrid work environments, and provide them with the capabilities to boost overall productivity and efficiency.

DEX and employee productivity

Forrester’s recent Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) Study goes further in identifying the tangible return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying a digital employee experience management solution that provides IT teams with visibility and the ability to fix endpoint issues quickly, proactively, and autonomously.

A lack of IT visibility into endpoints has a proven impact on employee productivity: remediating service desk trouble tickets can take a lot of time, and security postures become suboptimal. In turn, digital friction and frustration become part of employees' digital experiences, impacting productivity and engagement. And, as research shows, digital friction is a significant issue, with 95% regularly facing digital friction issues such as network issues and slow devices. Supporting IT in hybrid work and making sure they're equipped to address digital friction challenges—such as network and device issues—will have a direct impact on employee productivity.

“[Improving] the visibility IT teams have into their end-user device fleet and gives them the control to not only fix issues efficiently but also create proactive troubleshooting automations. As a result, employees are more productive and IT teams more efficient.” –  Forrester, Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) Study

Some other benefits of a strong digital employee experience (DEX) strategy, that impact productivity and improve business outcomes, include:

  • Makes your business 6x more resistant to handling any disruptions in the digital employee experience
  • Boosts employee satisfaction immensely
  • Enables you to build robust employee onboarding and offboarding pipelines
  • Helps foster a healthy and appealing work-life balance for your employees
  • Improves overall employee well-being and reduces absenteeism
  • Reduces operational costs and increases business revenues

DEX is only as good as its ROI

The benefits of DEX for employee productivity are clear, but it’s important to invest in a DEX solution that'll yield real results.

While DEX is focused on the intangible concept of ‘experience’, there are quantifiable outcomes for employee productivity that can give us an indication as to the effectiveness of a DEX program. It's vital for organizations to monitor the return on investment (ROI) of DEX. For example, Forrester highlights some of the potential ROI enterprises may realize by deploying a real-time digital employee experience management solution:

  • Improved employee productivity, resulting in $2.5 million in value. With fewer trouble tickets, proactive automation, and faster remediation, employees spend less time waiting for devices to be fixed.
  • Service desk headcount reallocation benefits amount to over $3.5 million. The biggest benefit for the composite organization in the study is the service desk team’s time savings. The team becomes 10% more efficient in Year 1, 20% in Year 2, and 35% in Year 3.

The TEI Study also highlights that the amount of time saved for service desk staff over 3 years – is 10% in Year 1, 25% in Year 2, and 35% in Year 3. That’s 20 employees in Year 1, 50 in Year 2, and 70 in Year 3. It's assumed that the average employee's fully loaded salary is $50,000 and that 50% of the productivity savings are put to productive use.

Clearly, placing an emphasis on EX, implementing an effective DEX program, and having the tools that perform the way employees need them to perform is the right first step in creating a productive environment. It’s simple, really. If the technology is user-friendly and provides a frictionless experience, things get done faster.

Want to learn more about the cost savings, business benefits, and productivity ROI of DEX? Download the Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) Study today!