The Digital Experience Defines the Employee Experience

Successful organizations are focused on improving and optimizing the employee experience
For organizations of every type, improving and optimizing the employee experience (EX) has become a top priority. Among the many benefits this brings, the most obvious is that a better EX improves business results. However, it is much more than that now. The shift to remote and distributed work both during the pandemic and after, is only increasing the importance of an outstanding digital workplace experience. Every organization needs to support the hybrid work model. Citrix’s “Digital Shock” survey, completed just recently, shows that 75% of executives expect organizations won’t be returning to the office as they knew it. Delivering an optimal digital experience has moved from “important” to “vital” after the pandemic.

Giving the employees an excellent digital experience as a semblance of normality returns is essential.  Organizations are taking action now. The Citrix survey shows 42% of firms are implementing a digital workspace to improve the digital experience. Improving the digital experience is essential for talent acquisition and retention as well. A recent Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) study found a negative experience with workplace technology would impact the job decision (staying or accepting a position) for 25% of employees.

Workplace technology is the focal point for improving employee experience. The digital platforms that organizations utilize certainly define EX for knowledge workers, but for other types of workers as well. The ability to deliver and gather information impacts nearly all types of jobs, and digital technologies are now essential on the factory floor, in the warehouse and even on construction sites.

The digital workspace defines the digital employee experience
Employees want to do their work in the best possible fashion, and the right next-generation digital platform will deliver the productivity and efficiency that will let them do that. Probably even more than management does, employees hate digital tools that don’t deliver. The impact of the frustration caused by second-class digital solutions is measurable. A survey by Sierra-Cedar found that 27% of employees report that they lose up to an entire workday every week through irrelevant digital activity. And a study by G2 found that 24% of employees have considered leaving their job because the apps and software they use are not a good match for their needs.

Many of the limitations of the digital employee experience can be eliminated with the latest digital workspace products. The digital workspace has seen major enhancements and improvements in just the last 12 to 24 months. The use of AI enables the digital workspace to conform itself to the unique workstyle of each employee. The next-generation platforms also eliminate many of the system management and security-specific tasks that get in the way of productivity and often create anxiety and frustration for the employee.

Next-generation digital workspaces do a lot more to improve the employee experience. One of the most attractive to employees is enabling them to use a wide range of devices and operating systems to interact with corporate apps and data. Enabling employees to use their device of choice is a substantial experience improvement over forcing them to use corporate-standard devices. The most modern digital workspace products protect the organization’s apps and data so that they can be utilized from nearly any device. This makes it possible for IT teams to provide greater freedom without potential security issues.

One of the most important digital EX demands from employees is the ability to work from anywhere. Enabling a flexible work environment has become a must-have, especially for millennials and digital natives. The modern digital workspace makes this a reality. Functionality is consistent regardless of location, and there are no special security hoops to jump through to work outside the office.

Performance has also been improved, ensuring that the EX of using specific apps or tools is as responsive as the employee desires. Improved app responsiveness is a combination of better virtualization and remote workload support capabilities and the seamless use of cloud for particularly demanding workloads such as analytics. Improving the performance and responsiveness has been a consistent request of employees that use digital workspaces.

Perhaps the single most visible improvement to the digital employee experience comes from raising employees’ work digital experience to the same level as their personal or consumer digital experience. A recent study by Salesforce found that 71% of employees want the same digital experience at work as they have in their personal lives. Putting apps, data and services in a single, consistent and easily accessible platform brings more parity between business and personal digital experiences.

As organizations focus on improving the EX, IT teams will have to step up to enhance the digital systems that drive it. This can be done by deploying a single, comprehensive platform for all apps, data and services that not only provides the foundation for a better experience going forward, but also remediates many of the limitations with existing solutions. Citrix Workspace is a best-in-class solution that delivers all the benefits listed above, along with many others.