Employee Experience (EX) is a combination of several points of interaction each employee has throughout their tenure at an organization, from people, to processes, and technology. This can be a wide range of interactions, including IT, HR, security, Lines-of-Business, Real Estate, and more. The employee experience is defined by multiple factors throughout the day and workweek. For example, an employee may have a remarkable performance review with their manager, which enhances their overall job satisfaction and leads to a positive employee experience.

However, they may have difficulty linking their new laptop to the company’s email servers, or downloading important software applications to their devices, or perhaps even experiencing challenges getting corporate data on their cellphone. Events like these are negative experiences that quickly lead to frustration, disengagement, and job dissatisfaction.

Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is a critical component of overall EX as most employees interact with digital tools/technology. Overall strategies should focus on empowering employees to do their best work with technology that ensures employees are engaged from the day they are hired to the day they leave the company. Providing employees with a personalized and relative experience that allows them to easily onboard and get access to all their corporate data and applications, ensures they are productive from the very first day on the job.

Employee Experience (EX) has evolved; there are new generations entering the workforce and they’ve likely had a digital billboard in their pocket since high school. They expect to be able to work remotely – if not all the time, at least in a hybrid mode, and need to have technology that is consumer simple and available anywhere, on any device.

The battle to attract talent, and retain talent is real. The market indicates there are more jobs available than there are candidates. That means the new generation does not have to make concessions when considering employment. Seemingly now, the candidates interview the company instead of vice versa.

Organizations must take into consideration that the new generations are not the old 9-5, M-F workers. Employees want to work anywhere – and on their device of choice. Technology is critical to keeping talent engaged and productive. This change in demographics, coupled with the war for talent has brought employee experience front and center.

Improving employee experience starts with the employees first interaction with the new organization through interviews, offer letter, and what happens after they accept their offer. DEX tools are critical to the entire employee experience lifecycle including onboarding, the employees’ first day, their tenure, and all the way through offboarding/retirement.

Key milestones in employee experience:

• Onboarding– Every new employee needs to feel welcomed and productive from the moment they accept their offer. Onboarding is a critical stage to set the right tone for the relationship between the employee and the organization.
• Day 1– Employees need to access resources and complete crucial tasks like enrolling in benefits or setting up enterprise accounts, so they’re ready to start working and ensure no time is wasted.
• Employee Tenure– Fostering the employee experience with continuous engagement and corporate communications is imperative.
• Offboarding– Provide a seamless transition as employees leave the organization. Turning over sensitive materials and removing access to corporate data will protect both the company and the employee.

Additionally, employees want to be allowed to choose how and where they get their jobs done. This could be a flexible work-from-home policy or allowing an employee to bring their own devices. As a result, it is up to the organization to enable seamless and secure access to company resources.

Each member of the team impacts employee experience. Surveys help organizations to define, measure, and attain goals. Surveys are the ideal method for collecting employees’ feedback and can be anonymized - which encourages honest feedback without fear of reprisal.

When it is time to say “goodbye” to an employee, that could be an excellent time to ask for feedback and thoughts towards their tenure at the organization. Employees leaving the company will be more inclined to be honest since there’s little possibility of repercussion.

Sharing the results of employee feedback with all employees and across departments encourages an open dialogue. Any changes made to an organization’s policy, workflow, or resources should be discussed considering feedback surveys. In that respect, team members feel as though the surveys were a valuable use of their time.

This article explains the many benefits of implementing a DEX platform throughout the employee experience lifecycle.

Research indicates that positive employee experience correlates to increased productivity, lower costs for the business, reduced attrition, and can help drive positive revenue results. For example, pleased customers will generate more revenue, and happy employees will be more engaged and productive. The employee experience begins well before a new hire joins an organization. Candidates now search for reviews and ratings left by former staff members online. Negative reviews, the results of a poor employee experience, can deter top talent from even considering an organization.

Active employee engagement positively impacts business through:

• Improved performance - engagement at the business unit-level increases future customer experience indicators, financial outcomes, and productivity.
• Reduced attrition- employees engaged with their organizations are less likely to depart, thus reducing costs of recruiting and training new employees.
• Improved revenue - organizations with highly engaged employees increased revenues more than organizations with minimally involved staff.
• Improved customer experiences- most engaged employees believe they know how to effectively fulfill customer needs compared to disengaged employees.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to employee experience, each company should define its goals and find solutions that fit their company culture.

Have you ever had the feeling that you do not want to do something you had to do? Of course, we have all experience this whether it was taking a test, doing chores around the house, filing taxes, or even going to the dentist. Employee Experience is critical for organizations because you certainly don’t want employees to have that negative feeling as they crack open their laptop and start their workday.

Ideally, employees should be excited to get to work, be part of the team, make a positive impact, and have flexibility as to when and where they can do their job. Technology is one of the most important factors to maintaining engaged employees who enjoy their work and bring their best every day. Creating an environment for employees that makes them feel empowered to do their best work is a critical piece to the employee experience.

Furthermore, employees want to know that leadership is listening, and they should be able to easily give feedback that can help improve the experience for all employees and progress operations.

There are many benefits of designing and implementing employee experience strategy, and at VMware we are laser-focused on the Digital Employee Experience (DEX) and help customers deploy and maintain technology throughout their organizations.

A popular choice among IT administrators for DEX is VMware's Workspace ONE®. Workspace ONE provides Digital Employee Experience Management (DEEM) tools for admins using components that enterprise-level organizations have relied on for years.

This digital workspace platform delivers and manages any app across any device with unprecedented security and control. Once an end-user accesses the platform, they can self-serve choose virtually any app—mobile, Windows, cloud, web—from a world-class unified app catalog without IT intervention.

Workspace ONE eliminates help-desk requests for services and applications and transforms employee onboarding. The use of one-touch sign-on utilizes certificates to relieve end-users from providing lengthy credentials or a universal password whenever they access an app. And it works on both BYOD and corporate-owned devices.

Workspace ONE provides several options for managing devices, with different levels of control for the IT Administrator and privacy for the employee. This is a critical piece of the design strategy as companies must fulfill the needs of the employees to work on any device – yes, even an unmanaged device (think BYO or Contractor use-cases). Read this Tech Zone article to learn more about the various management modes offered with Workspace ONE.

Regardless of where you are in your quest for exceptional employee experience, VMware is here to help you through this journey. To learn more please visit What is Digital Employee Experience (DEX)? on vmware.com or contact your Partner or VMware sales representative.