Let’s talk about DEX

The work­force and work­place have under­gone a seis­mic evo­lu­tion in the last 12 months and such rapid progress should be cause for cel­e­bra­tion. How­ev­er, fresh evi­dence reveals there are gap­ing and, because of the incred­i­ble pace of change, grow­ing fis­sures that lead­ers must address urgent­ly.

Organ­i­sa­tions world­wide scram­bled into cri­sis mode when the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic hit to achieve busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity. Remote work­ing was neces­si­tat­ed by lock­down and enabled by tech­nol­o­gy while dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion plans were yanked for­ward by years.

The direc­tion of trav­el is clear. Giv­en that numer­ous sur­veys high­light peo­ple would pre­fer to work at least part­ly from home, busi­ness­es must embrace hybrid work­ing and the dig­i­tal era. But effec­tive coor­di­na­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion are huge­ly chal­leng­ing if rely­ing upon a hodge­podge of old ways of work­ing and bolt­ed-on tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions.

Lead­ers must grasp the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rethink and shape the future of work, as vac­cines are rolled out and restric­tions begin to ease. We need to talk about the dig­i­tal employ­ee expe­ri­ence (DEX).

Even before COVID-19 struck, too much dig­i­tal noise was a pain point for wired work­ers. The speed of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, cou­pled with the enforced shift to remote work­ing, has ampli­fied prob­lems; desk work­ers don’t know which of the numer­ous appli­ca­tions or tools they require for spe­cif­ic tasks.

Con­verse­ly, desk­less work­ers strug­gle to access basic infor­ma­tion and sys­tems. Fur­ther, a lack of reach across the entire busi­ness, espe­cial­ly front­line work­ers, busy desk staff and employ­ees in the field, has been exac­er­bat­ed by the rise of remote work­ing, lead­ing to a dis­en­gaged, over­whelmed and unmo­ti­vat­ed work­force.

New Social­Cho­rus research expos­es these bro­ken busi­ness sys­tems. More­over, it indi­cates that it is crit­i­cal to fix dis­con­nect­ed lead­er­ship, dis­man­tle silos that impede devel­op­ment, and improve com­pa­ny-wide com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion to sur­vive and thrive in the new nor­mal. 

Delivering the correct signal through the noise

As we dis­cov­ered in lock­down, the right tech­nol­o­gy can solve these chal­lenges. To max­imise the poten­tial of tech, though, there needs to be a more orches­trat­ed strat­e­gy. For their organisation’s future, where agili­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion will be essen­tial, indi­vid­u­als – whether desk or desk­less work­ers – have to be empow­ered, engaged, aligned and moti­vat­ed. Lead­ers need to take charge and work togeth­er to dri­ve bet­ter DEX.

Indeed, accord­ing to our data, just 30 per cent of human resource (HR) and inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions (IC) staff say they col­lab­o­rate with their infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy depart­ments. To deliv­er suc­cess­ful employ­ee engage­ment, senior lead­er­ship needs to uni­fy these con­flict­ing views or face the long-term effects of low morale, a dis­en­gaged work­force and insuf­fi­cient pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els.

And, rather wor­ry­ing­ly, 88 per cent of chief infor­ma­tion offi­cers (CIOs) believe the pur­chas­ing deci­sion for col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools rests with them, with only 11 per cent stat­ing it was a deci­sion for their HR and IC col­leagues. The find­ings uncov­er a clash between CIOs’ “pull” and HR/ICs’ “push” approach­es designed to meet their organisation’s DEX require­ments.

Ulti­mate­ly, our glob­al research, con­duct­ed by Opin­ion Mat­ters and which sur­veyed 750 CIOs and 753 HR and IC pro­fes­sion­als, under­lined that with­out a strong DEX, busi­ness­es risk cre­at­ing a work­force that’s feel­ing burnout and dis­con­nect­ed from the busi­ness, hin­der­ing suc­cess. Social­Cho­rus’ dri­ving goal is to make the DEX work for every work­er so busi­ness­es can deliv­er the cor­rect sig­nal through the dig­i­tal noise. 

As the war for tal­ent inten­si­fies, pro­gres­sive busi­ness lead­ers realise that bet­ter DEX, which is per­son­alised, tar­get­ed and meets peo­ple on whichev­er device or dig­i­tal chan­nel works best for them, is cru­cial to attract­ing and retain­ing staff. DEX is increas­ing­ly vital to smooth the onboard­ing process. Addi­tion­al­ly, sup­port­ing well­be­ing and men­tal health is more impor­tant than ever dur­ing this uncer­tain time when change is the only con­stant.

For exam­ple, the Social­Cho­rus First­Up plat­form uses automa­tion to tar­get the right con­tent, resources and sys­tems access to each employ­ee on a per­son­alised basis. It also uni­fies ana­lyt­ics that gath­er behav­iour­al and engage­ment data across all enter­prise sys­tems, pro­vid­ing real-time vis­i­bil­i­ty into how the busi­ness per­forms, there­by opti­mis­ing strate­gic ini­tia­tives. 

Final­ly, senior lead­ers must remem­ber that all employ­ees have a voice too and, again, this is enabled by DEX. If they can build their com­mu­ni­ca­tions around what their work­force wants and needs to do their jobs bet­ter, they’ll see their busi­ness­es tri­umph dur­ing these test­ing times and beyond. 

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it socialchorus.com

Spon­sored by

Social­cho­rus