How to create a high-impact digital employee experience (DEX) strategy
In a recent global DEX survey, 42% of respondents rated digital employee experience either very or extremely important. As the working world has taken a sudden shift to digital and remote practices, this figure is no doubt higher still.
When digital employee experience gains traction within firms, the need for a meaningful DEX strategy quickly becomes apparent. This strategy points towards a desired future state, and then puts in place plans and actions to make it a reality.
The business world is, however, littered with strategies that fail to make their mark, sitting on the shelf rather than being put into practice. A high-impact DEX strategy should provide an invaluable companion for senior leaders, and a to-do list for the teams tasked with implementing it.
Start with deeply understanding employee needs
It’s widely recognised that ethnographic research is the foundation for delivering a great customer experience (CX). With a holistic understanding of needs, desires and issues, a strong strategy can be formed and delivered.
It’s no different for digital employee experience, except that the ‘users’ being researched are the organisation’s own staff. The huge advantage is that staff are much easier to reach than customers, enabling more insights to be uncovered in less time.
The best place to start is to dig into the needs of frontline and customer-facing staff. These are the key staff that drive the delivery of the organisation’s product or services, and they often have the most challenging work environments.
Over 20 years, Step Two has conducted this type of research in hundreds of firms, of all shapes and sizes. While there are always some good news stories to tell, there are also many employee issues and needs that could be better met.
Better supporting pregnant mothers
We posed an apparently simple question to managers at an Australian health insurance provider: “A woman hoping to get pregnant joins your health fund, with the intent that she’ll be in the fund for the necessary 12 months waiting time, so her birth would be covered. She falls pregnant ‘on time’, but then the baby comes one month early. Does your fund cover the birth?”
With managers of frontline customer service in the meeting room, the answers varied sharply. One manager said it would be the “right thing to do” and the birth should be covered, as it “wasn’t her fault”. Another manager exclaimed “of course we wouldn’t cover her birth, it’s not in her policy, and we can’t just make these things up!”.
This conversation came at the end of field research that we’d undertaken in the firm’s call centres and branch offices. We’d talked to the customer service agents, and it was clear that they were often unsure of what to say to fund members. This stemmed from a significant gap in their digital employee experience: there was no useful, trusted knowledge source they could rely on.
More broadly — and more strategically — we identified that there were no management practices in place to identify uncertainties, craft answers and then communicate them to frontline staff. This went all the way up the chain of command, with a misalignment between what was being promoted to customers in marketing campaigns, and how this was supported internally for customer-facing staff.
The power of holistic research was demonstrated clearly in this project, and it allowed the teams involved to make informed decisions about which problems they were going to solve, and how the pieces needed to fit together strategically.
Three elements of a DEX strategy
Drawing on our work with our clients, we see three elements that need to be put in place to deliver a great DEX:
- a powerful DEX vision and strategy that aligns thinking across the organisation
- clear DEX guiding principles that inform decisions and designs
- an ongoing series of DEX initiatives to make a concrete impact on how employees work
Create a DEX vision
The foundation for any meaningful strategy is a clear vision of where the organisation needs to get to. In the context of DEX, this vision must articulate in concrete terms the desired employee experience, outlining how digital tools and platforms fit together.
In most cases, using narrative to describe the DEX vision is both powerful and engaging. This could explore a future ‘day in the life’, showing how key staff will be working in the future, and what benefits this will deliver to the organisation.
It’s crucial that the narrative describes the desired future state, not just the current situation, while ensuring that what’s outlined is achievable within 3–4 years (as opposed to a 10-year ‘sci-fi’ vision).
This vision draws upon multiple sources:
- It’s informed by the employee research that uncovered points of pain, and key needs; this ensures that the vision is anchored in the reality of how the business works day-to-day.
- It’s shaped by overall business strategy, and the considerations of key stakeholders; this aligns the DEX strategy to the overall direction of the firm, ensuring that concrete business benefits will be delivered.
- It’s co-created with key players in the room, to draw on the deep expertise of individuals throughout the organisation; this maximises the knowledge that’s utilised, as well as engaging key staff and stakeholders throughout the process.
The vision need not be long; just a few pages may suffice if the direction is clear. However it’s articulated, the DEX vision will provide a ‘compass direction’ that will help to align the many projects and activities involved in delivering a better digital employee experience.
Establish DEX guiding principles
Over time, projects and business areas will make countless decisions that impact on the digital employee experience, either positively or negatively. Many design decisions will also be made, both large and small.
These groups can’t all be expected to be deeply immersed in DEX, nor will they automatically make changes that improve DEX. To help shape the holistic experience, what is needed is a set of guiding principles for digital employee experience.
For example:
- simplify our employee experiences
- achieve equity of experience
- lead with the experience
- generate delight
(These are all drawn from real-world projects that have worked towards delivering a concrete DEX strategy.)
Of course, there’s an extra level of detail that sits below these simple statements, and this must be articulated in a way that is meaningful to a wide internal audience. As they become more tangible over time, they should also be incorporated into project delivery methodologies, alongside technology assessment and change management planning.
In this way, solutions and platforms will all head towards a coherent and productive digital employee experience, even if this will be a lifelong journey.
Kick off DEX initiatives
To meaningfully move the dial, there will need to be an ongoing program of DEX projects and initiatives. Operating at both large and small scales, these projects should tackle specific business needs or points of pain for employees, delivering concrete outcomes in terms of functionality or experience.
These DEX initiatives will ‘provide the glue’ that delivers a productive experience across multiple systems. They will typically run alongside other activities, seeking to improve outcomes for all rather than competing with other projects.
Such projects could include straightforward activities such as restructuring the knowledge base for call centre staff, or might be more ambitious, such as creating a new mobility experience that integrates multiple business systems.
Customer experience again projects a template for how this would work, with better customer outcomes coming from 5+ years of hard work.
Think big, deliver often
Digital employee experience should be a strategic consideration for most firms, and a robust strategy should be put in place, with the direct support and direction of senior leaders.
Drawing on the real-world needs of staff, a DEX vision then utilises narrative to outline a future state that is desired by all. Guided by overarching principles, an ongoing series of strategic initiatives then make their mark on the organisation, by providing employees with better services and support, and uncovering ways that the business can work better as an integrated whole.
The unwritten rule behind all of this is: think big, deliver often. There is a real opportunity now to build on the success of customer experience and shine a strong light on the internal working practices of firms. To make this more than just words, however, it’s vital to get started straight away. Delivering small benefits unlocks the ability to tackle bigger problems, while providing measurable benefits sooner rather than later.
