Why digital employee experience will still matter after the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced an unprecedented digital transformation in many organisations. Traditional ways of working have been overturned, replaced by remote working, digital interactions and virtual teams.

Once the worst of the crisis has passed, organisations will settle back into a ‘new normal’ mode of operation. But this will look very different from 2019 ways of working, and digital employee experience must still be a leadership priority.

Digital employee experience during the crisis

It goes without saying that new digital experiences have been at the heart of business responses to the pandemic, for employees as much as customers.

Teams that used to meet weekly at head office switched to video chats and team collaboration spaces. Internal communication via digital channels became critical as a way of keeping everyone in the loop on daily changes.

Many staff found themselves working at home, alone and reliant on digital tools to productively work with others. Senior leaders were not spared either, having to find new personal working practices, as well as fresh ways of engaging with the whole workforce via digital channels.

In all of this, digital employee experience (DEX) has been the strategic consideration. More than just what digital tool (or pile of tools!) has been offered to employees, it’s about how they fit together, enabling staff to have a productive and enjoyable experience.

This has brought many technology aspects previously left solely to IT to manage into the domain of business strategy and leadership. When this was done, organisations reaped immediate and ongoing benefits.

Now that the pandemic is subsiding, do we all return to past ways of working? Has the need to focus on digital employee experience gone away? In short, no.

We’re not going back to that

In the 2020 State of Remote Work survey, 98% of remote workers want to continue working from home to some degree for the rest of their careers. With the pandemic suddenly forcing millions of employees to experience remote working for the first time, it’s a safe bet that many of these workers will want to hold onto at least the option to work from home after the pandemic has passed.

Firms should expect the new normal to look different in many other ways. The use of collaboration tools, formerly considered a ‘nice to have’ option, will now be embedded in the daily practices of many teams. Video communication from leaders, with real-time two-way engagement, will also be preferred to more traditional ways of communicating.

Challenges remain, with the same survey finding the two biggest struggles for remote workers were “difficulties with collaboration and communication” (20%) and “loneliness” (20%).

These two challenges can only be overcome by sustaining a business focus on delivering an effective digital employee experience to all workers, in or out of the office.

Connecting with a global workforce

Deutsche Post DHL have 550,000 staff around the globe, with the vast majority of the workforce out in the field. In 2019, they rolled out a new “CONNECT App” as part of an overall strategic approach for 2025 “Delivering excellence in the digital world”.

The purpose of the app is to communicate to, and engage with the whole workforce, beyond the 200,000 employees who have access to the current intranet.

More than just a rollout of a new headquarters solution, the approach gave the power to local business owners to make the most of the solution, and to find ways it can benefit their area of the business. As one manager reported: “It’s great to be able to set up my own chat group so I can keep my team updated and connected. It’s a great way to collaborate and stay in touch when we’re not all in the same place.”

Adding 19k employees in the period of October 2019 to March 2020, the app is accelerating in pace, and is a strong example of how longer-term digital employee experience strategy can be put into practice.

Managing in a digital age

With an increasingly complex and virtual workforce, managers and leaders will need to learn new skills in order to keep their teams and business units working productively.

While the goal has always been to ‘manage the output’ rather than ‘manage the activity’, this is much harder when teams aren’t all sitting together in a traditional office.

There will also be more part-time and contingent workers, who will move in and out of projects and teams as businesses continue to evolve their responses to the impact of the pandemic.

A key component of successful team management will be the sustained and intensive use of collaboration tools, and other online platforms. This will make work visible, and can help to bring together the team into a cohesive group.

Without this shared digital employee experience, managers and leaders will be ‘flying blind’ in post-pandemic organisations.

The pace of change will remain high

While the mortality rate of the pandemic will mercifully abate at some point, the economic repercussions will continue to spread for years to come. It has taken over a decade for many economies to fully recover from the financial crisis of 2007, only to be plunged into this new and even more radically reshaped world.

Flow-on effects will wash through economies multiple times, requiring organisations to constant respond and evolve. To do this, organisations must have a high degree of organisational resilience.

This means empowering staff with the tools and working culture to actively participate in these changes. This must be reflected in a simple, productive and coherent digital employee experience, rather than the previous confusion of different digital platforms, tools and processes.

The only constant in all of this is the need to bring the whole workforce on the transformation journey, ensuring that they are engaged and supportive. This is a broader employee experience challenge, and the digital aspect must play its part. Only then can we be confident that we will emerge with sustainable and successful organisations.