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Enhancing the Employee Experience with Technology

By

Heather A. Smith James D. McKeen

The IT Forum … Is a focus group of senior IT managers from a variety of different industries convened regularly by the authors to address key management issues in IT. This report highlights a recent discussion.

– See back page for details of the IT Forum and other reports.

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Introduction In an age when most work is technologically-mediated, many organizations are finding their

employees feel that the technology they are provided with is an impediment to their work. This

may be because they lack the right skills and training to use it effectively, the technology they

use is awkward, difficult to use, or "kludgy", or simply because the technology or information

they need is unavailable to them. In short, rather than enabling them to do a better job, corporate

technology is frustrating them. And frustrated employees do not feel empowered to "go the

extra mile" and are thereby less motivated to do their best for the organization. In fact, they may

feel unable to make good decisions, inhibited in their career growth and marketability, and

unable to provide exceptional service. In turn, this can affect employee retention, customer

satisfaction, and even talent acquisition. Conversely, an environment that promotes positive

employee experiences with technology can have a direct impact on creating a sustainable

competitive advantage for an organization that is difficult for other companies to duplicate.

Companies are beginning to recognize that their traditional transactional relationship (i.e., you

work for me and I pay you) with their employees must change because employees expect much

more from them than in the past (Dicianno 2017). Today, people want companies to invest in

them both as employees and individuals and they want the technical resources they need to do

their jobs effectively (Marketwired 2016A). Nowhere is this feeling more prevalent than with

millennials who expect to work with the latest technology -- at a time when only 31% of North

American companies allow the use of social media for work and only 40% of employees have

access to a smart phone (Marketwired 2016A). Unfortunately, with new technologies appearing

at an exponential rate and individuals adopting them almost as quickly, it is very challenging for

organizations to keep up. As a result, there are growing gaps between the technology individuals

expect to see on the job and what organizations provide (Stephen et al. 2017). "Satisfaction with

our tools is a moving target and it's getting harder," said a focus group member. "We are forcing

people to use tools that frustrate them when technology should be there to enable them, just

like electricity."

This situation is starting to change with 80% of executives rating "the employee experience" as

important or very important to them (Stephen et al. 2017). At the same time, many different

measures of this experience show that it is extremely challenging for organizations to make the

changes required to engage or retain staff. One study found that more than one-half of

employees state that they are open to changing jobs (Aggarwal and Rozwell 2017); another that

leaders feel their ability to improve employee engagement has declined in recent years and that

many companies have not yet made the employee experience a priority (Stephen et al. 2017).

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In this paper, we explore the nature of the employee experience and how technology contributes to it. It looks first at the many dimensions of this experience and the value that a positive experience can deliver to an organization. Then it examines the role of technology in mediating the employee experience both positively and negatively. Next, it looks at ways that organization can use technology to significantly improve the employee experience and concludes with some recommendations for getting started with developing and implementing an effective employee experience strategy.

What is Employee Experience? Because it is relatively new, the concept of "employee experience" is often used in different

ways and confused with other terms such as, employee engagement, job satisfaction, employee

well-being, and user experience. Therefore, before discussing how technology can improve the

employee experience, it is important to understand what it is and the factors that can impact it

both positively and negatively.

At the core of the employee experience is employee engagement (EE). This is the emotional and

psychological connection an employee has with an organization and is based on motivation, as

first described by Maslow in his hierarchy of needs (see Table 1) (Maslow 1943). Engagement is

a discretionary effort by employees in their daily work lives; a feeling of being passionate,

energetic, and committed to their work and a willingness to invest their best selves in it. It is a

feeling of connection, growth, impact and meaning in one's work and relates to the three higher

levels in Maslow's hierarchy. Conversely, disengagement is the lack of these things and relates

to his two lower levels (Dicianno 2017).

Level of Need Level of Engagement Employee Emotion

Self-actualization Highly-engaged "I love working here."

Importance Engaged "I'm a vital part of the

business."

Belonging Almost-engaged "I'm part of something

bigger."

Security Non-engaged "I don't like my job or my

manager.

Survival Disengaged "I'm here for the money"

Table 1. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Applied to Employee Engagement (after Dicianno 2017)

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Research has consistently found that more engaged employees produce significantly better

business results for their organizations. We know that when employees feel good about what

they do and are motivated to work hard, productivity goes up, deliverables are met, and

customer service improves (Liley et al. 2017, Shutan 2016, Stephen et al. 2017). EE can be

measured and many companies have implemented annual or more frequent surveys to have a

clearer picture of how well they're doing in this area. However, all too often they don't have a

holistic framework for fully understanding the factors that contribute to engagement either at a

point in time, during the entire employee journey, or for improving it (Stephen et al. 2017). And,

as the focus group pointed out, information from these surveys is not widely shared so it is

difficult to act on the results. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that only 32% of U.S. employees

are engaged and that levels of employee engagement have stayed flat in recent years (Rozwell

and Aggarwal 2017B).

More recently, experts have begun to speak of the Employee Experience (EX) at work in relation

to employee engagement. This concept relates to the actions and behavior of employees in

response to workplace processes, tools, resources, management, or other initiatives. EX interacts

with employee engagement to positively or negatively affect job outcomes, such as productivity,

job satisfaction, and performance (Poitevin et al. 2018). Thus, EX affects employee engagement

and vice versa. There are a variety of types of employee experiences: physical experiences

relating to the workplace environment; human experiences relating to interactions with others;

and digital experiences relating to the technologies available to do one's job (Liley et al. 2017).

In short, EX is the sum of everything an employee experiences throughout his or her connection

to the organization. While employee engagement is the end goal, EX is a means to this end

(Yohn 2018). And unlike engagement, EX can more easily be proactively designed to produce

better engagement.

The combination of positive EE and EX has been shown to have two valuable impacts for the

organization:

1. Productivity and Satisfaction. As noted above, highly engaged employees are more

productive and satisfied with their work. In turn this positively affects corporate performance.

In companies where there is high engagement, operating margins and net profits are both

significantly higher than in companies where there is low engagement (Dicianno 2017).

2. Corporate Brand. All organizations and IT functions have a "talent brand" (Smith and McKeen

2017). This is an expression of their culture, values and beliefs, the lifestyle that goes with

employment, and the nature of the work, and is somewhat different from a company's overall

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brand (Berry and Gabrys 2106, Hunter and Coleman 2016). With companies competing to

hire top talent, positive perceptions of an organization's talent brand are essential for

attracting and retaining employees (Shutan 2016, Marketwired 2016A). Research shows that

highly engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their companies than their

disengaged counterparts (Dicianno 2017). And the best way to attract new talent is by having

highly engaged employees who will recommend the company to others.

As Figure 1 shows, EX and EE can be positively or negatively influenced by two sets of factors,

most of which can be managed or designed. These are:

1. Management Support. This dimension includes both an employee's relationship with his/her

direct manager and with senior management in general. How one is managed affects one's

cognitive appraisals on the job and whether one is motivated to work hard or feels anxious

or threatened, particularly by change (Bala and Venkatesh 2016). Messages from senior

managers can give employees a sense of belonging and importance, assurance that they will

not be negatively affected by change, and a clear picture of the organization's vision and

goals. Management support incorporates goal setting, performance management, diversity,

inclusion, wellness, leadership and workplace design (Stephen et al. 2017).

Figure 1. The Relationship between Employee Experience and Corporate Measures of Success

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2. Organizational Support and Resources. This dimension includes the tools, processes, and

knowledge needed to do one's job well or to support the various aspects of the employee

journey. It includes compensation and benefits, enabling technologies, workplace and

structural processes, and issues that affect one's ability to do a job effectively, the physical

workspace, and social networks (Limeade 2016, Hanscome and Poitevin 2018)

EX is becoming increasingly important for organizations to get right with the baby boomer

generation retiring and millennials joining the workforce in significant numbers, said the focus

group. Millennials are currently the most disengaged segment of the workforce and the one

most likely to see access to new technologies, development opportunities, and a supportive

work environment as mechanisms that are important to a positive experience (Naim and Lenka

2017). In short, improving EX in order to engage employees more highly is now a corporate

imperative (Shutan 2016, Lesser et al. 2016).

How does today’s IT effect Employee Experience? Technology is revolutionizing how we work in multiple ways and therefore has a growing impact

on EX either positively or negatively (Lesser et al. 2016, Davies and Revang 2017). "The

expectation is that we should be able to work wherever we want and that the technology will be

seamlessly effective," said a focus group manager. "But the reality is somewhat different."

Another added, "How well we support our employees with technology is becoming a big issue

for us." Overall, there is now a recognition that the technology an employee uses influences both

EX and EE and through them, organizational performance and the customer experience.

Although it is by no means the whole picture of what affects EX and engagement in

organizations, IT now has an important role to play in affecting them for better or for worse.

At present, technology appears to contribute little to a positive EX and much towards a negative

one (Davies and Revang 2017). Researchers and the focus group noted that employees are both

consistently frustrated with the technology they are given to work with and by what they expect

technology should be able to do for them as they become more experienced with vastly superior

consumer technologies (Raia 2017, Cain and Miller 2017, Marketwired 2016B). "It's the hardest

thing to deal with," said a manager. "People are really frustrated with all of the stuff we make

them put up with. For example, our call center representatives must switch back and forth

between eight 'green screen' systems when a customer calls in. We'd never expect our

customers to do this!" "We've improved our front-end interfaces for customers, but not the back

end," said another. "We can't get any better until we fix our legacy systems."

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These problems affect almost every aspect of employees' work. A manager noted, "We gave

everyone a laptop but no one can connect because we don't have enough bandwidth." Another

pointed out, "Our Help Desk is called the 'Helpless Desk' by our employees!" Processes are not

enabled with technology. Thus, "We have a 19th century hiring process that takes months to

bring someone new in," said a manager. "Our onboarding process is terrible," another added.

"We've found that people's computers are freezing when they open a second internet tab," said

a third. "We have so many problems with access management. We get 20,000 calls every month

just for password resets but we've never thought out a better way to do this," a fourth pointed

out. "When we need to use multiple technologies together, it just defeats us!" complained a

fifth. "Our people have lost confidence in our enterprise data," said a sixth.

Overall, there was broad agreement in the focus group that technology is generally a dissatisfier

in their organizations and that it is increasingly difficult to attract and retain younger employees

because of it. They also agreed that something needs to be done about this situation. However,

"we have no strategy for where we need to go in this area," said a manager. The focus group

expressed frustration with the lack of importance business leaders have put on this issue. "They

don't want to spend the money unless it's tied to efficiency and savings," said another manager.

Research shows that new technology is approved primarily to optimize a company's operational

goals rather than to enhance EX (Davies and Revang 2017). "We need to build a case for how

these problems are affecting both EX and business performance. Right now the business case is

linked to upgrading legacy systems and this is decidedly 'unsexy'", a manager said.

There also appears to be a significant disconnect between how executives view employees'

experience with technology and how workers feel about it and a further disconnect between

leaders' desire to 'put people first' and what actually gets executed (Wilkie 2017). "Our

executives don't understand the problems our employees face," said a manager. "For example,

when executives need new technology, they get it right away; they don't have to go through the

procurement process." "Our executives don't understand their employees' experience with

technology – they have EAs to do this type of work for them," said another.

Up to now IT has tended to focus only on users' experience with a particular digital solution,

treating "experience" as an informational deficit that can be solved with more training (Poitevin

et al. 2018). Although user experience is one aspect of EX, IT clearly now has a much bigger

influence on how employees experience their work and workplaces. Therefore, IT leaders must

now view EX more broadly, and consider how organizations can leverage technology and

processes to equip and motivate their employees and improve their effectiveness. In this way EX

with IT becomes a vital part of a company's value proposition (Poitevin et al. 2018).

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The focus group noted that there are many important drivers for improving EX with technology,

such as:

• Attracting and retaining millennials and highly-skilled technology staff (Raia 2017, Lesser et

al. 2016).

• Making all employees more effective on the job and improving productivity (Employee

Benefits 2017).

• Creating an attractive workplace that promotes collaboration and flexibility and reduces

stress (Aggarwal and Rozwell 2018).

• Enabling mobile work and work from home (Employee Benefits 2017).

• Increasing a company's agility (Davies and Revang 2017).

• Improving the customer experience (Lesser et al. 2017).

• Improving the employee journey from recruitment to onboarding to ongoing administrative

processes to exit (Perkins 2018).

• Innovating more – when employees perceive a technology can help them succeed in their

work, they are more likely to leverage it to accomplish tasks in new ways (Bala and Venkatesh

2016).

For these reasons, many focus group organizations are now beginning to look seriously at ways

they can improve EX with technology.

What Can Companies do to Improve Employee Experience with IT? "Our goal should be to create a seamless experience for all our employees," said a focus group

manager. "We've started to do this but we're not anywhere near done. We need a better vision

for what's involved. At present, we've got weird holes in our plan." "Our general goal is to make

everything mobile and ensure we can work anywhere and do what we need to do faster," said

another. "But we still have to do something to execute this vision and we need to identify an

owner for it." "In our company, we have to get over the relationship between access to

technology and personal importance. You should get the technology you need if it helps you,

not because of where you sit in the organization, said a third. These three comments underscore

the three issues IT must address if it wants to improve EX with technology:

1. Recognizing the Business Value of EX for Work. Although companies are beginning to

recognize the value of EX in facilitating and enabling many aspects of work, efforts are still

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very disjointed in the focus group companies. Only one had an IT group dedicated to

improving EX; others had one-off initiatives or were just beginning to explore this issue. There

are at least three challenges to raising the profile of this issue at an executive level. The first

is understanding the extremely broad nature of this issue. EX encompasses all employee-

facing technology, all processes supporting the employee journey, the digital workplace, and

the fundamental IT architecture that supports each of these. Leaders must have enough

comprehension of this big picture and how their workers currently experience technology to

truly appreciate the value involved. There's still a perception that employees will work with

the technology provided and that this is a top-down decision (Liley et al. 2017, Rozwell and

Aggarwal 2017B). Although IT leaders "get it" and some have incorporated EX into their

technology strategy, they have not yet been able to articulate it well enough to the business.

As a result, most EX initiatives at present are piecemeal and often ineffective. There is still

limited appreciation for what most workers, especially those on the front lines go through.

"At present, we're enabling some of our high flyers but they don't see the case for our front-

line employees," said a manager. "Our plan is that some of this work will eventually trickle

down to others.""Our front-line staff hide because they have no means to answer customer

questions," said a manager. "Our management has no idea how much productivity is lost

due to requiring people to constantly switch between different systems," said another. "We

need much better measurement of the impact of poor technology – everything from

employee retention to lost productivity through downtime. We don't even do the easy stuff

because we don't have the metrics or the mindset."

This leads to the second challenge, which is the lack of a single owner of EX. While every

organization will have a slightly different structure, at a minimum IT, HR, Real Estate and

Facilities Management, and the various lines of business will all own some parts of EX. As a

result, in many cases, they will only see their particular costs and benefits, rather than the big

picture of business value. One manager explained the situation this way: "We expect our

employees to work in agile, collaborative teams but they can't move around our building to

different floors because they're in different business units. They have to go to the lobby and

get admittance and when they get there, they find the applications they need only work in

their own office." This makes developing a business case for improving EX to be no one's

particular job in many companies. Even in companies where it is a designated responsibility,

leaders must work with multiple stakeholders to develop awareness and understanding of

this issue, link their particular problems to business value (while keeping the big picture in

mind) and then to prioritize the work involved relative to other initiatives.

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Finally, there is the ongoing challenge of financing the work– particularly at a foundational

level. "We need better ways to articulate the overall business case to our executives," said a

manager. For example, "We rolled out Skype to all our staff but it couldn't be used because

our leadership wouldn't pay for the increased bandwidth needed," said a manager. "Once

some of this foundational work is done, we can use the same platform for facilitating mobility,

disaster recovery, and security, but it's challenging to explain this," said another.

2. Creating a Holistic Plan. "Although an employee-centric, simple, measurable end-to-end

experience is the ideal of any EX plan, we really don't yet have a deep understanding of how

we connect with our employees and what needs to be done to improve their EX," said a

manager. As noted above, different elements of it will mean connecting with different

stakeholders. Inspiring and well-designed workspaces will be the purview of Real Estate and

Facilities leaders in addition to IT (Rozwell and Aggarwal 2017A). HR will be a primary

stakeholder for many employee lifecycle and administrative processes (Cain and Miller 2107).

Corporate communications will want to have a say in any internal branding work and intranet

access. Security will have a role to play in facilitating mobility and remote access as will those

responsible for information management. Lines of business will need to be consulted about

any changes to their applications and processes. "EX really impacts everyone," said a

manager.

And last but not least are the employees themselves. Any planning process should involve

considerable staff input about what's missing or what needs to be changed (Raia 2017, Cain

and Miller 2017). "We need to start with the employees and work back and try to understand

the friction they encounter on the job," said a manager. "We need to listen first, and then

cycle back as we progress. We should also get some early adopters to work with us," said

another. "We need to engage with the business and their staff and not impose solutions on

them," said a third.

Part of the EX planning processes will be identifying the broad sets of employee needs

involved, such as "getting my work done", "HR and Administration", "Connecting with

People", and "Collaboration" and compiling them into a employee needs map that can then

be discussed with employees and stakeholders and eventually communicated to senior

management to help them see the big picture of what's involved (Cain and Miller 2017).

Ultimately however, it will be IT's responsibility to develop the overarching plan for what

could be done and the enabling technologies that will be required. "We've got to put some

energy into it," said a manager. "We have to help everyone see that it's not about

appearance – like a beautiful new workspace – it's also about making sure that the

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fundamentals all work together – such as communications technologies and other resources

– to deliver the experience that will deliver the results we're looking for."

3. Designing the Technology Work Environment. At the heart of IT's responsibility for EX is the

delivery of the technology that will make employees more productive and effective. And this

incorporates three layers and multiple types of technology, said the focus group:

• Foundational. Infrastructure, unified communications, and a technology-enabled

workplace are all foundational components of the user experience which enable most of

the tools and processes that employees use for their work and which support anywhere,

anytime working arrangements. If they are present and work well together these

foundational pieces will likely not be apparent to those outside of IT but if they are

missing, they will be a great source of frustration. At the infrastructure level are the IT

tools that enable EX tools, such as networks, security, platforms for IoT, collaboration, AI,

technologies that enable remote and mobile work, and the architecture that assembles

these various capabilities into a coherent whole (Rozwell and Aggarwal 2017B, Kuehner-

Herbert 2017). Unified communications blends traditional enterprise telephony,

messaging, presentations, and conferencing with new capabilities for workstream

management, collaboration, video, and virtual assistants to seamlessly support new ways

of working (Dewnarain and Benitez 2018). And the technology-enabled workplace

includes general facilitating technologies for the office, such as BYOD, managed print

services and optimization, desktop refreshes and upgrades, document management and

sharing, synchronization of files with employee-devices, and frictionless onboarding of

employees with technology (Smith and McKeen 2014).

• Enablement. This layer adds common services to the foundational technology, such as

meeting room and other resource and facilities scheduling tools. They also provide a

visible presence for IT, such as service bars where employees can get technology help

and new equipment without waiting. "These say, 'We value your time and want to enable

you to do your job'," said a manager. "What we really need is a 'How To Desk' to enable

employees to make the most of their technology", said another. Personalization and

contextualization services enable personal dashboards and support decision making

(Rozwell and Aggarwal 2017B). Other services could include an app store for approved

applicatons, social platforms to support innovation, expertise location, knowledge

sharing and expertise connections, and learning management solutions (Cain et al. 2017,

Lesser et al. 2016). These technologies also enable employee self-help, such as self-

service HR activities for payment, vacations, and claims, and a number of curated

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'HowTos' to save calls to Help Desks. The focus group also identified data management

and search as an important value-added services. "We know how to put data into a

repository but not how to get it out," said a manager. "We need to provide better meta-

data, tools for data destruction, improved search technologies, and better data context."

• Platform. This layer incorporates most employee-facing tools and technology, such as

personal devices, portals, the intranet, CRM, ERP, and HRIS systems and the processes

that are associated with them. The focus group envisioned a ubiquitous platform that

would enable all business processes to work together anywhere, anytime. Systems would

be connected with APIs to the other layers and to useful apps and even enable employees

to build their own apps and dashboards. "We need to dumb things down at this level so

it's easy to replace end user devices, like cell phones and tablets," said a manager.

Simplicity is the goal (Lesser et al. 2017). This is also the layer that includes improved user

experience (UX). While the lower two layers make the technology services available and

ensure it works smoothly, this layer makes employee-facing technology easy to use (Raia

2017). A good UX consists of usability (easy to use), adoptability (easy to learn),

desirability (the application is likeable) and value (it is inherent useful). Ideally, all

technology at this level should reflect a common corporate brand, language, design,

color, fonts and icon so that employees can switch tasks without losing time (Raia 2017).

For IT developers there should be a common set of UX standards and guidelines that will

ensure a positive UX as well as mechanisms to track usage and capture employee

feedback (Cain and Miller 2017). Every system should work the same consistently, agreed

the focus group. "However, it takes effort to do this thoughtfully, so we must prioritize

our work and consider the costs involved," said a manager. "It's helpful to evaluate if a

technology is a 'key frustrating' tool, or simply an edge application." "In the end, this

work is about respect for the person and their productivity," said another.

Starting to Improve the Employee Experience with IT As noted above, EX is about more than technology, but technology is a growing dimension of

EX and therefore about how technology affects business performance. Most companies have

accepted that technology is valuable for driving cost savings and also for increasing revenues,

but few fully recognize the employee in relationship with technology as an important factor in

improving productivity, retaining staff, and positively influencing business performance.

Therefore, it will be up to IT to make these connections for executives and take leadership in this

area. Getting started will first and foremost require EX to be part of someone's job who can plan,

educate, and influence their colleagues both within and outside IT so that much EX work can be

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done within existing budgets. As awareness grows, IT will then be ready to take greater initiatives

in this area. Some first steps for improving EX with IT include:

• Include Employees. Although this point may seem self-evident, an outside-in approach to

designing technology recognizes that employees know what they need to be productive

(Liley et al. 2017). Since EX is such a broad topic it would be wise to identify some employee

advisors from multiple levels and departments of the organization. From them, IT can collate

and organize employee perceptions of their interactions with technology and begin to

develop a map of employee technology needs (Lesser et al. 2016).

• Assess and Plan. Once IT has a clearer understanding of employees' pain points, it is helpful

to visit other organizations to see how they are addressing EX, said the focus group. This

may yield ideas in many areas such as, design principles, building a business case or a funding

model, and incorporating metrics. From here, IT can begin to evaluate existing technologies

that are significantly damaging employee engagement and connect these into sets of

capabilities that link to employees' technology needs. This is also a chance to identify

opportunities for improving and simplifying processes that can be passed on to other

appropriate IT leaders (Davies and Revang 2017). The outcome of this step should be a

qualitative and if possible, a quantitative assessment of the problems caused by offending

technologies, a vision for improving EX, including fundamental, enablement, and platform

technologies, and a blueprint for executing on this vision (Rozwell and Aggarwal 2017A).

• Develop the Value Proposition and Business Cases. The focus group was clear that a major

obstacle to improving EX is the lack of a strong business case. "There's some value in

addressing it for mid-level staff but not for our front lines," said a manager. Part of the reason

for this is the fact that EX operates at many strategy layers – employee well-being, customer

engagement, productivity, staff attraction and retention, and business performance. It's

therefore important to document these multiple layers of value and incorporate them into

any particular business case. Each proposed case will be slightly different and getting the

relevant metrics may be challenging. However, with a broader understanding of how EX

works and a deeper awareness of the issues involved, it should be possible to begin to

address the most frustrating aspects of EX with technology. As awareness of the importance

of EX grows and with greater access to metrics, adding more qualitative and quantitative

data into business cases should become easier.

• Address Executive Indifference. One of the most important factors for getting traction for an

EX program is getting executives to understand the technology challenges and frustrations

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their employees face – particularly at the front line. "Our executives need to get out to the

field more to see what's going on," said a manager. "Many EX issues are at the field level,"

said another. "Our executives need to lead from the front line." Getting out to the field

regularly will surface these problems better than any report from IT. "Unfortunately, when

executives don't do this, improving EX becomes a political decision more than a business

one," said a manager. Leaders tend to underestimate or overlook the issues involved in using

technology and the best way to address this is to ensure that they clearly understand what

they are asking their staff to experience (Rozwell and Aggarwal 2017B). This could be working

in new digital workspaces to see what they're like, working on the front line, or interacting

digitally with customers.

• Fund Foundational Technology. Finding this funding is a perennial problem for IT leaders

but some are beginning to come up with innovative ways of doing this (Smith and Watson

2018). "Our executives are looking for lipstick on a pig," said a manager. "We have to find

ways to show them that not investing in foundational technologies is inhibiting our abilities

in many areas, but especially in EX." Some companies add a "tax" to all project costs for this

work; others have allocated a percentage of their overall IT budgets to it and some focus

group members have found innovative visual ways to illustrate for executives how lack of

foundational technology inhibits what can be done for the business.

• Design Governance and Create a Cross-functional Coalition. With EX affecting almost every

part of organizational life, it's important to ensure that EX initiatives cut across traditional

organizational silos and are broadly supported (Lesser et al. 2016). If IT can build a cross-

functional coalition to promote EX, it is likely to get more attention in the organization. EX

can then be proactively built into all IT work and all parts of the organization can collaborate

on making the necessary changes to promote it (Rozwell and Aggarwal 2017B). Such a

coalition can also help prioritize resource allocations and create standards for UX, branding,

and communication. It can also support broader sharing of EX metrics (see below).

• Establish Standards. Standardization supports simplicity and an improved EX while

complexity undermines it. "We need to fight complexity," said a manager. "We can't move

ahead if every time we upgrade or add something new, other things break down." "If you

keep things simple, people will be better able to use technology effectively, but it's easy to

make something hard – that's why standards are so important." EX must also be an evaluation

criteria for all new employee-facing technology. Research shows that the most-pronounced

differentiation of off-the-shelf software is in its employee-facing components, yet this is rarely

part of a company's selection criteria (Cain et al. 2017).

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• Measurement and Feedback. Finally, and very importantly is the need to establish better EX

metrics. Most organizations don't have a clear strategy for employee engagement and EX

measurement (Hanscome and Poitevin 2018). "Right now the only metrics we use to justify

new technology are cost and FTE savings," said a manager. Although many organizations

measure employee engagement in a survey at least once a year, they do little else to mine

other sources of data to detect EX problems and it is rare for IT to get any feedback at all

from these surveys. "We got to see employee comments related to IT for the first time this

year," said a manager. "There was a lot of gold in the negative comments and areas where

we could improve." "Mostly these surveys don't include anything about IT," said another.

"We need to embed some questions and comments about technology and tools so we have

a better handle on the problems employees face." "When we did a survey about our Help

Desk, we got so much good information that we could use to make it better and it's been

good for IT because people now believe we're listening," said another. In addition to

quantitative metrics, the focus group also stressed the need to mine employee sentiments

and comments and undertake active listening of employee concerns.

Newer metrics are needed to measure workforce effectiveness, agility, employee satisfaction,

and retention, and to explore how various technologies affect EX (Hanscome and Poitevin

2018). Suggestions include: developing a digital workplace balanced scorecard, a usability

index to rank systems and technologies in a comparative way, asking employees to measure

their satisfaction with completion rates, task times, and response times, and incorporating

qualitative feedback on bottlenecks and the effectiveness of certain technologies.

There is clearly a need for better metrics and employee feedback relating to EX. Designing

ways to capture different aspects of EX could be both enlightening and valuable to senior

leadership and could provide new incentives for developing an EX strategy.

Conclusion EX has largely been ignored by leaders and IT departments until recently. By focusing on how

IT can achieve traditional cost savings and headcount reductions, the well-documented

productivity and performance benefits of having a motivated and engaged staff who have the

proper tools, technologies and workspaces to do their job well have somehow been neglected.

This paper has suggested that EX problems are not only inhibiting productivity, but are also

preventing companies from developing the capabilities they need to compete in a world run

increasing by technology – agility, innovation, and the attraction and retention of highly skilled

16

staff. EX has begun to get the attention of IT, but as the focus group stressed, there's a need to

build a much better business case before it will get the executive attention it deserves, so at

present improving EX with technology is largely IT's responsibility. Because it is a growing and

visible problem, it is incumbent on IT to build the coalition of stakeholders that will be needed

to make progress in this area as well as to drive the business case to fix some of the most

egregious problems. As with so much in IT, getting ahead of this issue now before it becomes a

significant business priority, is a critical way IT can add value to the organization and provide

thought leadership.

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Concept The purpose is to bring senior IT managers together to examine topics that are of critical concern to them and their organizations. Via the IT Forum (www.itmgmtforum.ca), members share experiences, learn from their peers, establish valuable networks, and develop practical strategies for creating, implementing, and managing IT solutions.

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