The ultimate goal of digital transformation is to simplify the adoption of digital tools for automation. This allows users to gain a competitive advantage over slower digital adopters.
However, the workplace has evolved rapidly in recent years and has become a non-negotiable requirement. More roles involve the use of software, and because employees frequently work with multiple applications, effective software adoption is critical to the digital employee experience.
It is about assisting your employees in embracing, utilizing, and maximizing new tools and technologies. The success of digital adoption is measured by the efficiency and quality of the results obtained after an organization adopts digital platforms. Employees can work smarter and have a better work experience when technology is simple to use.
Digital transformation is more than a technical topic; it is also a matter of employee experience.
Digital employee experience is critical in today’s rapidly changing work environment, where new technologies are rapidly deployed, refined, and adapted. Software (or digital) adoption assists employees in accepting, adopting, and enhancing their digital tools at work.
Poor software adoption is a significant challenge for many modern businesses, preventing them from achieving their digital transformation goals. It invariably obstructs a positive and healthy digital employee experience. Employee engagement, morale, and a company’s productivity, sales, and bottom line can all suffer as a result.
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What is the Digital Employee Experience?
The digital employee experience refers to how employees interact with the technical tools that are used in their daily duties and responsibilities, and how these tools help them to be more engaged and productive.
We could investigate specific aspects of the digital employee experience, such as:
- Device and program performance: How fast are they? Are they set up in a way that allows employees to do their jobs?
- Device and program dependability: Do programs crash? Do computers slow down to the point where they must be restarted on a regular basis? Do company-issued mobile devices seamlessly connect to the company VPN?
- Mobility: Do job-related tools allow employees to work effectively from anywhere?
- Collaboration: Do programs enable employees to collaborate effectively with their team members? Do they increase productivity? Do they contribute to business success?
Remember that a digital employee experience includes not only how employees interact with technology (the applications and devices they have access to), but also the way the IT department collaborates with the business and individual employees to address issues and service requests, deploy new technologies, train employees, and work collaboratively with employees to understand and deliver on requirements.
What makes the digital employee experience so important to your employees?
People, on the whole, just want to get their work done, and they want it done quickly. Employees do not want to create complex workarounds or deal with outages or bottlenecks while attempting to serve internal or external customers.
People are unable to move as quickly and/or efficiently as they would like due to a clumsy digital employee experience. When people are stuck, they look outside the company for help.
The Digital Adoption Platforms of the Future in Software Training (DAPs)
Business leaders are pursuing a variety of strategies to increase digital adoption, with the launch of a digital adoption platform being one of the most popular (30%). (DAP). DAPs did not exist until a few years ago, and there are still only a few significant players in this field worldwide.
A DAP assists businesses in making their software more user-friendly for employees. It functions as a layer on top of a web-based software application, containing interactive guides that provide real-time employee training and assist users in completing specific processes.
Simply put, a DAP replaces traditional software training, which is costly and time-consuming, with independent, continuous learning. The goal is to assist businesses in accelerating digital transformation by quickly onboarding, training, or skilling employees on new technologies.
Tips for improving the digital employee experience
There are numerous actionable steps you can take to improve software adoption and the digital employee experience.
1. Assess your current software TCO
To derive value from your software investment, you must internally quantify the problem’s magnitude. The best way to do so is to consider the expenditure in terms of total cost of ownership. Looking only at software subscription or implementation costs overlooks the big picture. You must also consider the costs of training and onboarding.
The cost of retraining frequently competes with the cost of a software subscription. Classroom training yields poor results, as studies show that people forget up to 90% of what they learn in a week. This necessitates frequent checks that disrupt work and only addresses the digital experience issue temporarily. Businesses should examine past training costs to determine the ongoing costs of using the software.
Although it is more difficult to quantify, a lack of trust in the software also reduces a company’s productivity. Errors, duplicate processes, support tickets, and other issues caused by poor digital adoption all increase a company’s software TCO.
2. Provide various software training options
As previously stated, the traditional one-time training approach is ineffective and costly when supplemented with periodic reviews. However, training is required, so businesses must adopt a new strategy. That is not to say that classroom training has no place; rather, it should not be the only option.
A more efficient training model combines several methods. This ensures that training options address a wide range of situations, needs, and learning styles. One-on-one training is the most popular training solution. Companies that can provide this should do so while also taking into account obvious scaling issues.
The second most popular – and far more scalable – the solution is to use a DAP. Existing written training materials can be easily translated into interactive guides in the DAP and tailored to the specific needs of different roles or teams. Another significant benefit of a DAP is that, unlike the IT team, they are always available to assist employees in resolving software issues.
DAPs can be used in conjunction with traditional options to provide employees with more contextual, real-time, and hands-on training. Enterprise DAPs are also easily scalable and data-rich, allowing for insights into how and why employees use
3. Consult with employees, listen to them, and communicate with them
To learn more about employees’ technical experiences in the workplace, conduct interviews with those who use a specific platform or software. The interviews should seek to ascertain how easily they locate digital applications to work with, their results, frustrations, and the number of features they use. The average employee only uses 40% of the available functions, which is equivalent to renting office space and only occupying two-fifths of it.
To obtain accurate results, make it clear that the software, not the employee, is being evaluated. In other words, employees would not be penalized for admitting they only use a subset of the features available.
Instead of imposing software from the top, you should involve employees more in future software purchasing decisions in the future. Collaborating on a solution instills a sense of ownership in employees and ensures that their ideas are not overlooked.
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4. Form a software adoption team
It is best to address the digital adoption challenge with input from various key stakeholders and experts within the organization, such as HR, IT, functional leaders, and employees. It makes sense to establish a task responsible for digital adoption across the organization.
Software implementation is not a one-time event. Because both the software and the environment in which employees use it are constantly evolving, you must review and update your tech stack on a regular basis.
A good digital adoption team includes representatives from various departments and meets on a regular basis. Many successful organizations have placed their digital adoption teams under the leadership of a Chief Digital Officer (CDO).
This team manages the software’s internal messaging to ensure that everyone understands why it’s being introduced, how it affects day-to-day work, and the full range of features available. This is in contrast to the commonly used model, in which management frequently selects software without explaining “why” to employees.
5. Assess and evaluate the adoption
The digital adoption team also monitors employee adoption rates through product analysis and interviews to ensure that the software invested in is fully utilized. It assesses how frequently or for how long employees use software and how effectively they achieve business objectives. After all, introducing software is a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself.
In a Nutshell
You don’t have to nail your overall digital employee experience the first time. The idea is to ask your employees how they feel about technology in general, as well as how your IT department handles issues and service requests, deploys new digital tools, trains employees, and collaborates with employees to understand and meet requirements. Then, take those revelations and put them into action.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for creating a great digital employee experience. However, your employees will be able to tell you which digital employee experience works best for them.
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