Digital employee experience (DEX): A practical guide
An excellent digital employee experience is critical to modern talent management strategies. Learn how to build an excellent digital employee experience for the modern workforce.
Published: December 16, 2024 | by Natasha K. A. Wiebusch, JD, Marketing Content Manager at Brightmine
A great digital employee experience that attracts and retains top talent is not just about quick IT ticket turnarounds. Those days are long gone, and they’ve been replaced by better technology, higher employee expectations and a new definition of the digital employee experience.
In this resource, you’ll learn how to build an excellent digital employee experience for today’s — and tomorrow’s — workforce.
What is the digital employee experience?
The digital employee experience, or DEX, is a culmination of all an employee’s perceptions of and interactions and connections with the technology they use to function at work. This includes the technology employees use to complete tasks related directly to their work and personal tasks. Personal tasks may include enrolling in health care benefits or requesting family leave.
The DEX is an essential element of the overall employee experience. And its role in the overall experience continues to increase as organizations pursue their digital transformations.
The following are a few examples of the digital employee experience:
Example 1: The deskless car mechanic
Good experience
A car mechanic uses an app on their phone to track their progress on an inspection. They can take photos and add notes directly to the photo. The app can then create a form in real time showing what repairs the car may need.
With the app, the mechanic no longer needs to carry a clipboard or try to remember what they’re seeing. The mechanic can also move around or under the car with ease since their phone can fit in their pocket.
Example 2: The remote salesperson
Mediocre experience
A salesperson working from home in Chicago uses a customer relationship management (CRM) software to track their leads. The CRM allows them to create profiles, add notes, track communications with customers and much more. The salesperson uses their CRM and Microsoft Teams to triage work with fellow coworkers located in New York. Unfortunately, the CRM has a Microsoft integration, so they need to copy and paste important notes to team members.
The company uses more than one CRM because they recently acquired companies that already had their own CRMs. This helped them expand into new regions, but they haven’t yet fully integrated the companies under the same platform.
Once the salesperson is ready to pass a new customer to the customer onboarding team, they can do so directly in the CRM. The process is smooth and efficient. However, if they need to pass the customer to the New York office, they need to do so manually.
Example 3: The employee seeking family leave
Poor experience
An employee is gearing up to go out on family leave, and they want to confirm their parental leave benefits. First, they browse the company’s Sharepoint site to find the family leave policy.
The policies are hard to find in the company’s intranet. The employee eventually finds the policy stating that they must create a ticket with human resources (HR). The policy links to another document that provides directions for creating tickets through the HR information system (HRIS).
Through the HRIS, the employee tries to create a ticket but realizes there are several types with little explanation. They’re not sure which ticket they need to create, so they email HR directly and ask for assistance. HR responds two days later with additional directions. After the employee submits their ticket, HR reaches out again to inform the employee that they need to register with a provider, FamilyLeave.
The employee then must contact FamilyLeave to complete the process. Only then does the employee learn which documents they need to provide. FamilyLeave requires the employee to register with a document management platform to upload their documents. This requires a separate login, and though secure, the system times out frequently.
The employee is finally able to submit their application for family leave.
Elements of the digital employee experience
As you can see from the examples above, in today’s digital workplace, employees use technology all the time. And, how you build an employee’s digital environment can greatly impact their productivity, engagement and personal well-being.
So, what exactly makes up the digital experience? Some organizations define it as, simply, what software programs employees use and how happy they are with their IT department. If you do this, you may find yourself counting dozens of software programs without context.
A better way to break down the digital employee experience is by how employees experience technology at work. Generally, employees experience technology in three “spheres” in the workplace — which often intersect:
1. Work: Completing work tasks
Employees engage with technology at work regularly to complete tasks. Today, this includes both employees who work at their desks and deskless employees. Employees may use technology to write their reports, build designs, and most importantly, make decisions.
2. Social: Collaborating with team members
A key part of the digital employee experience is communication and collaboration through technology. Various types of technology facilitate this in the workplace for both remote and on-site employees. As a group, business leaders generally refer to them as collaboration tools. However, these tools can take many forms.
Employees may use video conferencing software, chat tools, or project management software to collaborate with other employees. Even when employees are on site, collaboration tools can help employees coordinate and manage team meetings.
3. Personal: Engaging with total rewards and administration
Employees regularly experience technology at work when they’re engaging with their employee benefits and managing their personal affairs. For example, to request time off, the large majority of employees submit requests online. Employees also engage with HR software programs to complete open enrollment, manage their retirement plans and more.
Employees also often use technology to manage their own career development. They can update their organizational profiles, select development courses and track development progress.
The convergence of the physical and digital experience
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the digital employee experience can also include technology that influences employee’s physical environment. Many call this the convergence of the physical and digital experience.
Technology can influence both a remote employee’s environment and on-site environments. The following are common examples of how workplace technology can influence the digital employee experience through the physical environment:
- Company apps to order food in their building or make other requests, such as repairs.
- Software to book meetings and other physical spaces.
- Programs that adjust the type of lighting in office spaces.
- Smart low-stimulation rooms or pods, which employees may use to take breaks or work in silence.
Why a great digital employee experience is paramount
The digital employee experience is paramount because it directly impacts several HR key performance indicators. This includes:
- Recruitment success.
- Time to full productivity.
- Retention.
- Turnover.
- Employee net promoter score (eNPS).
- Productivity.
- Performance.
- Benefits engagement.
And, the impact of the digital experience continues to increase as organizations continue their digital transformations. Today, employees are no longer “going to work” as much as they’re experiencing work through technology.
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Key benefits of a winning digital employee experience
Because of its influence, a great digital employee experience can result in significant benefits. Overall, whether an organization has a successful digital experience will impact business outcomes and the bottom line.
The following are some key benefits to consider on when designing your own digital employee experience:
1. Improved recruitment and retention
Today, most employees are digital natives. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over half (54%) of today’s workforce is either a Millennial or a member of Gen Z. Because these employees have grown up using technology, they value the digital experience in ways previous generations may not. They also have higher, unique expectations of their digital experience.
Meeting employee digital experience expectations is particularly important in recruitment. During this key moment in the employee journey, employers must make a great first impression if they want to secure top talent. And for today’s employees — or at least 66% of them — a timely, smooth recruitment process is the best way an employer can stand out. Since recruitment has become primarily digital in the last 10 years, this opportunity to stand out needs to start with the digital experience.
2. Improved employee engagement
The seamless digital employee experience supports employee engagement by creating a highly connected, efficient and enabled working environment for employees. With a seamless digital experience, employees can focus on the work that requires their soft skills and unique capabilities.
More specifically, the digital experience improves engagement by:
- Building connections among employees by improving communication and workflows.
- Removing common barriers and automating time-consuming tasks.
- Enhancing project management visibility.
- Personalizing the employee experience at key points in the employee journey.
- Empowering employees to use their well-being and development benefits.
3. Seamless flexible working
Another benefit of a great digital employee experience is its ability to enable seamless flexible working. This has become extremely important for today’s workforce, which has grown to prioritize flexible work since the pandemic.
During the pandemic, organizations across the globe faced the challenge of creating a digital experience to support remote teams. For many, 2020 was the first time their teams engaged in a completely digital setting. By October 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had sped digital technology adoption by several years.
Since then, both organizational practices and employee expectations have changed drastically — and permanently. According to a Randstad survey, 83% of U.S. employees consider flexibility important. And, 74% of these employees consider location flexibility a top priority.
Today, seamless flexible working is not just a benefit of a great digital employee experience. It’s also a necessary ingredient for a successful talent strategy.
4. Improved employee productivity and performance
According to research from Mckinsey & Company, employees at organizations with leading employee experiences “are more inclined to surpass work expectations.” Their research showed that the level of discretionary effort was 40% higher at these organizations.
Though this research address the overall employee experience, it’s important to remember that the digital employee experience is a key element overall employee experience – and its influence is growing. According to recent research, digital and AI transformations are underway at 89% of large companies. To reap the benefits of this new digital era, organizations must align their transformation with their employee experience.
Common challenges
Effective digital employee experience management is no small feat, and you will likely experience challenges along the way. Some of these challenges are more common than others:
Security
Any time you incorporate new technology, you introduce new security risks. Especially today, the technology employees use at work often need access to sensitive information. This may include company trade secrets, customer data or personal employee information. Organizations that don’t carefully vet their providers or consult with IT leaders can easily expose themselves to threats.
Maintaining security is harder than ever before…
Most organizations rely on cloud systems to streamline business processes and enable cross functional teams. Unfortunately, cloud systems are increasingly the targets of hacks. According to the CrowdStrike 2024 Global Threat Report, cloud intrusions increased by 75% from 2022 to 2023.
Lack of seamlessness
If the digital experience is not seamless, it can do great damage to the overall employee experience. It can — and usually does — result in frustration, low productivity, diminished engagement and more. A digital employee experience is not seamless when employees experience high levels of friction with workplace technology. More specifically, it results from issues such as:
- Poor user experience, making technology difficult or confusing.
- The existence of multiple programs that don’t integrate well or at all.
- Slow, time-consuming or inaccessible technical support.
- A lack of personalization for individual users.
- Unclear data privacy and security practices, which can harm employee trust.
Onboarding
Even if you design a great digital experience, insufficient onboarding can itself create friction. This can impact an employee’s overall onboarding experience and lead to bigger problems. Research consistently shows that employee onboarding is critical to productivity and retention.
The “human” impact
Employees can feel overwhelmed by the technology they interact with every day at work. In many cases, feeling overly connected to work by technology can result in overworking. A study by Calm found that the constant connection technology creates is common and contributes to overworking. Eventually, this can lead to burnout.
Research also shows that our new digital workplaces are making employees lonely. AI, for example, improves employee productivity but is also reducing human interactions. Without balance, a digital workplace could create social vacuums. Employees will, unfortunately, interact more with their technology, like their AI assistants, than their colleagues.
How to improve the digital employee experience
Creating an excellent digital employee experience is a continuous strategic process. The following are steps you can take to start building a winning strategy:
1. Create a cross-functional team
The digital employee experience impacts the whole workplace, and so it requires buy-in from across the business. When addressing your own digital experience, consider creating a cross-functional team of stakeholders. Having a variety of representatives ensures the experience works for everyone, not just one team. A cross-functional team can also help you vet new technology, communicate changes and establish best practices.
2. Make security and data privacy a priority
Today, security and data privacy are a top priority for businesses. And as digital transformations continue to gain momentum, so too do the risks to company and personal data. To protect your data and maintain employee trust, ensure that your digital employee experience includes safeguards, such as:
- Adherence to best practices related to encryption, credentials, virtual private networks (VPN), etc.
- Thorough vetting for any new technology.
- Continuous onboarding and training for employees.
- Close partnership with your IT department.
3. Use human-centric design
To be successful, the digital employee experience must be seamless and accessible to all employees. For example, a customer service agent should be just as capable of navigating their employee portal as a software engineer. It should also help connect your employees, not make them feel more distant.
Using human-centric design methods can help direct digital experience efforts. If you implement this method, be prepared to test, collect employee feedback and make frequent changes.
Inclusive design
Workforces today are more diverse than ever. Consider the following:
- Around 15%-20% of the population is neurodivergent.
- Four generations are working together for the first time. By 2035, Gen Z will make up the majority of the workforce.
- Approximately 1 in 5 employees have a disability.
- Almost 1 in 4 employees are people of color.
- Companies are increasingly global, hiring more employees internationally to manage costs and labor shortages.
When designing a digital employee experience, make sure your design is inclusive and considers the unique needs of your workforce.
4. Ensure continuous onboarding and training
Appropriate onboarding to digital tools at work is more than a best practice — it’s essential. Create an onboarding and training program that is thorough, inclusive and — most importantly — continuous. Also, consider what onboarding and support services your providers have. This may sway which tech providers you choose, and it could inform training programs.
5. Play the long game
A great digital experience takes time, and likely, multiple iterations. So, play the long game, and set both short- and long-term goals to keep your team on track. Because this process will require changes to your practices and policies, consider creating a change management plan.
Conclusion
The digital employee experience is critical to modern workplaces. It heavily influences employee satisfaction, productivity and overall organizational success. And as technology continues to integrate with our daily work, employee expectations continue to increase. To meet these expectations, organizations must prioritize creating a seamless, secure and inclusive digital environment that supports all employees.
Are you building an excellent digital employee experience? Brightmine can help. Our solutions can improve your decision-making and save you valuable time so that you can focus on what matters. Book a power hour with us today and learn how:
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About the author
Natasha K. A. Wiebusch, JD
Marketing Content Manager, Brightmine
Natasha K. A. Wiebusch is the marketing content manager at Brightmine. Before transitioning to the marketing team, she covered a variety of topics as a Brightmine legal editor, including benefits, compensation, workplace flexibility, and the future of work.
Natasha holds a Bachelor of Science in communication science and rhetorical studies from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a juris doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School. Prior to joining Brightmine, Natasha was a practicing attorney and HR compliance and training specialist.
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