Don’t underestimate the impact that bad tech has on employee engagement

Most industries are seeing HR and business leaders forge new strategies to deliver better employee experiences – this typically leads to improved workforce productivity and retention.

Even if you’re not too sold on ‘Quiet Quitting‘ or the ‘Great Resignation‘, and their impact on the workplace, it’s hard to argue that employers are having to work harder than ever to meet the ever evolving needs and requests from their talent.

This is especially true in the last 12, 18 months where we’ve seen the labor market evolve into a fiercely competitive, candidate-driven landscape.

To ensure that employees aren’t lost to rivals, employers are having to step up.

The days of just offering an appealing salary and benefits package are behind us.

While this won’t distinguish you from any competitors, it also won’t appease the needs of your employees anymore.

The workforce now seeks flexibility; the ability to choose if they’re going to head into the office, as well as when and where they work.

Workers expect companies to prioritize their general wellbeing and support their physical, mental and financial wellbeing.

In addition, employees seek a clearly defined trajectory for their skillset, and how to enhance this, as well as their career advancement.

Now more than ever, employees are all too aware that if their current employer fails to meet these expectations, they can seek opportunities elsewhere that will fulfill their needs.

Therefore, businesses are focusing, and investing, in their employee experiences, to ensure that staff are provided with the working practices, benefits and culture they need in order to feel wanted and supported within the workforce.

And whilst digital experiences may not seem as the obvious answer to many of these issues, HR and business leaders need to appreciate the increased significance of digital experiences in regards to employee experience. Employees are relying more on digital services and applications than ever for their work.

Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that these services maintain optimal performance consistently and are prioritized by the organization.

By failing to do this, employees may experience mounting frustration and disengagement, which increases the likelihood of them seeking new job opportunities.

The correlation between digital experience and retention

Research by Cisco AppDynamics highlights the importance workers now attach to digital experiences as claim that if the applications and digital services they use in their job fail to perform, it leaves them feeling anxious and angry.

A staggering 52% claim it makes them more inclined to leave their job.

Employees are especially reliant on digital services to ensure that they can perform their jobs to their best ability – they are utterly unforgiving when the technology they use at work fails.

Most admit that employers have just one chance to impress them with an application or digital service.

If an application cannot meet their expectations, then they will be left feeling frustrated and de-motivated, something that employers should seek to avoid in the current climate.

What is even more alarming for employers is that more than half of employees have experienced at least one occasion in the last six months when they haven’t been able to do their job properly because of poorly performing applications and IT within their company.

If HR and business leaders want to avoid a talent exodus, then they need to address this issue urgently.

The power of application observability

Expectations for seamless, intuitive, and personalized digital experiences have skyrocketed in the last few years.

Consumers are benefiting from, and accustomed to, the very best, and most groundbreaking applications on the market when consuming entertainment or news; even mobile banking and instant messaging are seamless.

Yet because of this, we now see no reason why, as employees, we shouldn’t encounter the same level, and standard, of seamless digital experiences within the workplace – however unrealistic or unfair that may be on employers.

With this, organizations need to ensure the applications and digital services they’re providing employees with can deliver seamless digital experiences at all times.

But many IT teams are currently encountering considerable issues in managing application availability and performance.

The ongoing transition to multi-cloud and hybrid environments has left technologists facing overwhelming complexity and data noise across a highly dynamic and fragmented IT estate.

A considerable issue is that most IT departments do not have unified visibility across hybrid environments, therefore they’re unable to get a clear view of applications where components are running across on-premises and cloud native environments.

This makes it extremely challenging for IT teams to identify and troubleshoot issues before they impact employees.

This lack of oversight is undoubtedly a significant factor in why the majority of employees have been reporting disruption and downtime over the last six months.

The possible consequences of this are profound – not just for workforce productivity and talent retention, but particularly with the employer brand and reputation.

In order to overcome this developing issue, IT departments need an application observability solution which spans across both on-premises and cloud native environments and provides a full view of the entire application path.

Organizations also need real-time business transaction insights, so technologists can pinpoint the root cause of issues and expedite resolution.

This level of application observability means that IT teams can ensure applications are fully optimized at all times and are enabled to meet the heightened expectations of employees.

Good news for employers is that while the impact of poor digital experiences is damaging to employee engagement and retention, workers now look very favorably on employers who are able to offer these high performing applications.

Significant numbers of employees state that they are more likely to stay with an employer that provides excellent digital experiences and to talk positively about the company to other people.

To ensure that organizations engage with, and retain, their talent, HR and business leaders must recognize the role that applications and digital tools now play in every part of the employee experience, plus the importance that workers now attach to digital experience.

By delivering seamless digital experiences to employees at all times, employers can mitigate the concerns and frustrations of employees.

This goes a long way towards retaining a more engaged, motivated and productive workforce.