Why your IT team needs to upgrade its digital employee experience (DEX)

Business and IT leaders agree that improving the “digital employee experience” (DEX) results in better productivity and workplace morale. But recent research by Ivanti reveals an important reason why many organizations fail to achieve those benefits: rank-and-file IT workers lack the funding and the operational know-how to get it done. They don’t prioritize DEX for others because the organization hasn’t prioritized improving DEX for the IT team.

There are enormous benefits in improving digital employee experience, and DEX remains an area that executive leaders are optimistic about. But there is a disconnect when it comes to its practical application across IT teams. IT professionals remain extremely skeptical, in part because they are being left out of the benefits of DEX. This has led to problematic perceptions: almost two-thirds (60%) of IT professionals in the Ivanti survey believing “Digital employee experience is a buzzword with no practical application at my organization.” Clearly IT leaders need to do more for teams to realize the full benefits of DEX.

DEX best practices, metrics, and tools are missing

Nearly seven in ten (69%) leadership-level employees call DEX an essential or high priority in

Ivanti’s 2024 Digital Experience Report: A CIO Call to Action, up from 61% a year ago. Yet the same report confirmed that DEX best practices are still not widely implemented in and by the IT team.

Barely half of the Ivanti respondents say IT automates cybersecurity configurations, monitors application performance, or remotely checks for operating system updates. While less than half say they are monitoring device performance, or automating tasks.

This indicates few IT teams are systematically investing in DEX tools and practices to monitor the spectrum of user interactions and respond automatically to emerging problems before they disrupt employee productivity and satisfaction.

Without these practices and tools, IT workers themselves struggle to cope with their coworkers’ “tech friction.” IT workers are over-burdened with the volume of DEX issues and hamstrung by manual resolution processes. Most of all, IT workers are “flying blind” because they lack detailed data about the real DEX issues plaguing themselves and the organization at large.

Lack of DEX data undermines improvement goals

This lack of data creates a major blind spot , says Daren Goeson, SVP of Product Management at Ivanti. “Accurate DEX data illuminate what are the real technology challenges that the organization is facing,” he says. “And the data enable IT to get at the root cause of the DEX issues.”

Most IT organizations lack metrics for DEX. These include digital experience scores (only 48% do this), device/user analytics (42%) and speed of ticket resolution (39%). Without metrics, IT workers can’t discover the scope, scale, and severity of DEX issues. They can’t prioritize DEX problems or measure progress toward DEX goals.

Ivanti’s research shows the extent and costs of these chronic, endemic DEX problems and the toll they take:

• Office workers have to cope with an average of four technology-related issues every day, such as poor application or device performance, slow networks, and many more.
• 60% of office workers report frustration with their tech tools.
• 55% of them say negative experiences with workplace technology impact their mood and morale.
• A higher percentage of executive leaders than other information workers report experiencing sub-optimal DEX.

To improve digital employee experience, start with IT employees

“IT leaders can use the IT organization as a test bed to prove the effectiveness of proactively managing DEX,” says Goeson. Managed, measured DEX will ease IT’s workload and make staff more productive.

How IT leaders can improve DEX for IT professionals:

1. Ensure IT staff have the updated tools they need to work anywhere. Nearly one-quarter (23%) of IT workers say that their current toolset is not as effective in off-site work.

2. Establish DEX metrics and equip IT with the DEX management processes and tools to monitor, collect, analyze, and present this data.

3. Deploy automation processes and accurate knowledge bases to speed up help desk response and resolution.

4. Leverage AI and machine learning capabilities – through endpoint management and service desk automation platforms – to detect data “signals” such as performance trends and thresholds before they become full-blown problems. And to automate routine tasks, such as installing a new patch or remediating slowed app performance.

5. Prioritize automating help desk responses to trouble ticket requests by using self-service portals, AI/machine learning capabilities for routing and analyzing online and telephone ticket requests.

The bottom line

IT leaders can demonstrate the impact of managed, measured DEX for the enterprise. But that means starting by optimizing DEX for the IT organization.

For more information, see Ivanti’s 2024 Digital Employee Experience Report: A CIO Call to Action.

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