Digital Employee Experience and the Future of Work: Insights from a VMware Study

Last Updated: December 16, 2021

Companies that provide a positive digital employee experience are more likely to be able to attract and retain top talent,” says a new VMware report that surveyed 6,400 employees, HR professionals, and IT specialists across 19 countries. How can organizations augment digital employee experience? And what are the implications of going digital-first? Take a look.

We are in a digital-first world. Yet, several organizations follow manual processes for certain key HR tasks. It is understandable – some HR professionals question the reliability of technology when it comes to valuable functions and data. But it is time to adapt – especially to the changing demands of the workforce, in which employees who have grown up in a digital world are in the majority.

Companies which go above and beyond to provide a stellar customer experience are now shifting focus to providing a stellar employee experienceOpens a new window – and that can come from giving employees a great digital experience, says the VMware report titled “The Digital Employee ExperienceOpens a new window .”

The report also reveals that for employees, freedom in the form of being able to work remotely and the ability to access their work apps from their own devices simplifies collaboration and execution of work.

Learn More: How AI is Driving the Next Wave of Digital TransformationOpens a new window

What Benefits Can a Digital Employee Experience Offer? VMware Explores

Imagine the reduced amount of paperwork, the back and forth, and the general red tape in following due process. The report, however, specifies more measurable outcomes:

  • Talent retention: An enhanced employee experience is likely to help retain critical talent.
  • Talent acquisition: 73 percent of candidates said that the digital culture of an organization was a key factor in accepting or rejecting a job.
  • Employer branding: A positive digital employee experience can improve the employer brand. The report revealed that employees who believe their organizations offer a good digital experience are more likely to claim that their organization is a top place to work and has a progressive culture than organizations that do not allow such freedoms.
  • Competitiveness: Employees who rate their employers as competitive are more likely to have a positive digital employee experience.

Learn More: 4 HR Digital Transformation Trends for SMBs in 2019Opens a new window

The Future of Work is Now: How Organizations Can Embrace a Digital-First Culture to Improve Employee Experience

The future of work is entirely digital with overarching human intervention. This is the time to adopt a digital-first cultureOpens a new window . Speaking exclusively to HR Technologist, Shankar Iyer, Senior Vice President and General Manager of End-User Computing at VMware, shares three insightful tips for organizations to embrace a digital culture:

1. “When it comes to delivering tools and technology, put employee experience first.”

This is entirely IT’s lookout, says Shankar. It begins with an assessment of the flexibility employees expect in terms of their device preference and location.

While the VMware report states that 95 percent of IT providers say that they give employees all the digital solutions that they need for good employee experience, 42 percent of HR and other employees believe that they don’t have the digital tools necessary for their jobs. This indicates a wide perception and communication gap between IT and the rest of the organization.

Even the report suggests that 84 percent of respondents put a lack of understanding of what employees need among the top three challenges in enabling digitization to improve the employee experience.

2. “Make employee experience a team sport.”

Ensuring a positive employee experience is a team effort. It requires attention from all teams involved, including employees themselves. Clear communication between IT and HR can enable a comfortable transition to a digital-first culture.

“Bringing IT and HR together through a human-centered design thinking approach can accelerate the culture shift needed to adopt digital workspace strategies,” emphasizes Iyer.

While IT deploys the devices needed for this, keeping in mind data security concerns, HR needs to take responsibility for implementing a culture of digital transformation, ensure that employees are comfortable embracing this culture and make it easy for them to work around these changes.

3. “Embrace a digital workspace platform.”

Iyer adds, “The digital workspace, a concept VMware pioneered three years ago, is a holistic change in the way end-user services are delivered by IT. By taking advantage of today’s cloud-based management technologies, digital workspace solutions deliver self-service, out-of-the-box experiences that scale across platforms, locations, and device ownership models.”

Learn More: Why HR is at the Center of Digital TransformationOpens a new window

Key Takeaways

Organizations face several challenges in effectively implementing a digital-first culture while keeping in mind continuous enhancement of the employee experience. Apart from a lack of understanding about what employees really want, the report indicates that challenges in implementing a digital-first culture range from lack of support from senior leadership in the form of funding to concerns over data security when employees use their personal devices to access confidential organizational data.

IT then has the responsibility to create a robust data security platform to enable a digital culture that HR can evangelize. For example, Iyer adds, “With the right policies and tools in place – from bring your own device (BYOD) and choose your own device (CYOD) to adaptive identity management and native app delivery – organizations can strike a balance between employee experience and IT security.”

An interesting finding of this study is that HR alone is not responsible for the digital transformation of an organization. It is, however, the mediator, the enabler of a workplace culture that is forward-thinking and ready to adapt to and adopt the latest technologies.

All these position an organization as a great place to work, keeps employees happy and retains them, and enhances the overall experience of both existing talent and incoming talent.

What are some of the ways your organization has embraced a digital-first culture? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window LinkedInOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!

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