Who oversees employee digital wellbeing?
Nexthink’s Meg Donovan (Chief People Officer) and Tim Flower (Global Director of Business Transformation) recently sat down to answer this question on the minds of so many business leaders.
Of course, Human Resources departments have traditionally shouldered the responsibility of managing employee wellbeing. But a recent Nexthink survey reveals that unreliable IT services and equipment is the third biggest contributor to employee turnover and burnout. In other words, digital technology has become a major part of the employee wellbeing conversation. In a world of remote and hybrid work, HR needs to work alongside IT to oversee digital wellbeing.
Want to hear Meg and Tim discuss the steps organizations can take to bring HR and IT together to improve employee experience before the Great Resignation strikes? Watch the entire session here: . Or read on, as below we offer key discussion points from the session that all HR and IT leaders can use to maintain their culture during the transition to hybrid work and keep their employees from leaving during the Great Resignation.
Digital experience is the driving factor of overall employee experience.
“Your entire experience is really a digital experience.” – Meg Donovan, Chief People Officer at Nexthink
As Meg Donovan points out, HR needs to evolve to be more consumer-like in today’s digital-first world – which isn’t always how HR has functioned.
She recommends evaluating how HR interacts with employees starting with the tools and processes they use. The key is to interact in a way that is not disruptive, and to allow employees to be more self-sufficient.
To deliver a more consumer-like experience, employees expect tools to be available all the time. COVID and the rise of remote work have only further exasperated this need. If tools are not available due to IT issues, it disrupts productivity and adds to the ever-growing list of stressors employees have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. As Meg puts it, “[digital employee experience] is not a nice to have. It is a must have.”
HR & IT: The grand alliance?
Nexthink’s new research, HR & IT: The Grand Alliance, revealed startling results around the top drivers of employee burnout and the return to the physical office.
- HR & IT leaders listed “employee burnout” and “return to physical office” as two of the top challenges they care about.
- 77% of HR & IT think poor/unreliable IT services & equipment plays a significant role in employee burnout.
As Tim and Meg discuss, these statistics point to the growing importance of Digital Employee Experience (DEX) and the role of IT service in employee retention.
Since more and more organizations see DEX as an important discipline, it requires a Center of Excellence (COE) to ensure its success across the organization. A COE can serve as an integral mechanism to bring the right stakeholders to the table in collaboration, including HR and IT leaders as well as other representatives from across the organization. Just as Meg says, “it takes a village.”
Your employees’ digital experience cannot be arrived at by accident. It requires an integrated HR and IT strategy to ensure employees have what they need through a holistic wellbeing approach – addressing both digital and in-person needs.
How do we marry the perspectives of HR & IT?
Organizations traditionally use traditional metrics found in service-level agreements (SLAs) to measure IT success. However, SLAs focus on the effectiveness of the IT service, not the end-user experience. If IT teams continue to focus on just IT productivity and efficiency, they miss the bigger picture. By marrying the perspectives of HR and IT, organizations can track the whole digital employee experience and truly address and capture employee frustration before it leads to burnout or attrition.
We’ve provided you with the highlights of Meg and Tim’s Digital Well-Being and the Role of IT and HR in Reducing Digital Burnout session from DWX21. To get even more insight, . In 20 minutes, you’ll hear more about the survey results on the importance of HR and IT’s partnership to tackle DEX, along with actionable insights on how HR and IT can evolve and work together to face these new challenges and deliver an optimal digital environment for employees.
Related posts:
- The DEX Show | Podcast #1 – Holistic Technology Experience Management w/ Andrew Hewitt
- The DEX Show | Podcast #5 – Aristotle in the Digital Workplace w/ Dr. Brennan Jacoby
- The DEX Show | Podcast #3 – CIO in the Age of Experience w/ Martha Heller
- The DEX Show | Podcast #4 – IT Insights as a Cornerstone of Company Culture w/ Gil Cohen
