A few years ago, Microsoft conducted a study of 200 companies across different industries and found that high employee engagement correlates with strong financial performance, especially during times of economic uncertainty. In fact, the study found that companies with highly engaged workforces can even outperform the S&P 500.
Researchers pointed to a simple, yet effective, equation for organizations and business leaders: Engagement + Productivity = Performance.
While the formula might be clear, applying it to real world problems is another story. 73% of respondents said they needed a better reason to go into the office than just company expectations; and 64% of employees reported they don’t have the time or energy to manage their workloads.
The Narrative on XLAs
The Microsoft study was proof of something our team at CGI has known for a while now: if you want to unlock Engagement and Productivity gains for your organization, you need to bring user sentiment, or more specifically, Digital Employee Experience context into the problem set above.
For starters, traditional SLAs aren’t enough. Most IT professionals today understand the utility of Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) because they can keep departments honest and influence them to close the loops between users and tech support, etc.
The narrative about XLAs has changed significantly over the years. Back then, if we met with a service desk and they said to us, “our service desk has answered 80% of calls in 20 seconds,” and we said, “great, but do you have an XLA in place to measure user sentiment?”, we would’ve been laughed at!
Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore, but why do so many IT teams still struggle to connect the lines between engagement and productivity?
Based on our experience, there are dozens of lessons we learned helping IT teams that you can apply to your organization today.
Smarter Doesn’t Always Mean Faster
Timely, honest sentiment data can tell you wonders about your employees. For example, we helped a client craft a unique questionnaire about their employee tech experience and they discovered that users were absolutely fine waiting an extra 5-10 seconds if it meant they’d receive a tailored solution for their computer problems.
Obviously, the quest for cutting down response time is real, but ultimately, employees want a single response (and solution) to their problem, and not a back-and-forth interaction with IT.
Onsite, In-person Listening Really Does Work
Not every digital fix warrants a one-on-one tech session, but we cannot stress this enough: onsite data collection is one of the most valuable strategies you can take as an IT department. We frequently visit our clients’ employees and spend time asking them open-ended questions to truly understand their day-to-day battles. You can only collect so much from the device, or a voluntary online survey, sometimes you need to put in the work and let people open up because most times, their comments will reveal a hidden piece of the puzzle!
CSAT Data isn’t Enough
All too often, IT leaders think CSAT data is enough to mark a project a success or not, or to understand what users are thinking.
CSAT surveys are useful, but there are other things you need to consider:
1) Hardware Essentials – Boot time, memory space, etc. These metrics are like nutritional labels, they can influence our behaviors and perceptions.
2) Tool Adoption Metrics (and usage) – Are you over/under allocating software seats? What in-app performance metrics demonstrate value? How many steps are users taking to complete a task, and is that the best use of their time?
3) Understanding Equipment Needs versus Wants – The boardroom might want the latest tech, but we’ve found that many employees are completely fine using older laptops and devices as long as they work well. Save the latest and greatest tools only when it’s abundantly clear your workforce needs them for the job.
Tap the Right People to Spread the Message
How do you get the right people to spread your ‘Experience first’ strategy? Give them a platform.
IT workers want to solve problems for their organizations, but they also want to protect and elevate their careers, so why not help them do both? We offer our clients multiple mediums to do this by collaborating on white papers, hosting webinars, and promoting accreditations and upskilling opportunities. It’s important to remember to market the good work you’re doing with your team! That way, you can build a community of people who speak the same language and approach problems from the perspective of users, not just technology.
Tailor Every Interaction
Of course, getting that message to stick is very important. If you’re too wordy or reusing the same materials for different audience members, the message, and your team, becomes dull and predictable.
This is something we know how to avoid at CGI. Every presentation we deliver is tailored and unique to the audience. Adding even just a little bit of personalization to every call or pitch has paid serious dividends for us. We suggest putting yourself in the audience’s shoes and starting with this question: ‘What do I want to get out of this meeting?’.
Where’s our Proof?
By sticking to the principles above, our team has been able to deliver serious, quantifiable results for our clients year after year.
Here is a snapshot of some of those returns:
1) Boosting Employee Engagement - With the help of Nexthink, we helped a client boost their employee survey engagement from just 12% to 64% in the span of a few weeks.
2) Mapping Employee Happiness – we helped another client collect and calculate an employee happiness metric for staff and the wider organization. They started with a baseline (at 42%) and have since made measurable improvements to its current level of 87%.
3) Slicing Average Handling Time – by identifying employee knowledge gaps with Samsung phones, we helped one customer improve their templates and knowledge articles, thus triggering a reduction in handling times by more than 200 seconds (from 815 seconds to 602).
4) Tighter Onboarding - Email blasts aren’t the most exciting medium for IT, but if you use them intelligently they can still be very effective. We helped one client tailor quarterly emails for new hires with pertinent IT usage and performance stats. These message helped the company improve their UX score from 78% - 87%, and offset future tickets related to: access to services, tech knowledge, desk support, equipment requests, etc.
5) AI Personas for Clients – Thanks to our framework and relationship with Nexthink, we’ve also been able to leverage AI to build named personas, and proactively update employees with new info captured from clients. From this feature, our customers can send out a new message in Teams to employees that provides a refresher on the needs of a given category. For example, 'Dear (x), Here's what you need to do for a member of the audit team, etc'. This is a great example of how IT can make employees more productive and efficient by assisting them with their responsibilities.
The Right Ingredients
Ultimately, if you want to improve engagement and productivity your IT department and organization should focus heavily on a user-centric approach, which means integrating Digital Employee Experience (DEX) technologies and Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) and frameworks. In addition, by focusing on tailored solutions, IT teams can drive measurable gains in performance, turning the IT department into a true enabler for workforce success.