The role of technology in employee experience

Technology is changing the fabric of organisational design and day-to-day communications across every industry – but how can you harness tech potential to deliver a consumer-grade experience that brings your entire organisation together?

First, let’s remind ourselves why a positive employee experience matters.

According to research led by Harvard Business Review, companies in the top quartile for employee experience generate 50% more revenue than those in the bottom quartile. The gulf in performance traces back to key factors such as wellbeing, staff retention, training opportunities and provision of digital tools to support job roles, all of which has a big impact on service quality, customer satisfaction and revenue.

It doesn’t happen overnight, either. Industry leaders recognise it takes time and careful investment to turn engagement ambitions into reality. A recent study commissioned by Microsoft revealed that leading organisations are planning to increase their investment in employee experience technologies by roughly 16% on average over a two-year period.

This sets a clear benchmark for digital transformation efforts, one which industry leaders are committed to achieving as they blaze new trails for workplace culture, collaboration and operational efficiency.

Here we explore three ways in which technology can strengthen your approach to employee experience and drive high performance across all organisational levels.

Building a connected culture

Humans are social creatures. We’re wired to connect with those around us because it regulates our mood, improves wellbeing, gives us a sense of community and allows us to find vital support when needed.

Work settings are no exception, which is why at the heart of every great workplace culture you’ll find a communications strategy designed to facilitate swift, easy interactions in a familiar environment.

Tools like Microsoft Viva Engage, Teams and Slack now provide fully unified, instant communication channels that encourage and enhance collaboration while speeding up response times. They also offer a range of different messaging and video conferencing options to suit different employee needs and common scenarios. Elsewhere, modern intranet systems are lightyears ahead of the static bulletin boards of the past. They now act as interactive, personalised hubs where employees can access essential information, policies, updates and resources within a matter of clicks.

These platforms reduce reliance on traditional comms streams like email and ensure that information is always available and up to date. They help employees feel more connected to their colleagues, which creates a sense of community, even in remote or hybrid environments.

Matching modern expectations

People today have come to expect the same slick digital experiences at work that they enjoy outside of it. Convenience, speed and highly intuitive interfaces are now considered basic requirements for user engagement, whereas companies still relying on outdated systems are likely to find their employees more prone to frustration, inefficiency and turnover.

Achieving consistency in employee experience is key, especially for businesses aiming to bridge the gap between frontline, remote and hybrid workers. It’s often the case that comms strategies have a degree of bias towards knowledge workers, which can lead to a disconnect and risk of disengagement among other teams. Instead, companies should adopt a multi-channel approach with content personalised for all employee groups, including operational updates and frontline success stories that resonate with non-office staff.

Understanding how content format and accessibility plays into your communications experience is another factor. Mobile apps and mobile-ready systems are becoming increasingly important to connect frontline employees, as well as any staff working in the field. Making it easy to access important programs and files at any time, from any location goes a long way to maximising organisational agility. 

Delivering the bigger picture

In the past, internal systems and platforms were standalone programs with either limited or no ability to interact directly with one another. Even best-in-class systems operated in siloes, leaving teams to deal with poor interconnectivity, fragmented workflows and manual data entry prone to human error.

Although many businesses still find themselves facing these same inefficiencies today, industry standards are moving quickly towards fully connected digital ecosystems where all programs and platforms can speak to each other and share real-time data instantly.

Being able to rely on easy integrations and robust application programme interfaces (APIs) is a major advantage for any business that aims to roll out and scale new systems quickly. This allows comms teams to create a cohesive, end-to-end experience that spans various tools, such as intranets, collaboration platforms, HR systems and project management systems. It also saves a lot of headaches for IT in the long run.

Investing in a reliable suite of software from the same provider is one of the easiest ways to ensure that information flows freely across systems as part of a growing tech stack. Seamless integration is a key driver of operational efficiency and a fantastic employee experience.