Navigating the digital landscape: Best practices for employee management

Sixty-two percent of workers feel more productive when working remotely. But without the right digital employee experience (DEX) management tools and approach, this level of remote work productivity is difficult to attain. 

The same holds true for hybrid work environments and even work environments where team members spend most of their time in the office. Whatever model your organization employs, we're still living in a digital world — and digital employee experience management is key to improving communication, collaboration, and productivity.

But what is DEX management, and how can you improve your employees' digital experience? Below, we'll explore the value of a positive DEX, the key ingredients to a great overall employee experience, and five proven ways you can improve your company's digital experience.

Why providing a positive DEX is important

DEX is how satisfied your employees are in their interactions with their digital tools. DEX management, then, is a combination of tools and strategies to provide your employees with a smooth and enjoyable digital workplace experience. By cultivating a positive DEX, you can encourage more productive employees while also boosting employee retention and satisfaction rates.

Companies have long recognized the importance of employee sentiment and experience when it comes to improving employee satisfaction as well as employee productivity. But how do you manage your employee experience when your employees all work remotely? 

When you don't provide a physical workspace, providing an optimized digital workspace is paramount. You can start by ensuring that your remote employees have the digital tools they need to perform their roles effectively. Dashboards for keeping up with tasks and workflows, time-tracking apps, and tools for efficient communication are just a few examples of tools that can keep your employees as engaged and productive as possible.

But workplace technology is not the end of the story when it comes to DEX management. In addition to providing your remote team members with the right tools, other keys to an optimized digital workplace experience include onboarding and training initiatives, human resources management, and building a company culture designed to bring the best out of your remote workers.

At Pyn, this is the value that we strive to help organizations achieve. By empowering improved remote team management and communication, Pyn makes it easier than ever before for companies that rely on remote workers to create an optimized DEX.

The key aspects of digital employee experience management

What considerations must you make to build a truly positive, engaging DEX? Below are four elements to help keep your employees satisfied and productive. 

Software and tools for boosting productivity

Asking your remote employees to do their jobs without the right tools is a lot like asking them to dig a well with a tablespoon: They'll probably get the job done, but not very efficiently. Project management platforms, video conferencing apps, and automation solutions are just a few examples of tools that are key to remote employee productivity. 

Communication: Email, instant messaging, and video calls

Effective communication is one of the most important pillars of a great employee experience. For remote employees, this communication is facilitated via emails, instant messaging, and video calls. It's important to provide these tools and encourage open lines of communication across your entire team. For more details about building a solid communication strategy, check out our guide to effective HR communications.

Professional development

Along with improving the quality of their work, providing employees with effective training and development systems is also an important key to improving employee satisfaction. According to a survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), providing employees with professional development opportunities leads to a 15% boost in employee engagement and a 34% boost in employee retention. 

Make sure your company’s intranet or internal knowledge base is accessible to everyone and easy to navigate. If it isn’t, employees could feel that they don’t have access to the information needed to advance professionally, which could lead to frustration.

Talent management and HR

Your remote employees need access to all the same HR-related information  as your in-office employees. By providing self-service access to certain information (such as compensation, benefits, PTO, and company policies), you can give remote employees the tools they need for a great employee experience and free up your HR teams to handle more complex tasks.

5 proven ways to improve your digital employee experience

From improved productivity to reduced employee churn, an optimized digital employee experience offers plenty of benefits. To prioritize improving the digital employee experience at your company, here are five proven DEX strategies to employ.

1. Use a personalized communication tool like Pyn

Developing a remote workforce capable of communicating and collaborating like a true team requires more than email and SMS. With a personalized communication tool such as Pyn, you'll be able to leverage automation to provide your entire remote team with personalized communication, training, and management.

Pyn is an employee journey builder that allows you to plan and schedule personalized messages throughout the employee journey. From training resources during onboarding to career conversation nudges and everything in between, Pyn makes it easy for companies to communicate with remote team members to maximize employee engagement and productivity. Best of all, Pyn's powerful automation features enable organizations to facilitate remote team communication and management at scale without overburdening your HR team.

To see how Pyn empowers an optimized digital employee experience without requiring you to move mountains, schedule a free demo. 

2. Understand your employee needs

In the end, providing a great DEX is all about addressing your team members' needs and pain points — and this naturally starts with understanding what those needs and pain points are. Gathering employee feedback at various stages in the employee journey is one effective way to understand your employees' needs and how they evolve. Consider conducting focus groups (in person or via Zoom), or using survey tools like Culture Amp to get a pulse check on how your employees are feeling.

3. Provide proper tool and software onboarding

We've spent a good bit of time already discussing the importance of providing remote employees with the right tools and software. However, training them how to use the various tools you provide is equally important.

Adopting new technology can be highly beneficial — but only when you pair that new technology with proper onboarding. Each time you bring a new tool or software solution into your ecosystem, you'll need to provide your team members with thorough training on how to use it. 

4. Track and monitor your new hire onboarding efforts closely

Carefully track and monitor your onboarding process to ensure your new employees learn everything they need for a satisfactory, productive experience with your company. 

Using a buddy or mentor system is a great way to help new hires get acclimated quickly. When selecting a mentor for a new hire, you want a strong performer who understands the new hire’s role. However, be sure that the person actually wants to be a buddy, and ensure that they can be given the time needed to devote to “buddy responsibilities.” 

Another effective way to monitor the results of your new hire onboarding efforts is with employee feedback surveys. Ultimately, no one is in a better position to judge your company's onboarding process than the employees who complete it. By gathering feedback on your onboarding process, you can identify issues and opportunities for improvement. 

Given how vital effective onboarding is when optimizing your employee experience (among a host of other benefits), improving your onboarding process is sure to pay dividends!

5. Build a work culture that encourages collaboration and teamwork

Remote workers can often feel isolated, which can tank productivity. Whatever digital employee experience you create for your remote teams, a culture that emphasizes collaboration and teamwork should be at its heart.

Communicate often with your team members, and encourage them to do the same. Provide the proper tools for communication and collaboration, and make sure your employees know how to use them. Both provide and encourage honest feedback. These are just a small sample of the various ways you can build a work culture for remote teams that will encourage collaboration and teamwork — massively improving your digital employee experience in the process.

Why your team should invest in digital employee experience

Now that we've covered the how of improving your digital employee experience, it's time to address the why. Providing employees with all the tools, resources, and training required for an optimized digital employee experience can be a major investment, but the return is always worth it. Here are a few of the biggest reasons why investing in digital employee experience is worthwhile.

Makes your business more flexible

To understand the importance of the flexibility that great DEX management provides, look no further than events of the COVID-19 pandemic. When social distancing forced businesses to pivot to work-from-home models, it was the companies that already had remote infrastructures in place that were able to adapt and thrive.

By developing an optimized digital employee experience, you can effortlessly shift employees to remote work without harming employee productivity. This makes your company far more flexible and ready to meet whatever opportunities or challenges the future of work might hold in store.

Creates happier and more engaged employees

Remote employees with the right tools, training, and guidance to perform their job efficiently and effectively are happier and more engaged. By improving employee satisfaction, an optimized digital employee experience helps keep talented employees around for the long haul and reduces employee churn. There's also the fact that employee satisfaction leads to improved productivity: Happy employees are 13% more productive than those who are not.

Improving employee engagement with DEX management likewise means getting more value from the remote workers you hire. Employees who are more engaged with a company invest more energy and effort into their work rather than just doing the bare minimum.

Improves your business profitability

When employees are more engaged, satisfied, and productive, the companies they work for are more profitable. This is a simple concept, and is ultimately why any profit-minded company chooses to invest in its workforce.

If you would like to directly generate more value from your remote workers, DEX management is key. From reducing costly employee churn to improving employee productivity, there are several ways that creating an optimized digital employee experience can improve a company's bottom line.

Boost your digital employee experience with Pyn

Nearly 28 million people in the U.S. work remotely: A number that tripled between 2019 and 2021. With so many employees now working entirely within a digital work environment, providing an optimized digital employee experience has never been more important.

With Pyn's powerful employee communication and management software, you'll craft a digital employee experience strategically designed to boost employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity. To get started using Pyn to improve your digital employee experience, schedule your Pyn demo here!