Digital Employee Experience (DEX)
A practical guide for pragmatic IT teams
If you want to learn about Digital Employee Experience Management, what it is, why it is important, how to monitor and measure it, how to improve it and what are the benefits, you have come to the right place.
Whether you’re just getting started in improving Digital Employee Experience, or already know the basics, this page is your gateway to becoming a DEX master.
Table of Contents
Click to go straight to a specific DEX topic:
- What is Digital Employee Experience (DEX)?
- What is Digital Employee Experience Management (DEX, DEEM)?
- Who is Digital Employee Experience Management for?
- Why DEX and why now?
- Digital Employee Experience Solutions
- Measuring Employee Experience
- Visibility into your computer and software environment
- Digital Employee Experience Principles
- The roadmap for improving your Digital Employee Experience
- Benefits of Digital Employee Experience
- Digital Employee Experience case studies
What is Digital Employee Experience (DEX)?
Digital Employee Experience, often shortened as DEX, refers to employees’ experience of how digital tools, computers, and devices work. Digital Employee Experience or DEX also refers to Digital Employee Experience Management (link to below), which is a IT management approach that puts the end-user, the employee, and employee experience at the center.
Employees are a company’s greatest assets. For many employees, computers are the main tool, if not the only tool, and almost all need one to get their job done.
So, it isn’t insignificant how computers and other digital tools work when it comes to productivity, motivation, and overall employee experience.
Recent trends such as bring your own device (BYOD) and work-from-anywhere are pushing IT from a traditional business-centric, if not from older tech-centric to modern end-user-centric IT.
What Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is and how to improve it >
A pragmatic approach to improving Digital Employee Experience >
What is Digital Employee Experience Management (DEX, DEEM)?
Digital Employee Experience Management (DEX) is a modern IT management approach that puts the end-user, the employee, at the center. Earlier it has been also shortened as DEEM, but generally DEX is now used for the whole phenomenon covering experience and management.
DEX refers to employees’ experience of how digital tools, computers, and devices work. DEX is all about being end-user-centric and measuring, monitoring, and improving the end-user IT experience.
Employees are a company’s greatest assets. For many employees, computers are the main tool, if not the only tool, and almost all need one to get their job done.
So, it isn’t insignificant how computers and other digital tools work when it comes to productivity, motivation, and overall employee experience.
Recent trends such as bring your own device (BYOD) and work-from-anywhere are pushing IT from a traditional business-centric, if not from older tech-centric to modern end-user-centric IT.
Who is Digital Employee Experience Management for?
Digital Employee Experience Management is for every organization, large or small, that cares about employees. It is important regardless of whether IT is in-house or outsourced.
In the simplest terms, DEX is all about putting digital employee experience in the center.
In practical terms, a DEX solution is often needed to measure and monitor the experience, and find improvement opportunities.
Why Digital Employee Experience and why now?
According to primary research by leading IT industry analytics firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), 70% of organizations regard 'increasing workforce productivity' as a high priority to their business objectives—a goal inhibited by the fact that, on average, each individual employee is impacted by a digital experience issue 18 times per week”
According to EMA, one out of every ten workers will actively seek employment elsewhere if they are forced to use IT resources they do not like.
Digital Employee Experience is one part of the customer-centric and customer experience revolution. And for IT, the customer is the employee.
Digital Employee Experience Solutions
Traditional IT management tools do not measure or monitor employee experience, and finding experience improvement opportunities is often hard. In practical terms, a DEX solution (linkki) is often needed.
Most DEX solutions are designed for large enterprises requiring implementation projects and dedicated resources. However, lighter and simpler, yet fully featured DEX solutions that are designed for every organization, and not just large enterprises, are also available, making measuring, monitoring, and improving digital employee experience accessible for all IT organizations and teams. Applixure is such a solution.
The state of the DEX market and a list of the top DEX solution providers can be found in this report:
Analyst report: EMA RadarTM for Digital Employee Experience (DEX) 2022 >
Measuring Employee Experience
You get what you measure, and the same applies to the Digital Employee Experience.
Digital Employee Experience should be measured objectively as well as subjectively. Objective experience is measured by monitoring how the computer and software are used and behave. E.g., hangs and crashes are obviously big negatives. Subjective experience is measured with surveys.
How to improve Digital Employee Experience
Improving your employees’ IT experience starts with data. The IT team needs to be able to see what is going on with computers and software. IT departments traditionally have loads of data, but the key to successfully improving your digital employee experience is having the relevant data available to you in a format where it is actionable.
Clear metrics, such as scores, trends and benchmarks, help IT teams to understand where they stand when it comes to digital employee experience, how things are improving and how they are doing against others.
Data and metrics gives visibility, and that visibility leads to data-guided decisions, turning IT operations from reactive to proactive.
There are certainly low-hanging fruit to be harvested in any IT environment. For example, battery wear or high memory usage – both of which cause daily hassles for employees. So, being able to identify computers with these issues will allow you to bring relief to end-users quite easily.
How to Start Using Data to Improve DEX >
The secret to a better IT experience for employees is simple >
7 Things to check first to improve the quality of end-user IT >
9 most common issues in end-user IT >
Importance of visibility into your computer and software environment
You can’t improve something if you don’t know it’s in bad shape, and you can’t fix something you don’t know is broken. So to improve digital employee experience, you need visibility into your computer and software environment.
3 ways IT can gain visibility into computer environments >
The secret to a better IT experience >
Digital Employee Experience Principles
5 key elements of a well-working computer environment >
Webinar recording: Study reveals the most common roadblocks to a well-working computer environment >
The roadmap for improving your Digital Employee Experience
Improving DEX is a journey which you can break down into three steps:
1. Gain visibility and start being data-driven:
IT teams have a lot of data. The problem is that it's not always the data they need to see what is going on in the computer and software environment so that they can take action. Many companies use their employees as their computer monitoring systems and respond only when employees report a problem. This method means missing most issues - as less than half of them are ever reported - and it means being reactive which is not a pleasant mode of working for IT.
So, the first step towards better DEX is to ensure your IT can see the state of the computer and software environment and the issues therein so that they can start taking action based on that data.
2. Automate monitoring:
Once you have gained visibility and started acting on the data you have, you'll want to start automating that process to make it run more smoothly.
3. Incorporate employee feedback:
In steps 1 and 2, IT is working with data about the computers and software to fix issues. In this step, the end-user's perspective comes more strongly into play as employees are invited to share their experience with their computers and software. This is the final piece to understanding which fixes to prioritize and how best to ensure employees have an uninterrupted workday.
Webinar: Take your end-user IT from good to great in 3 practical steps >
Take your end-user IT from good to great with Applixure >
Benefits of Digital Employee Experience improvement
Benefits of DEX for employees
Ebook: Users Love IT – How to turn your IT into a productivity booster >
DEX improves employee productivity
One of the key benefits of improving DEX is that you increase employee productivity. There are two levers that you can use here: minimize IT hassles which cut into productivity AND raise the ceiling on productivity by developing the digital tool set in use.
Read more about these two ways IT can increase employee productivity >
Is IT handicapping employees with poor equipment? >
DEX increases employee satisfaction and happiness
When employees are frustrated to their digital tools, they are not just less productive, but also unsatisfied. According to EMA, one out of every ten workers will actively seek employment elsewhere if they are forced to use IT resources they do not like.
Benefits of DEX for IT teams
DEX enables IT teams to shift from reactive to proactive way of working
Is your IT team tired of firefighting? Would they rather be working on more value-adding tasks? Making smart use of data will enable your IT team to move from a reactive to proactive way-of-working.
How to transform your IT from reactive to proactive >
Clear metrics helps focus effort
When the IT team has clear metrics, such as DEX scores together with trends and benchmarks, it is easier to focus everyone's effort to a common goal of improving the overall employee experience.
More meaningful IT work
Let’s face it, fighting fires is not what most IT pros prefer to do. With better visibility to the End-User IT environment, with clear metrics and prioritized lists of issues to focus on, the IT team can focus on where it matters the most, and finding patterns where fixing one thing makes experience better for many.
Work smarter, not harder
The beauty of the DEX approach is that with the right tools it does not require more resources and more work, but the opposite. When the team can focus on the right improvements and issues, those that will bring most improvement with less effort, the overall situation will soon get better and focus can be moved to proactive work.
Competitive advantage
DEX approach often opens up possibilities to provide not just better working tools, but also tools with more choice while keeping the environment easier to manage at the same time.
Benefits of Digital Employee Experience for security and compliance
Surprisingly, taking the DEX approach also leads to better security and compliance. One of the cornerstones of the approach is the concept of well working PC. A DEX solution will help find software that requires updating, is unapproved or out-of-date or end-of-life version. It also helps to see other security issues such as if the computer is unnecessarily used with local admin rights. And whether security software are installed.
In short, DEX approach helps to reduce attack surface and security risks while still allowing IT team to offer more choice for the employees with less effort.
Ebook: 5 Key Elements of a Well-working Computer Environment >>
Digital Employee Experience Case Studies
Case study: International law firm Taylor Vinters improves employees’ IT experience >
Case: Pihla Group gained transparency and productivity >
Case study: How Valtti made the shift from reactive to proactive end-user IT >
Case study: How the JYSK IT team manages to stay small yet improve the employee experience >
Applixure: A leading DEX Solution for pragmatic IT teams
Finally, a word about us.
Applixure is a leading DEX solution for pragmatic IT teams regardless of your size. Applixure makes measuring, monitoring, and improving digital employee experience simple. Getting started is fast and effortless.
Check the recent report by leading IT industry analyst Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) where they listed the 9 leading DEX solutions in 2022. You’ll find us there.
Sign up for free to assess your Digital Employee Experience, or if you prefer service instead, book a date with out DEX master for a free guided assessment.