Your workplace experience management strategy spans technology, products, services, experiences, and change
Computers, devices, and operating systems provide the technology layer that underlies all workplace experiences. IT has always managed end-user computing, but now the task requires extra measures to ensure you have the time and resources to address employee needs while also meeting business goals. These added complexities require a multi-layered management structure.
Organizations must manage experiences across technology, products, and services. Product management ensures that application features are delivered on time and that organizations build (or buy) the right product in the first place. Services encompass software products along with the digital and face-to-face interactions and business processes that support them.
In our fast-paced world of digital transformation, technology, product, service, and experience management all happen within the context of change management. Change managers provide the organizational change strategy and ensure that organizations adopt the right technology.
This framework will help you execute your digital employee experience strategy.
As employees work from a greater variety of places, they face a growing need for different types of devices for different purposes. The end-user computing manager’s job goes beyond ensuring the security of employees’ endpoint devices. Managers must also ensure that employees can access business applications and feel comfortable using the hardware.
While IT manages the technical side of applications, business stakeholders manage the requirements. This demands strong collaboration since the users just want the layers of technology to work.
Provisioning devices based on general business roles such as “office worker” and “sales traveler” might have been useful in the past, but those days are behind us. The future of end-user computing requires a more refined understanding of employees’ multifaceted needs.
To succeed, IT managers must work with product, service, experience, and change managers.
Let’s start with products. Consider the applications employees use to create business value. Managers can view these as products tied to business outcomes and manage them accordingly. Product managers ensure that features are delivered on time, but also ensure that their organization is building or buying the right product in the first place. More and more, managers are applying modern product management practices from the start-up and consumer worlds to the internal products that employees use every day.
A service desk, for example, is just as important for IT to manage as the devices, although such supportive services are often underfunded and poorly managed.
Think of services as a collection of products, and products as a collection of technology. Each layer requires its own individual management, but you must also manage everything holistically.
Experience managers must constantly look “outside-in” from the employee’s point-of-view, resolving issues no matter what layer triggers them and filling gaps between the layers disrupting a user’s experiences.
For an organization to remain competitive, it must constantly evolve. To create affordable, easy-to-use, and delightful technology, managers must first understand what makes people tick. Change management—as both a strategic objective and profession—must be part of the picture.
Use this framework as a “canvas” to help map relationships and dependencies across all workplace elements.
Say you want to improve end-user computers for new hires. On whom will you need to depend? With whom will you need to collaborate? Identify these people ahead of time.
When all the pieces work together, new hires will say they had a “delightful” experience joining your organization. Many small details, like sending their computer, a company T-shirt, and a signed welcome letter from the CEO together in the same box, will go a long way toward employee satisfaction.
It’s easy to say that IT leaders need a DEX strategy. But what exactly does this strategy entail? Our framework will help you answer DEX questions at a high level.