One of the most common problems with digital employee experience (DEX) we see is that IT leaders who think they're measuring DEX aren't!
We see it all the time, but it's understandably easy to fall into the trap of cataloging symptoms instead of measuring experiences because measuring digital employee experience is new, and there are so many DEX tools.
The good news is that you can measure digital employee experience in an actionable way. Doing so will improve your capabilities by removing the root causes of DEX problems.
This post shows you how and why to measure digital employee experience diagnostically. You'll understand how to measure DEX in a way that lets you remove its root cause as it increases the skills of your IT teams.
Sound good? Let's go!
How to Measure True Digital Employee Experience (2 Core DEX Metrics)
Are you an IT leader struggling to measure digital employee experience (DEX)? You're not alone! Many struggle to accurately measure DEX because it's a relatively new concept and so many tools claim to help. In this blog post, we will show you how and why to measure digital employee experience diagnostically to remove its root cause and increase the skills of your IT teams. Learn more about the actionable ways you can measure DEX and improve your capabilities.
However, most IT Leaders rely upon experience proxies or tools for this answer.
Are you measuring satisfaction, Net Promoter Score, retention, wellness, or other issues related to poor digital workplace environments? If you are, you're cataloging symptoms, not measuring Digital Employee Experience (DEX).
Does your DEX leadership rely upon event management tools and their alerts and predictions? If so, you're reacting to those symptoms, not leading the removal of their root causes, and your DEX problems recur persistently.
Your employees — your internal customers and users — make their DEX determination based on an unconscious examination of two fitness attributes.
Business value only comes from the correct balance of both.
How to Measure Digital Employee Experience
To measure digital employee experience in an actionable way, you must assess employee perceptions of fitness.
Digital employee experience has two axes: Fitness for Purpose, or meeting business requirements, and Fitness for Use, or meeting user needs.
Fitness for Use and Purpose is the only accurate and proven measure of Digital Employee Experience (DEX).
You can summarize fitness for purpose as "what IT does." Evaluating fitness for purpose shows digital workplace solutions' ability to fulfill specific employee business functional needs and the extent to which the solution supports them in meeting those needs.
Fitness for use reflects "how IT does it." Employees perceive fitness for use as the level of difficulty involved with using IT products and interacting with IT service staff. When measured, fitness for use shows IT competence in supporting employees to meet their needs.
Combining both aspects of fitness gives you a single actionable digital employee experience metric for your IT solutions — like a grade point average (GPA).
How to Measure Fitness for Purpose
Learn how strongly employees feel an IT digital workplace solution suits their functional needs by measuring employee perception of the three fit-for-purpose components:
Reliability: availability and comprehensiveness of feature-set for its primary task.
Responsiveness: consistent and appropriate timeliness of service(s) when needed.
Assurance: trust in these IT solutions and the IT organization.
Example questions you can of employees to verify fitness for purpose include:
RELIABILITY DETERMINANTS: Does IT design and delivery staff deliver the level of functionality employees expect? Do they:
Provide IT systems as, when, and where promised?
Handle support issues dependably?
Perform tasks right the first time, every time?
Deliver services at the promised time?
Maintain error-free records?
Follow published and promised specifications?
Produce error-free statements and reports?
RESPONSIVENESS DETERMINANTS: Are IT products, services, and design and delivery staff responding in the time frame employees expect? Do they:
Willingly help employees by responding to requests or issues quickly?
Show readiness to respond to employees requests and issues?
Provide prompt support services to employees?
Keep employees informed about the status of requests, installs, moves, adds, changes, tickets, etc?
Communicate early and clearly about when tasks will occur?
Treat employees situations with care and seriousness?
ASSURANCE DETERMINANTS: Do IT products, services, and design and delivery staff make employees feel sufficiently confident or secure? Do they:
Instill confidence in employees?
Make employees feel safe in their transactions?
Have the knowledge to answer employees questions?
Use technology quickly and skillfully?
Consider the property and values of employees?
Act considerately and politely during all interactions(e.g., telephone, email, instant messaging)?
Give responses that are accurate and consistent with other reliable sources?
Assure employees that IT systems operate correctly?
How to Measure Fitness for Use
Understand how well customers believe a digital workplace solution helps them achieve their goals from two fit-for-use traits:
Tangibility: physical service elements such as documentation, ease of use, UX, etc.
Empathy: being engaged by IT, understood, and seeing that engagement reflected in the IT solution.
Example questions you can ask of employees to verify fitness for use include:
DETERMINANTS OF TANGIBILITY: Do IT products and services and design and delivery staff make the physical aspects of the service — interface, documentation, printed materials — easy to understand and use (or even fun)? Do they:
Demonstrate business professionalism when working with employees?
Ensure materials associated with the digital workplace solution are visually appealing?
Create easy to understand written materials?
Prioritize software and interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use?
Deliver modern systems and equipment?
Keep systems in good repair?
DETERMINANTS OF EMPATHY: Do IT products and services and design and delivery staff show a connection to and understanding of employee wants and needs? Do they:
Provide access, both physical and social by being approachable and service-oriented?
Understand employees and make efforts to get to know employees and understand their specific needs?
Give employees individual attention?
Deal with employees in a caring fashion?
Have the employees best interest at heart?
Understand the needs of employees?
Provide convenient support hours or systems?
Implement systems that are complicated or hard to use?
Make it it easy to reach the appropriate staff person?
Avoid using technical jargon when communicating or speaking with employees?
Provide a level of service consistent with what employees require and need?
Stay calm with employees when employees don't understand technical language?
Accommodate employees schedules?
Key Points
Remember the following key points as you lead measurement of digital employee experience:
The digital employee experience you provide is only — and exactly — what your employees say it is
Your team is most likely not measuring digital employee experience
Most IT DEX teams catalog symptoms like satisfaction and engagement scores, not real DEX
If your team relies on DEX tools, then you're probably not getting to the root cause
Digital employee experience is a perception of how well your IT performs on two axes
The only true measure of Digital Employee Experience is Fitness for Use and Fitness for Purpose
Fitness for Use (FFU) measures how well the digital workplace solution meets employee business-functional DEX needs
Fitness for Purpose (FFP) measures how well IT engages with and meets employee DEX needs
Reliability, responsiveness, and assurance make up the fitness for purpose component of DEX
Tangibles and empathy comprise the fitness-for-use part of digital employee experience
Both fitness for purpose and fitness for use are equally important to digital employee experience
You measure fitness by asking employees about specific classes of IT-employee DEX engagements
Conclusion
There it is. That's how you measure digital employee experience.
If you want to improve digital employee experience — not just solve tactical DEX problems when they pop up — this is the only approach that works.
Start by reviewing how your team "measures DEX" today. Do they use an approach based on verifying fitness? Do the questions your teams ask (assuming they ask) look similar to the determinants presented in this post?
If not, this is your starting point!
From the determinants presented above, you can identify the systemic organizational breakdowns that result in low DEX. Once you do so, you can work on a communication, teamwork, process, controls, and governance roadmap to resolve those bottlenecks.
I'm optimistic that these steps can and will improve your IT capabilities as it raises your digital employee experience. I also know that if you do that, all the other symptoms will fade away or improve.
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Our Principals Hello, we're the Principals of DEXSIGHTS. We're guiding IT Leaders through the journey of transforming into employee IT experience experts. Each of us has been in IT for over 20 years. Our past roles include IT Leader, Analyst, startup founder of a SaaS firm, and Practice Leader at a global consultancy. We've always focused on the experience of IT's consumers — employees, customers, and users. As a result, we've achieved global visibility as IT thought leaders. We've learned how to quickly find and fix IT customer and user problems. We've combined all our experiences, research, successes, and struggles from leading IT by using employee experience as our compass. Now we're providing it to you.
Our Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Blog Posts The author is responsible for the content of this post. First, the author drafted this post using a word processor. Next the author used AI (OpenAI and Grammarly) to refine parts of this posts structure. Finally, the author edited the text for content, voice, and desired reading time.
