The employee comes first

Technology is the foundation of digital workplace services, but organizations must remember that employees are the heart of every business. Technology should be designed around their needs, says Lennert l'Amie, chief information officer at Dutch airport management company Royal Schiphol Group.

“AI can be a solution, but first, we need to be clear about the problem we are trying to solve. We don't want to push tools into areas where they don’t really help. We look at problem-solving based on personas, on function types and on specific work to really dig deep and start to understand what we need to do."

Lennert l'Amie
Chief information officer
Royal Schiphol Group

The leading organizations consult their employees

Productivity Leaders understand the importance of this kind of due diligence, and they lean on their workforce when selecting digital strategies: 96% say they understand what their employees want from technology, compared with 72% of Late Adopters.For instance, 93% of Productivity Leaders have established robust feedback mechanisms that allow employees to provide suggestions for technology investments, compared with just 34% of Late Adopters.Railway technology company KONUX takes a multi-layered approach to employee feedback, according to Johanna Leisch, managing director and chief operating officer. “We do a lot of surveys and run an ‘open line’ so employees can share technical feedback directly with leadership, which is used actively," says Leisch. "We also do extended business lunches that enable employees to raise their suggestions in person. It takes time, but it’s really needed — meaningful interaction requires effort.”It is more than investment decisions that benefit from employee perspectives. For IT support, Productivity Leaders are increasingly focusing on the employee experience as a measure of success. They are almost six times as likely as Late Adopters to move from service-level agreements, which focus on quantitative results and service delivery, to experience-level agreements (XLAs), which focus on human outcomes. And three-quarters of Productivity Leaders have increased investment in XLA monitoring and analysis, compared with just 11% of Late Adopters.As a result, Productivity Leaders are giving employees the tools and services they really need, instead of guessing. Their employees are more than twice as likely to quickly adopt new tools once they are available. This is improving ROI on digital workplace investments, and increased productivity is improving commercial results.This feedback approach also makes employees feel heard: 91% of Productivity Leaders are exceeding expectations for employee satisfaction and retention, compared with just 31% of Late Adopters.