The digital workplace your employees really want

A perfectly equipped workstation sparks enthusiasm in employees – a huge opportunity that many companies are still missing. Instead, hardware ill-suited to the task at hand, outdated devices, and poor accessories cause anger and frustration and kill employees’ enjoyment of their work. But it does not need to be like this. With a bit of long-term thinking and competent partners, companies can turn their IT infrastructure into a real source of intrinsic motivation. Studies certainly show that satisfied employees perform better.

Figures published by HR consultancy, Korn Ferry, clearly underpin this claim: Companies with highly motivated employees are 18 per cent more productive than those with a less committed workforce, generate 2.5 times higher revenue growth, and twice as much profit. This means that you can boost the productivity of your business just by optimising the IT user experience. “One way of fully implementing the idea of an end-to-end user experience is to create a chain of experiences, a journey that follows the asset lifecycle.”

Every person is unique, but in our fundamental needs, we are surprisingly similar. Most of us have a deep-rooted desire to make our own independent decisions about what we do and how we do it. This goes some way toward explaining why many well-intentioned IT investments are met with poor acceptance from employees. It is simply that no one made an effort to consult them beforehand. At first, it may seem difficult to entrust the selection of hardware to employees – after all, most of them are not IT experts. But with the right framework and project setup in place, taking this bold step will be rewarded with a massive improvement in employee satisfaction. Ultimately, users will always have a more enjoyable experience with their own choice of devices, than with something that was imposed from above.

If you want to let your employees select their own hardware, an online self-service portal is a practical solution. Employees can access this platform to choose their preferred device from a range of options preselected by your IT department. This is handy because the order and delivery processes will be automated once the platform is properly set up. This should reduce the workload of your IT department. An IT self-service portal also offers another priceless opportunity. A clever shop design (maybe even personalised to fit your brand) can create an order experience for employees that feels like an exclusive webshop – a crucial piece of the puzzle on your journey toward the perfect user experience.

The major manufacturers of consumer gadgets have long understood that there are many elements to a good user experience – it starts with unwrapping the product and extends throughout its entire lifecycle.

The same model can be applied to your company using a variety of features such as personalised welcome screens, individually pre-configured software, and usage tips. The workplace user should feel like a customer and be treated accordingly, especially when it comes to support, which is often a weakness of corporate IT.

Using the services of an external provider to set up a 24/7 help desk not only takes a burden off your IT department but also increases user satisfaction. After all, granting users more freedom to choose their hardware and software does not guarantee that they know all the relevant functions. It is more efficient to proactively teach users the knowledge they need, for example, by offering tips on processes they might not be familiar with or providing answers to typical user questions.

Everyone chooses their own hardware, the help desk is available around the clock, broken equipment is replaced straight away, and updates are swiftly rolled out – this is the vision of the perfect workplace. But can it really be delivered? And is it actually possible? The answer is an emphatic ‘yes’! New financing methods such as DaaS (Device as a Service) or HaaS (Hardware as a Service) models ensure that your perfect concept can be implemented successfully and in keeping with the allocated budget. For a fixed monthly fee, the DaaS provider will take over all aspects of the workplace support, from the provision of the selected hardware to the operation of the help desk, the protection against risk, and other end-to-end services. Therefore, these models offer more than just an employee experience – they lay the foundations for your organisation’s digital transformation. The outsourced processes are lean and perfectly complement your company’s digital transformation in areas such as the work-from-home setup. They are also entirely scalable, both in technological and financial terms. In other words, a positive experience for everyone involved.