Organisations struggle with delivering the optimum digital employee experience

Wednesday, 23 Oct 2019

When we talk about digital transformation, what have we been missing out?  

Digital employee experience is tightly linked to business success but it has been commonly overlooked, as it is pointed out in Digital Employee Experience survey, a recent global survey by VMware. 

The survey shows that globally, 80% of employees at companies experiencing high- or hyper-growth (more than 15% revenue growth) report they can easily find and install the right app for any new task/process at work, compared to 42% of employees at companies that are under-performing or not growing (-1 to 0% revenue growth).

In APAC, the vast majority (89%) respondents believe that their organisation struggles with delivering the optimum digital employee experience, with the most significant issue (42%) being a lack of understanding of what employees want and need.  

Top line report takeaways:

  • As companies go through digital transformation programs, the digital employee experience is a critical area that should not be overlooked, especially as employees are a company’s most precious resource.
  • The digital experience is directly linked to how competitive a company is, its growth trajectory and its net promoter score.
  • In Asia Pacific HR is seen as a credible force for change. Employees want the function to actively help improve the digital employee experience.
  • Globally, almost three-quarters (73%) of employee and HR decision-makers agree that the flexibility of tools (e.g., technology, apps, and devices) for work would influence their judgement to apply or accept a position at a company.
  • In APAC, there is a perception gap inside organisations . 95% of IT respondents say that they provide employees with the digital tools employees need. However, 46% of employees don’t feel that they do have the tools they need.
  • APAC, respondents from India are the most positive across the board for all questions, while Japan routinely scores the most negative. Singapore and China are both above average in sentiment, and Australia is generally neutral to slightly positive. 

Challenges to delivering the optimum digital experience

The vast majority (89%) of APAC respondents believe that their organisation struggles with delivering the optimum digital employee experience, with the biggest issue (42%) being a lack of understanding of what employees want and need (compared with 29% in EMEA and 30% in NA).

When it comes to the priority placed on employee experience projects, over half (52%) of APAC respondents say that their organisation has placed more priority in this area over the last 12 months, while over three in five (62%) state that there will be more priority in the next 12 months.

HR and the employee experience

82% of APAC respondents say that HR currently has at least some responsibility in improving the digital experience for employees within their organisation.

And of those who don’t say that HR has complete responsibility, 86% of APAC respondents state that HR should have more responsibility for improving the digital experience for employees within their organisation; this is higher than EMEA (80%) and North America (74%). Respondents in China (97%) and India (94%) score particularly highly, underlining the importance of HR in these markets.

However, HR needs to build trust across the organisation. Only 39% of APAC respondents cite that they have a complete level of trust in HR for boosting digital employee engagement in their organisation. IT only fares marginally better at 43%. These scores are lower when only the employee opinion is measured; HR – 28%, IT – 35%.

Respondents in the APAC region are more likely than any other respondents to feel that HR and IT could work better together (EMEA: 87%, NA: 89%, APAC: 95%).

We can conclude that the majority of respondents, no matter what role they’re in or where they come from, recognise that HR and IT could work better together to improve the digital employee experience.

employee experience organisation priority Responsibility Employee Engagement employee opinion HR decision-makers perception gap growth trajectory transformation programs Business Success hyper-growth Transformation Flexibility

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