This article, written by Vincent Bieri, Nexthink Co-founder, first appeared on Forbes on May 23, 2018.
Embracing digital is the new workplace directive: as noted by Forbes, 94% of executives have increased their focus on digital growth, leading to Gartner projections of a $3.7-billion year for IT spending. The challenge? Throwing money at the shift to digital transition doesn’t guarantee ideal results, especially when it comes to the end-user experience. Here’s a look at the top five IT frustrations your employees aren’t telling you about — and what you can do to relieve the tension.
Fragmented Functions
Companies are embracing omni-channel support to improve the customer experience; as noted by CMS Wire there’s now a need for application integration across cloud servers and on-premises hardware to deliver the same value to employees. But linking next-gen SaaS apps to in-house legacy tools isn’t always easy, in turn causing frustration for employees when they can’t access critical applications anywhere, anytime and with any device.
As a result, businesses need a way to monitor application use end-to-end on their network and discover where gaps in function are driving user frustration.
The Complexity Crisis
With the IT landscape expanding to include mobile and cloud services, total complexity is on the rise. According to eWeek, two-thirds of IT executives say complex technology is making their jobs more difficult, while Baseline Magazine reports that 37% of staff members don’t feel their employer provides enough training — and 10% say they’ve had to teach themselves about new tech deployments.
The solution? Start with tools that deliver complete transparency on digital experience from the employee perspective and can proactively detect IT problems before they hamper employee productivity. Combined with self-help and auto-remediation, companies can significantly reduce both overall complexity and employee complaints.
Efficiency Issues
Mobile devices and cloud services have changed the way employees think about business technology. They now expect tools and systems to perform seamlessly and allow efficient collaboration with customers and partners alike. The problem? Many IT departments still view business end-users as outside the customer subset rather than as prime examples — as noted by Retail TouchPoints, keeping staff satisfied means treating their needs like those of consumers, while research firm Capgemini notes that employees using business technology are its largest stakeholders.
What does this mean for your business? Eliminating collaboration and efficiency deficits requires the creation of persona-based engagement strategies and experience monitoring that prioritizes end-user needs, continuous delivery optimization and operational support efficacy.
The Big No
Want to reduce employee frustration? Find ways to avoid saying “no” when staff request new services or applications. It’s a tough line to walk — as noted by Network World, one-in-five serverless apps now has a “critical security vulnerability”, while the Capgemini study warns that as connected workplaces expand, there’s a commensurate “loss of control over devices and applications.”
Embedded security forms the core of this frustration-buster. Companies need adaptive end-user monitoring solutions capable of tracking threats anywhere and anytime to help quickly identify and eliminate them. This frees IT staff to skip the “no” and say “yes” without compromising security.
Digital Distractions
Staff get distracted at work. According to CNBC, most employers estimate that staff waste at least two hours every day; Human Resources Director Magazine reports that 55 percent of employees are “frequently distracted” during the work day.
Here, the frustration goes both ways — staff may be fed up with constant emails and “urgent” instant messaging while C-suite executives worry about non-business Internet surfing and video streaming. Solving this problem means giving IT the tools necessary to anonymously monitor network behavior, in turn identifying patterns related to key time wasters and allowing managers to take specific action.
Digital transformation is inevitable — employee frustration with digital technology and IT are not. Improve end-users’ day-to-day experience and overall efficiency by addressing fragmented functions, reducing complexity, improving efficiency, saying “yes” (securely) more often and reducing digital distractions.
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Want to know more about addressing employee frustration? Join our webinar on Wed. June 13th, with Dennis Drogseth, Vice President of Research at EMA, Humanizing IT: Putting the User into “End-User Experience Management”.
The post Digital Disappointment: Your Employees’ Top Five IT Frustrations appeared first on Nexthink.