Stop workplace UX problems from posing a retention risk
There’s added pressure on organizations to make sure the user experience (UX) delivered in the workplace in the workplace is helping, rather than hindering, their people. Failure to do so can lead to top talent feeling frustrated and disengaged.
It’s one of the many contributing factors to retention risks faced by employers nationwide. According to a report from Adobe, 49% of U.S. workers have considered moving on from their current job due to frustration with the technology they use at work.
Using real-world examples from organizations across two very different verticals, the following strategies can be used to help address technology UX issues before they hurt long-term talent engagement and retention.
Simplify how people engage with workplace technology to reduce frustration
Several user experience gaps across multiple teams were tackled by Rice University as the institution overhauled its real estate business processes and technology strategy:
• The project management team felt the use of spreadsheets to manage the capital budgets process was unwieldy and tedious.
• The building operations team was stymied by unreliable methods for managing campus space, assets, and infrastructure.
• Tenants across the university expressed dissatisfaction with the process of creating digital service tickets.
Rather than allow these real estate technology gaps to culminate in growing frustration among employees and potential retention risks, Rice University partnered with JLL Technologies (JLLT) to create a holistic solution.
The end result, a more complete, reliable IWMS implementation supported by targeted modules and integrations, provided the institution with a newly unified information hub and a one-stop solution for digital service requests.
The major takeaway is that each opportunity to eliminate a paper-driven tasks or an inefficient process also represents an opportunity to recalibrate the workplace around how people do their work in the present, rather than trying to modify solutions that made sense in the past. As a result of that realignment, user experience improves for employees as does their satisfaction with their jobs.
UX must evolve as new stakeholders get involved
One reason frustrations around UX are common is because best practices can become obsolete as soon as new stakeholders get involved. Processes that seem intuitive to one team may be seen as intimidating and overwhelming by another. If employees are stuck engaging with technology they don’t understand, their overall experience in the workplace begins to suffer.
One of the nation’s leading fast casual chains dealt with this problem after digitizing its process of collecting and retrieving lease contract data. The original solution was ideal for its initial audience with the goal of pulling individual contracts. When new stakeholders looked to use data points from each contract to generate insights, they found the process in place to be a major hurdle.
Rather than ask employees to endure the tedium of parsing through individual reports, the fast casual chain partnered with JLLT to develop a navigator app powered by the chain’s existing IWMS implementation. The new, device-friendly solution eliminated the hassle of navigating the old lease contract data hub and allowed users to gather specific lease data insights in seconds on their mobile device.
This example illustrates how improving user experience does more for talent retention than simply curb angst around technology. Policies that embrace intuitive, accessible UX across the workplace also help make employees aware of all the resources they have available to do their best work. The more employees feel directly supported and feel they are learning, the less likely they are to become retention risks.
Build on the technology already underpinning your real estate
Much can be done with solutions like workplace experience platforms to guarantee that employees across an organization enjoy satisfying user experiences. As work processes and technology needs become more specialized, however, more robust solutions like IWMS are needed to manage them.
Don’t let confusing software tools become the source of your company’s next talent engagement crisis. Connect with our IWMS experts to improve the relationship between your people and the technology they use every day.
