For many organizations, the average workday is digital. We meet on video conferences, delegate tasks in a project management tool, communicate in Slack or Teams, collaborate inside coauthored documents, and maybe even send an email or two if we’re feeling nostalgic.
All told, employees often experience their assignments, interpersonal relationships, and the organization at large through the technology made available to them. And sometimes that technology can warp the experience in completely unintentional ways.
To help make sure your IT isn’t quietly eroding employee engagement, let’s examine three scenarios where organizations commonly misstep.
1 – New Employee Onboarding
The state of your IT can either validate a new hire’s decision, or plant seeds of doubt in their mind. Consider the following:
- What a malfunctioning laptop says about your forethought and operational maturity.
- What disparities in company-provided equipment imply about status and hierarchy.
- How guidelines regarding “active” online presence reflect on management principles.
- What your data access controls suggest about security, autonomy, and transparency.
Do these first impressions align with your true culture and values?
2 – Hybrid Team Meetings
Meetings that bring together on-site and remote employees can easily alienate a certain group or individual. Assess whether participants are equivalently empowered to:
- Take in all contributions: spoken words, chat messages, visual aids, etc.
- Interject with their own input
- Interpret facial cues and body language
- Engage in related follow-up discussions
Would changes to your technology help even the playing field?
3 – Persistent, Nagging Issues
An employee left to endure the same “small” technical problem time and time again may begin to question their value. Issues can persist for a number of reasons, including:
- Unresponsive or ineffective helpdesk
- A functional gap in your systems
- Lack of proper training on your systems
- Failing or underpowered hardware
What would it take to solve the core problem, and what would happen if nothing changes?
Have Room for Improvement?
Did you identify areas where your technology could better support engagement and retention?
We’d love to see how we can help, whether it’s through:
- Proactive planning for new hires
- New hardware standards across employees
- A conference room overhaul
- Modernized systems that give hybrid teams equivalent work experiences
- An increased user support presence
- Another initiative tailored to your needs
Don’t hesitate to reach out!