Employee Experience (EX)

Employee Experience (EX) from a UX View

In today’s fast-changing work environment, attracting and keeping talent depends on how employees feel about their time with a company. This includes company culture, leadership, benefits, and the physical workspace. Importantly, it also covers the digital tools and systems employees use daily. This area is known as Employee Experience (EX), which is the total of an employee’s views during their time with a company. While HR or Operations often manage EX, it closely related to UX. Internal software usability impacts employee productivity, satisfaction, and retention. For UX professionals, using research and design principles for internal systems is crucial to enhancing EX. This article will explain Employee Experience. It will highlight where UX is important. Then, it will show how UX research and testing can improve EX. Next, it will discuss why EX matters for business success. Finally, it will outline the benefits and challenges involved.

What is Employee Experience (EX)? The Total Workplace Journey

Employee Experience (EX) is how an employee views their time with a company. This starts when they think about applying for a job and continues through their entire stay, even after they leave. It’s the cumulative effect of all their interactions and touchpoints with the company.

Key aspects contributing to EX include:

• The Physical Environment: Workspace, office layout, amenities.
• The Cultural Environment: Values, leadership style, peer relationships, sense of belonging.
• The Technological Environment: The digital tools, software, systems, and infrastructure employees use to do their work and interact with the company.

Positive employee experience (EX) boosts engagement, productivity, and morale. It also lowers burnout and improves employee retention. Conversely, poor EX leads to frustration, inefficiency, decreased morale, and higher turnover.

The link between UX and the Technological Environment is crucial. User Experience looks at how employees interact with digital products. This includes internal dashboards, project management systems, HR portals, communication platforms, and CRM tools. When these tools are hard to use or frustrating, they make it tough for employees to do their jobs. This can harm their overall Employee Experience (EX). Even in a strong culture, dealing with bad software can weaken the employee experience.

Thus, while EX is broader than UX, high-quality UX for the digital workplace is a fundamental driver of a positive Employee Experience, especially in today’s increasingly digital-first organizations.

Designing the Digital Workplace: Key EX Areas and UX Contribution

Key Areas of Employee Experience Influenced by UX and Relevant Research

Numerous aspects of the Employee Journey involve interaction with digital tools, making them ripe for UX research and design intervention.

1. Employee Onboarding: The initial experience with company systems, setting up accounts, learning internal tools, accessing information. UX ensures this digital onboarding is smooth and efficient.
2. Core Daily Workflows: Using industry-specific software, project management tools, data entry systems, analysis platforms, etc. UX design of these tools directly impacts productivity and efficiency.
3. Collaboration and Communication: Using email, chat platforms, video conferencing tools, document sharing systems. UX design influences ease of communication and teamwork.
4. Accessing Information and Knowledge: Finding company policies, internal documentation, training materials, or accessing data via intranets or knowledge bases. UX design of these information systems impacts discoverability.
5. Internal Support Systems: Interacting with IT help desks, HR portals, submitting tickets, managing benefits. UX influences the ease of getting help or information.
6. Learning and Development: Using internal learning platforms or accessing training resources. UX design affects the learning experience.

UX Research for Internal Tools and EX:

Applying standard UX research methodologies to internal systems is crucial for identifying pain points and improving EX:

• Usability Testing with Employees: Observing employees use internal software to perform their actual job tasks. This shows workflow bottlenecks, confusion, inefficiencies, and errors from bad design. Userlytics and similar platforms are great for remote usability tests with employees. They can capture screen interactions, workflows, and verbal feedback while users navigate internal systems.
• Employee Interviews: Talking to employees about their daily workflows, the challenges they face with current tools, what works well, what doesn’t, and how tool usability impacts their productivity and morale.
• Surveys: Measuring employee satisfaction with specific internal tools or the overall digital workplace experience. Identifying common pain points across the employee base.
• Shadowing / Contextual Inquiry: Observing employees using tools in their actual work environment, understanding the context, interruptions, and workarounds they use.
• Analyzing Internal Data: Reviewing help desk tickets related to internal tools, analyzing tool usage data, or reviewing feedback channels for internal systems.

These research methods provide the data needed to understand employee needs with digital tools and identify opportunities for UX improvements that enhance EX.

Why EX Matters, Driven by UX

Focusing on Employee Experience, especially the UX of internal tools, is now seen as a key strategy for organisations. Its importance lies in its direct impact on key business outcomes:

1. Increases Employee Productivity and Efficiency: Usable, intuitive internal tools allow employees to complete their tasks faster, with fewer errors, and less frustration, directly boosting overall organizational productivity.
2. Improves Employee Morale and Satisfaction: A positive experience with the tools used daily reduces stress, makes work more enjoyable, and contributes significantly to overall job satisfaction and morale.
3. Boosts Employee Retention: Employees are more likely to stay with an organization that provides effective tools and a supportive work environment. Poor usability of critical systems is a common source of frustration that can contribute to employees seeking opportunities elsewhere.
4. Facilitates Collaboration and Communication: Well-designed internal communication and collaboration platforms improve how employees work together, share information, and solve problems.
5. Reduces Training and Support Costs: Intuitive tools require less time and resources for employee training and generate fewer support tickets for IT and help desk teams.
6. Attracts Talent: A reputation for providing a positive Employee Experience, including a modern and usable digital workplace, can help organizations attract top talent in a competitive job market.
7. Direct Driver of EX: High-quality UX for internal systems is a tangible and significant component of the Employee Experience in knowledge-based work environments.
8. Informs Broader EX Strategy: Insights gained from UX research into internal tools can reveal systemic issues impacting workflows, training needs, or even organizational culture.

Investing in the UX of internal tools is investing directly in the capabilities, productivity, and satisfaction of your workforce, which translates into improved business performance.

Designing the Workplace Tools: Pros and Cons

Using UX research and design for internal tools can improve employee experience (EX). However, it also presents unique challenges that differ from those in customer-facing products.

Pros of Focusing on UX for Internal Tools (Driving EX):

• Directly increases employee productivity and efficiency.
• Improves employee morale, job satisfaction, and reduces stress.
• Helps boost employee retention.
• Reduces training and support costs.
• Facilitates better internal collaboration.
• Enhances the company’s employer brand.
• Provides a clear, measurable impact on employee workflows.
• Employees are often readily available for research (though scheduling can still be tricky).

Cons of Poor UX for Internal Tools:

• Reduced employee productivity and workflow bottlenecks.
• Increased frustration, stress, and burnout among employees.
• Higher rates of employee turnover.
• Increased demand on IT and help desk support.
• Hindered internal collaboration and communication.
• Negative impact on company culture and morale.

Challenges in Designing UX for Internal Tools:

• Lower Prioritization/Funding: Internal tools may receive less attention and budget compared to customer-facing products.
• “Captive Audience” Mentality: Users (employees) may tolerate poor design longer because they have to use the tools, potentially masking the severity of issues until frustration is high.
• Diverse Employee Needs: Designing for varied roles, technical skills, and job functions across the organization.
• Technical/Security Constraints: Internal systems may have legacy code or strict security requirements that limit design flexibility.
• Getting Stakeholder Buy-in: May require advocating for the value of UX investment in internal tools to management focused on other priorities.
• Accessing Users in Workflow: Testing with employees requires fitting research into their busy work schedules.

Despite these challenges, the potential gains in employee productivity and experience make investing in internal tool UX a high-ROI activity for many organizations.

Conclusion on Employee Experience (EX) and UX

Employee Experience (EX) is the complete journey an employee has with a company. It greatly affects productivity, morale, and retention. EX is broad, but the usability of digital tools is key. These tools impact daily work and are shaped by User Experience (UX).

UX research and design are key to enhancing EX. They focus on how easy internal systems are to use. UX professionals use methods like usability testing with employees, often using platforms like Userlytics. They also conduct interviews about workflows and analyse feedback on internal tools. This helps them find friction points, inefficiencies, and frustrations.

Creating internal tools that are easy to use and efficient is key to helping employees excel. Focusing on the user experience (UX) in the digital workplace boosts productivity and morale. It also cuts support costs, leading to a better overall employee experience (EX). By viewing UX as crucial to EX, organisations can strategically invest in researching and designing user-friendly internal tools. This commitment supports the workforce and drives future success.