How Innovating IT Practices Leads to Happier Employees

Everyone wants to work in an environment where they feel good about their jobs. And every CEO wants the organization’s employees to recommend the firm to others as a great company to work for and do business with. Now, findings from Forrester Research quantify the pivotal role that IT plays in supporting these outcomes.

According to Forrester, in companies where employees are advocates ” for their business as a place to work and as a place to do business,” 65% say they are satisfied with the service they receive from their IT departments. In contrast, just one-quarter of unhappy, non-advocate employees are satisfied with their IT groups.

Furthermore, significant majorities of advocate employees:

• Report they are satisfied that their IT departments understand their technology needs and what they need to be successful in their jobs.

• Say they “have access to technology and tools to solve their problems and challenges.”

• Feel encouraged to solve customer and business problems.

• Are active users of collaboration and communication tools.

Clearly, as even Forrester points out, there are many other factors that affect employees’ overall work satisfaction and advocacy (corporate culture, policies, work environment,  compensation), but the correlation with IT support is nonetheless significant.

So how can IT managers help create a positive environment of employee advocacy? Here are three key tactics:

• Help business managers use technology to automate common processes and solve business problems. Ideally, IT should provide departmental / business function managers with easy to use tools to create their own automated task workflows, with minimal IT assistance.
• Give employees a single web (and mobile) portal to request any type of service. Ultimately, employees don’t care whether a specific request gets fulfilled by IT,  or HR, or facilities, or through coordination between different departments, and they don’t want to have to request different services from different systems and user interfaces.
• Deliver services the way that users want them. Contrast the typical IT help desk queue approach with the user-friendly experience of Apple Genius Bars, particularly for remote users and road warriors. Enabling users to schedule an appointment online rather than wait in a queue, particularly for complex-but-not-urgent service requests, reduces stress for IT professionals and business users alike.

Trends like bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and an increasingly mobile workforce are creating new challenges for IT departments. But given their importance in employee satisfaction and advocacy, it’s crucial for technology groups to embrace new approaches that both enhance productivity and delight business users.

For more information, check our white papers Say Goodbye to the IT Service Management Queue and Business Process Automation Anywhere and Everywhere.