{"id":1833,"date":"2025-02-07T20:46:31","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T20:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/?p=1833"},"modified":"2025-02-07T20:46:31","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T20:46:31","slug":"worker-distraction-is-on-the-rise-digital-employee-experience-dex-platforms-can-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/?p=1833","title":{"rendered":"Worker distraction is on the rise. Digital employee experience (DEX) platforms can help"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With the dramatic increase in remote work in the last few years, many of us are actually working longer hours, ricocheting between communication platforms, learning new systems on the fly, and struggling to fix our own tech issues.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all adding up to a new kind of burnout<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also focusing renewed attention on the\u00a0digital employee experience (DEX)<\/a>\u00a0and the tools needed to monitor, manage, and improve it.<\/p>\n

According to McKinsey<\/a>, nearly 60 percent of employees work at home at least one day a week, and more than 30 percent are full-time remote. But what we save in commute times, we more than make up for with longer workdays.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it seems to be taking a toll:\u00a0Aflac\u2019s 2024 WorkForces Report<\/a>\u00a0found 59% of employees had feelings of moderate to severe burnout, with 23% facing high burnout. Gallup estimates that at least half of the U.S. workforce are \u201cquiet quitting\u201d\u2014giving less than their maximum effort at their jobs. The cost of lost productivity from disengaged employees is enormous;\u00a0per Gallup<\/a>, it saps some 8.9 trillion, from the global economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A mix of factors have traditionally contributed to\u00a0employee burnout<\/a>, says Dr. Jacinta Jim\u00e9nez, vice president of coaching innovation at BetterUp, a leadership coaching platform. She cites work overload, a lack of control, insufficient reward mechanisms, high levels of workplace conflict, inequities in workload or pay, and organizational values that fail to align with those of employees.<\/p>\n

But other key factors are higher levels of stress, frustration, and distraction. Tools designed to help remote workers be more productive by connecting them to their office colleagues often do the opposite, overwhelming them with notifications.<\/p>\n

Studies by Dr. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California at Irvine, found that employees switch tasks an average of 566 times each day and that it typically takes 25 minutes or longer for people to return to a task after being interrupted.<\/p>\n

What can organizations do about it? While there\u2019s no silver bullet, enterprises can for their employees by reducing unnecessary distractions, consolidating their collaboration tools, and changing expectations about what it means to be \u201cat work.\u201d<\/p>\n

To improve the digital employee experience, anticipate problems and automate solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n

A relatively new type of software,\u00a0a DEX solution<\/a>, can help relieve some of that stress, notes Karyn Price, industry principal in Information and Communications Technology for Frost & Sullivan.<\/p>\n

These platforms combine technical information (endpoint and application usage and reliability) with sentiment analysis (asking employees what they are thinking and feeling) to identify and address digital problems before they turn into long-term issues.<\/p>\n

DEX systems enable IT teams to monitor and manage employees\u2019 daily interactions with the digital tools in their workplace, thus delivering more effective support. By collecting and analyzing telemetry data from networks, devices, and apps, these systems can detect common problems, send notifications, or provide real-time automated fixes.<\/p>\n

If a particular condition is detected\u2014for example, slow performance caused by multiple instances of an application running in the background\u2014the employee gets an alert describing the problem with an offer to fix it, which they can accept to self-remediate the issue. Some DEX products can warn people proactively when their hard drives are nearly full, letting them delete unnecessary files by clicking a button or detecting when their anti-malware software has failed and automatically restoring it.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the IT team can learn how employees feel about these interventions via sentiment analysis features in the DEX software. Some tools ask workers questions in the midst of an activity; others\u00a0send employees post-remediation surveys<\/a>\u00a0to determine if actions taken by the employee, IT, or the help desk were effective. The collected data can then be used to improve employees\u2019 digital experience (it can offer training or additional fixes going forward) and inform the help desk of missed opportunities\u2014instances where they can do better with the technology and services they provide.<\/p>\n

Your digital employee experience should feature fewer interruptions, more communication<\/strong><\/p>\n

The overwhelming array of collaboration tools, accelerated by the increase in remote workers, has created additional and\u2014for employees\u2014a new source of stress.<\/p>\n

Consolidating the tools used for internal communications can help, says James Brogan, CEO of PepTalk, a platform that enables teams to work together better. \u201cThe abundance of productivity tools has, not surprisingly, led to less productivity,\u201d he notes. \u201cIt\u2019s a nightmare when you are trying to remember where you saw that document that was shared with you\u2014was it in Slack, a Zoom chat, email, or text?\u201d<\/p>\n

The real key to effective collaboration is communication, Brogan adds. Managers need to have ongoing conversations with their employees about their work experience, not just quarterly or yearly.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to measure how energized, distracted, or burnt-out people are feeling,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAsking people how they\u2019re doing four times a year is no longer enough. You need to ask on a more regular basis and to demonstrate that action is happening based on their honesty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corporate culture\u2019s role in the digital employee experience<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are other common-sense steps companies can undertake to reduce the burden on their people. Shortening meetings, setting up prompts that remind people to take breaks, and using time blocking to set aside times where no distractions are permitted can all help, says BetterUp\u2019s Jim\u00e9nez.<\/p>\n

Encouraging employee wellness, such as the adoption of meditation apps, can also boost both employee morale and productivity. That benefits the company as well as its personnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmployees with the best well-being are five times more likely to be rated a top performer, have 25 percent higher productivity, and 34 percent higher engagement,\u201d Jimenez adds.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the biggest change has to be cultural. Companies need to downshift their expectations about what it means to be \u2018at work\u2019 and embrace asynchronous communications, says Price. They can\u2019t expect people to be chained to their computers 12 hours a day or respond immediately to every message on Slack.<\/p>\n

\u201cBusinesses need to put more trust in their people,\u201d she says. \u201cIf employees are meeting their performance goals, creating an environment where they\u2019re allowed to \u2018unplug\u2019 will help alleviate the stress and distraction technology can cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn how to protect your business-critical endpoints and cloud workloads with the Tanium platform.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article was originally written by Dan Tynan and\u00a0originally appeared in\u00a0<\/em>Focal Point<\/em><\/a>\u00a0magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the dramatic increase in remote work in the last few years, many of us are actually working longer hours, ricocheting between communication platforms, learning new systems on the fly, and struggling to fix our own tech issues. It\u2019s all adding up to a new kind of burnout It\u2019s also focusing renewed attention on the\u00a0digital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}