Welcome to WFA’21, the fall edition. This half-day conference is made up of several brilliant and insightful sessions, delivered by a line-up of digital workplace experts, all focused on building your Digital Employee Experience (DEX) plan for 2022.
For the first time, we’ll be blogging along LIVE, so you can read along in real time as we cover key moments and highlights from the Work From Anywhere Conference.
You can also follow along on Twitter and LinkedIn with our official hashtag #WFAconf – be sure to keep an eye out for our series of brief Twitter parties, where you’ll be able to engage with industry pros, Microsoft MVPs, and like-minded peers about key conference topics!
9:00 EDT – Kick off
Why WFA? – VP Product Marketing and WFA MC, Amy Collins kicks things off by talking why WFA. Well, we think working from anywhere and the move to remote and hybrid work are some of the most substantial changes to the world of work that will ever take place.
Andrew Hewitt, Sr Analyst at Forrester kicks off the conference in true Work From Anywhere style from his home office in Boulder, Colorado. He joins us, having worked very closely with us here at 1E on world’s first Digital Employee Experience (DEX) maturity model, to unveil what host Amy Collins describes as “game changing research about the current state of the industry around DEX”
Andrew’s session focuses on maturing DEX for hybrid working. He starts with the question “how has hybrid and remote working changed priorities around providing a good digital employee experience?” – significant considering the research shows that 40% of companies will operate in a hybrid model by 2023!
As Andrew talks through the research, results made one thing very clear: The most DEX mature organizations see a range of business benefits extending beyond just employee experience: sure, they see better employee retention and satisfaction, but also see improvements in IT operations (innovation capabilities, ticket volume, collaboration) and security too.
So how do you improve your organization’s DEX?
To learn more, check out Forrester’s research here or fill out the assessment to find out how your organization’s DEX maturity ranks.
“A DEX program success is driven by the ability to actively manage the employee experiences across their lifecycle in the enterprise” – Rob Peterscheck, VP Head of Product, 1E
Our Product all-stars take to the virtual stage next to showcase the product roadmap and what’s next for DEX management. Rob Peterscheck, VP Head of Product and Bogdan Udrea, Chief Technologist Product explore:
- How Tachyon 8 can help bring you from low to high DEX maturity levels
- New features that will help you better embrace hybrid working
- Analytics powered Digital Experience Management (DEM)
- The modern IT focus: Employee Empowerment, Employee Engagement, Actionable Insights and Prevention, and Accelerated Experience Improvement
If you want to see the scenarios Bogdan talked us through today, keep your eyes peeled for recording of this session that will be available on our replay site in the upcoming days!
This session focuses on the service desk, or – more specifically – ITSM automation (an extension of what Andrew mentioned in his keynote about automation imperatives for improving DEX).
In this Q&A style fireside chat, DXC Technology’s Global Service Desk Manager, Janine, is sharing valuable insights based on her experience turning manual service desk resolutions into automated resolutions with 1E Partner Value Director, Steve Melnyk:
Steve: What are some service desk KPIs that drive the wrong behavior?
Janine: In my experience, most of the desks I’ve worked with have been stuck measuring speed to answer as a main KPI – the assumption being the faster we answer the phone the happier the customer will be. The reality for the service desk of today is that most customers are ok with waiting a few extra seconds if it means they get first call resolution. Customers are really looking for that overall experience where their issue is resolved or there are self-service options; how fast we can resolve the issue rather than how fast we answer the phone. Hyper-focus on the phone is driving the wrong agent behavior…
If you want more than the above taste of what Janine and Steve discuss, be sure to watch the full session for deeper insights. It will be available on our replay site in the upcoming days!
On to another exciting session now! Steve Brasen, Managing Research Director, EMA is looking at new research the dives into DEX, enhancing digital experiences, and the challenges or successes organizations are facing with remediating digital experiences issues.
The research provides all sorts of unique and interesting insights. For example, just look at the numbers of really simple tasks that impact employee productivity each week! In fact, Steve told us that employees are disrupted by experience-related issues on average 18 times per week! Imagine what that is doing to employee productivity and engagement!
Steve's session has got us all thinking about what priorities need to me in the modern hybrid workplace. What do you think?
Have you heard of ‘Problem Hunting Methodology’ before? It’s an exciting concept that has only grown in relevance and importance in the last few months or so! And it’s also exactly why Cameron Fuller, Solutions Director at Catapult Systems is with us today…
Cameron summarises what problem hunting methodology actually means for your organization and the benefit of going beyond analytics to fix the issues your employees care about. If improving your DEX maturity is a priority, this might just be the methodology for you! Implement a process that is repeatable to no end so when it's fixed once, it's fixed for all. But it always starts with the right data in order to investigate once and fix for all. Watch this space for Cameron's whitepaper that delves deep into how to implement this methodology!
11:15 EDT – From the backroom to the boardroom
Implementing DEX and Insights-Driven Experience Automation (IDEA)
Up next is an exclusive session from Gartner. Hopefully you’re all feeling refreshed after the break because Dan Wilson is about to take to the virtual stage to discuss Gartner’s vision for the emerging new category of DEX.
According to Gartner, what is DEX?
Digital Employee Experience (DEX): A strategy that focuses on employees and their experience/use of technology, supported by a set of tools that offers key feature sets to provide insights that drive action – both in the form of a script or technology automation and human action or behavioral change.
Why does it matter?
Who should be responsible for it?
Dan poses an interesting question here and suggests that since DEX has become a board-level concern the pressure is on the Digital Workplace team to deliver. What do you think?
Steve Brasen is back for a second session! If you caught his first one, you’ll know EMA conducted some fantastic research, the results of which we’ve already dug into. Well, in this session Steve goes a step further. He utilised insights from the research to compare market vendors when it comes to remediation.
Of course, no DEX solution can meet all your DEX needs, which is why you need a custom scripts tool! This empowers organizations to tailor their automation strategies based on their own environments. According to Steve, this should be a primary factor in your evaluation. The ability to create custom scripts will enable your automation strategy to mature over time.
Wanna delve a little deeper into EMA's comparison? There's going to be a Buyer's Guide for DEX available in the upcoming weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for updates!
Now to get to know our newly appointed CEO, Mark Banfield as he sits down for a cosy fireside chat with Kenny Kirkwood, Workspace Technology Manager at Baillie Gifford. This session is exploring a real-life example of implementing DEX to support hybrid working by a customer.
Mark: What advice would you give to organizations looking to adopt hybrid working long term?
Kenneth: In terms of technology, you need a tech tool that can analyze your clients wherever they are. You need to be able to look at Wi-Fi signal, performances applications, etc. Wherever you are in your journey, remember everything ends and starts with customer experience.
For more advice, knowledge, and insights – based on real-world experience – be sure to watch the full session with Kenneth on our replay site.
We’re heading into a panel session now that features an all-star group of panellists: David Jaffe, Global End User Device Operations Manager, Amgen; Mike McDaniel, President, Modern Workplace, DXC Technology; John Dubois, VP Digital Services, NTT Data; Erik Jost, Chief Strategy Officer, 1E.
Why do we need a DEX Center of Excellence? According to Mike McDaniel, employee experience is at the heart of everything you do. It starts with how people are experiencing tech today and how those interactions are happening. That CoE is all about building knowledge about your personas, their technology needs, and how to improve their experience. Understanding your dataset it key to success, as is building our your action set and measuring their impact.
The session is rounding off with a quick-fire question round. David Jaffe left us with a final thought – how can we take things further as we keep moving forward? Keen to hear what the panel has to say? You know the drill… keep your eyes peeled for those on-demand replay sessions!
Last but certainly not least is the ever-popular and always in-demand Tachyon Masterclass, hosted by our Tachyon Master, Jason Keogh.
