What does IT success look like in your organisation? And what do you do when tech isn’t working in your business? If the answer is to bury your head in the sand, then chances are you could benefit from an action plan to increase technological utilisation. The challenge of on-boarding and maintaining new technology is a hurdle that managed IT service providers encounter consistently.
The key to breaking down poor adoption is to get to the root of why the company is using these tools and identifying the problems stopping employees applying them. Many organisations have a fundamental disconnect between management’s perspective of technology adoption and the attitudes of employees in the ground.
While 92% of C-suite execs say they’re satisfied with the technology experience their company provides for making progress on their most important work, only 68% of staff agree.
The saying “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” is as relevant to employee productivity as it is to a trusty steed. No matter how many tools you have at your disposal, you won’t start to reap the rewards if your employees don’t use them.
However, enterprises need to acknowledge that poor adoption of technology isn’t always the fault of employees. Sometimes new tech just isn’t up to scratch. As Geoffrey James Contributing Editor of Inc has said, “employees who say ‘no thanks’ to crap software do their company a favour because crap software always gets crap results.”
Regardless, knowing what to do when your technology, systems, and processes aren’t working for you is paramount for building a productive workforce experience. That’s why we’ve compiled an action plan to help motivate your employees and get technology working for you.
What to do When Technology Isn’t Working for You
If your technology isn’t delivering the results you expect, then your immediate goal should be to increase utilisation. Getting employees using the technology in front of them is critical for reaching techceptance (a state of synergy between employees and digital solutions). To boost adoption, we recommend the following process:
- Focus on small teams of no more than 20 and look for potential advocates. Advocates are people who want to improve their job and the customers’ experience of the company.
- Gather their feedback and review current pain points or inefficiencies. Identify a part of their job where existing technology within the company would allow them to complete their role quicker and more efficiently.
- Take a video of the employee explaining their frustrations and ask them what the ideal use of technology would look like. Follow up by creating metrics such as how long it takes to do that job or how often it needed redoing because of technical errors.
- Implement a new technological tool or teach them a better way to use the existing technology.
- Monitor employee feedback to assess the improvements made throughout the transition.
- Use this before and after comparison to help implement the change for other staff.
Following the steps above will help to increase the use of new processes or systems smoothly, and actively educate employees on how to make their job easier. Rather than deploying a new platform and hoping for the best, this approach actively nurtures the technical development of your team.
The core ideas behind the process are:
- Stay focused on the staff and understand their current workflow very well.
- Stay focused on improving one key part of their work with technology.
- Take records so that the experience can be amplified and motivate other parts of the business to look for more ways to improve their work processes.
Applying the Managed IT Service Provider Action Plan
Research has shown that 60 percent of all occupations comprise at least 30 percent of activities that are technically automatable, which can cause employees to have anxiety over adapting. Following the strategy above will help create a stable workforce experience even in the wake of digital disruption.
You can apply the action plan regardless of whether regulatory compliance has forced you to implement new technology or because management requires greater visibility into operations.
Even if you install new technology primarily for the benefit of employees, you can improve adoption by being proactive and finding ways to improve their lives. For example, you can give an employee a faster computer as part of the transition to boost enthusiasm going forward. The key is to be creative!
Of course, active dialogue with staff will also uncover when you shouldn’t deploy a certain technology or remove it from the workflow ASAP. If a piece of technology is going to make the life of your employees more difficult, then you can look at alternative products, or find different ways of using current platforms.
Tell Us Your Experience with IT Success (or Lack Thereof!)
If you have made it this far then the chances are that the technology in your workplace could be better. Do you think there is a disconnect in your business between management and employees on how beneficial the technology used in the company is? Is the right amount of effort being spent finding how to improve your team’s experience?
If you think your company could do with more human-tech synergy or you have a battle-tested adoption strategy, tell us about it, we’d love to know your thoughts.