These days, virtually all businesses use digital technology to  help their employees communicate, collaborate, and access important data. Such technology is designed to help employees work more smoothly and efficiently, but of course, that’s not always how these things work out. In some cases, technology may be frustrating or unintuitive, actually causing employees to lose productivity or to experience less job satisfaction.

To put it differently: The quality of your IT ecosystem can have a direct impact on the employee experience. And given that surveys show record-low levels of employee engagement, this is an area where leaders cannot afford any blunders.

Employee Engagement Explained

But let’s back up for a minute: When we talk about employee engagement, exactly what are we talking about?

To define the term most succinctly, employee engagement is a measure of how emotionally involved employees are in their work. Highly engaged employees feel like the work they do matters, that their employer cares about them, and that they have the resources they need to succeed. And when employees are highly engaged, it means not just a higher quality of work, but lower turnover rates, too.

In short, employee engagement is an important metric for assessing the health of your team at any given moment. So how does technology factor into all of this?

IT and Employee Engagement

When rightly leveraged, technology can enhance employee engagement. It demonstrates to employees that, as the employer, you care about them having the tools they need to work as efficiently as can be.

There are a number of ways in which technology can create a more frictionless employee experience, and ultimately boost employee engagement levels. For example:

  • Collaboration. From project management tools to online chat, collaboration tools can help your employees to facilitate productive partnerships with other team members, including those from different disciplines or departments.
  • Peer-to-peer recognition. P2P recognition systems can allow employees to honor and recognize one another for daily achievements, a great way to boost morale (especially among younger generations of employees).
  • Gamification. Not all employees like gamification, but in some instances, gamifying daily work can be a great way to encourage your team members to monitor and maximize their efforts.
  • Learning and development. Technology can also be a powerful tool for helping employees learn and develop new skills. Professional development and continuous education are core principles for boosting employee engagement.

For Boosting Engagement, Tech is a Must

The bottom line: Technology can make your employee engagement efforts… but they can also break them, especially if you deploy technology in a way that is overly complicated or frustrating.

That’s what makes it so important to work with a proven IT vendor to roll out new, engagement-boosting features. At BlueArmor, we’d love to help with this. Reach out to us whenever you’re ready to discuss the use of technology to boost employee engagement.