Struggling with disengaged teams? Employee experience technology can transform your digital workplace.

Digital workplace experience plays a significant role in shaping the overall employee experience in organizations. It affects how people communicate, collaborate, and get work done every day. When systems are slow, disconnected, or hard to use, frustration builds quickly. That’s why investing in the right employee experience technology is no longer optional—it directly influences engagement, productivity, and retention.

Research shows that technology is crucial to keeping employees happy. 92% of workers claim that access to the right technology that helps them be better and more efficient in their role has an impact on their satisfaction. This highlights a clear expectation: employees want tools that are intuitive, reliable, and actually make their work easier—not more complicated.

Furthermore,

“While data and digital technologies were once enablers of efficiency and cost-cutting, today they’re the engines of innovation and revenue growth,”

says Linda A. Hill, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

On the other hand, research by Deloitte showed that only 38% of employees thought that they were satisfied or very satisfied with work-related tools and technology. This gap between expectations and reality shows that many organizations still struggle to deliver a seamless digital experience. Without the right employee experience technology in place, even the best strategies can fall short.

While the goal of digital workplace solutions should always be to improve employee productivity, engagement, motivation, morale, and well-being, that’s not always the case. In reality, many tools promise efficiency but end up adding complexity, especially when employees have to switch between multiple platforms to complete simple tasks.

In fact, technology can also be a big productivity blocker if not implemented and integrated properly. Poor user experience, lack of training, and disconnected systems can slow employees down and create frustration. Instead of enabling better work, the wrong setup can lead to duplicated efforts, missed information, and reduced focus.

It’s important that organizations put effort into understanding how to choose the most appropriate workplace technology, how to adapt it to their business needs and employees’ expectations, and how to get the most value out of each solution. This includes selecting the right employee experience technology that integrates well with existing systems and supports how people actually work day to day.

Organizations should also regularly gather employee feedback and track how tools are being used. This helps identify what’s working, what’s not, and where improvements are needed. Continuous optimisation ensures that technology evolves alongside employee needs, rather than becoming outdated or underused.

Only then digital workplace experience can be improved!

Let’s now dig deeper into specific ways to improve the digital employee experience.

1. Understand Your Employees’ Current Digital Experience

Before you even start investigating ways to improve the digital workplace experience, make sure that you understand the current state of it. Without a clear baseline, it’s easy to invest in the wrong tools or fix the wrong problems.

The best way to do so is by asking your employees directly. They are the ones using your systems every day, so their feedback is essential. If you are already using an employee survey solution, put together a few simple but well-thought questions that can help you identify your organization’s technology gaps and limitations. Focus on ease of use, accessibility, and how well your tools support daily tasks.

Here are a few examples of employee survey questions:

• Overall, how satisfied are you with our organization’s tech stack?
• Do you feel like you have access to the right technology to perform well on your job?
• Which of our organization’s tools do you find most valuable? Why?
• Which of our organization’s tools do you find least valuable? Why?
• Do you feel like our tech stack is well-integrated?

You can also combine surveys with interviews, focus groups, or usage data to get a more complete picture. This helps you validate feedback and uncover issues employees may not explicitly mention.

Answers from these surveys should equip you with valuable insights and actionable recommendations for improvement. They also help you prioritise the right employee experience technology investments, ensuring your efforts are aligned with real employee needs rather than assumptions.

2. Implement the Right Workplace Technology

As nicely put in an article by Harvard Business Review:

“… the technology experiences that employers provide will more or less define the employee experience — technology and workplace tools are, for all intents and purposes, the new workplace. As such, they’re becoming central in attracting and retaining new talent, fostering workplace culture, creating productivity, and more.”

This shift means organizations can no longer afford to treat tools as simple add-ons. The right employee experience technology should support how people actually work—across teams, locations, and devices—while removing friction instead of adding to it.

At the same time, according to research, 80–93% of employees don’t think that increased technology has improved business performance. This suggests that simply adding more tools isn’t the answer—quality, usability, and integration matter far more than quantity.

Furthermore, in Qualtrics research only 30% of employees said their experience with their company’s technology exceeds their expectations. This gap highlights a major opportunity for organizations to rethink their approach and invest in tools that truly deliver value.

To get this right, businesses should focus on choosing solutions that are intuitive, well-integrated, and aligned with employee needs. Prioritising employee experience technology that simplifies workflows, reduces tool overload, and enables seamless collaboration can have a direct impact on engagement and performance.

In other words, it’s not about having more technology—it’s about having the right technology that people actually want to use.

So workplace technology should be chosen wisely and with employees in mind. In the sea of hundreds of solutions out there, it can be hard to find, evaluate, and implement the right ones. Many organizations fall into the trap of adopting too many tools without a clear strategy, which often leads to confusion, low adoption, and wasted investment.

To avoid this, companies need to focus on employee experience technology that solves real problems and fits naturally into existing workflows. This means prioritising ease of use, strong integrations, and clear value for employees—not just new features or trends.

According to research by Harvard Business Review, technologies that organizations invest the most in are:

• Data management tools (52%)
• Communication/collaboration/learning tools (48%)
• Cloud-based platforms/tools (42%)
• Project and team management tools (41%)
• Remote work tools (41%)
• Task-automation tools (39%)

These categories reflect where organizations see the most value, but they also highlight a common challenge: many of these tools overlap or operate in silos. Without the right strategy, this can create a fragmented digital workplace instead of a seamless one.

That’s why it’s essential to regularly review your tech stack, eliminate redundancies, and ensure every tool has a clear purpose. The goal is to build a connected ecosystem of employee experience technology that supports productivity, collaboration, and a better overall experience.

💡 Take a look at our comprehensive guide about how technology can improve the digital workplace experience and how to choose the best solutions for your company!

3. Make Digital Experience Personalized

According to Gallagher, dissatisfaction with internal technology and channels is one of the biggest problems for larger organizations with more than 500 employees, resulting in poor digital employee experience. Yet, 36% of organizations still don’t have a clear strategy around how to improve it.

One of the most important ways to improve the digital workplace experience is personalization. Yet, most of the content, tools, and information that employees interact with daily is still generic, irrelevant, and easy to ignore. This disconnect makes it harder for employees to stay informed, engaged, and productive.

In a study of more than 300 communications and HR professionals––71% said employees don’t read or engage with company emails or content, and one of the major reasons is lack of personalization and relevancy. When messages don’t feel tailored or useful, employees are far more likely to tune them out.

This is where the right employee experience technology makes a difference. Modern solutions allow organizations to tailor content, notifications, and tools to individual needs, helping employees quickly find what matters to them without unnecessary noise.

Luckily, some workplace solutions are built to allow for high levels of personalization, enabling organizations to provide a better workplace experience. These tools help reduce information overload while increasing engagement and clarity.

For example, Haiilo’s intranet enables HR and Internal Communications professionals to create and distribute hyper-personalized and engaging content to every employee. Robust internal audience segmentation makes it easy to deliver content based on employees’ preferences, departments, job functions, locations, and many other criteria. This ensures that every employee sees content that is relevant, timely, and actionable.

4. Enable Employees to Stay Connected

Today, employees want to be connected to their peers even when they are physically dispersed. They want to have a sense of belongingness and feel like they are a part of a community. This is especially important in hybrid and remote work environments, where casual interactions and in-person touchpoints are limited.

Without strong connections, employees can quickly feel isolated, disengaged, and disconnected from company culture. Over time, this can impact collaboration, knowledge sharing, and overall performance.

According to APA’s 2023 Work in America workforce survey, 94% of respondents reported that it’s somewhat or very important to them that their workplace be somewhere they feel they belong.

This highlights the need for organizations to actively create opportunities for connection. The right employee experience technology can help bridge the gap by enabling real-time communication, social interaction, and knowledge sharing across teams and locations.

Tools like social intranets, employee apps, and collaboration platforms make it easier for employees to stay informed, participate in conversations, and build relationships. Features such as communities, comments, and peer recognition can strengthen engagement and reinforce a sense of belonging.

By prioritising connection, organizations can create a more inclusive and engaging digital workplace experience—no matter where employees are based.

Enabling employees to stay connected and easily collaborate with each other plays a critical role in creating a sense of belonging, and the right technology can help! When communication flows naturally, employees feel more included, informed, and aligned with their teams and the wider organization.

Many of today’s workplace tech is designed to enable team communication and drive collaboration. Take project management tools, document management solutions, enterprise social media platforms, or CRM solutions. You will soon realize that most of them come with various collaboration features and functionalities such as real-time messaging, file sharing, commenting, and task tracking. These features help reduce silos and make it easier for teams to work together efficiently.

However, simply having these tools in place isn’t enough. Organizations need to ensure they are well-integrated and easy to use. The right employee experience technology should connect systems, streamline communication, and minimise the need to switch between platforms.

Because people are used to using technology to connect with people in their private lives, they expect the same experience in the workplace. Simple, intuitive, and social-like interactions are no longer a “nice to have”—they are expected. When workplace tools meet these expectations, collaboration becomes more natural and engagement increases.

5. Pay Attention to Your Mobile Workforce

Oftentimes, frontline and mobile workers don’t have the same level of access to all the workplace tools, and accessibility plays a critical role in shaping a better digital workplace. In many cases, these employees are left out of key communications, updates, and resources simply because the tools aren’t designed with them in mind.

According to research, 20-25% of the global workforce telecommutes on a regular basis and 50% of the workforce is made up of front-line workers such as grocery store clerks, nurses, cleaners, warehouse workers, and bus drivers, among others. This makes it clear that a large portion of employees rely on mobile-friendly solutions to stay connected and productive.

Consequently, around 53% of employees say mobile apps improve business processes and productivity. When employees can access tools and information on the go, they can make faster decisions and stay aligned with their teams.

This is where employee experience technology plays a key role. Mobile-first platforms, employee apps, and responsive intranets ensure that all employees—regardless of location or role—have equal access to communication, knowledge, and workflows.

Organizations should prioritise simple, accessible, and secure mobile experiences. Features like push notifications, offline access, and easy navigation can make a big difference in adoption and usability.

By focusing on the needs of mobile and frontline workers, companies can create a more inclusive digital workplace experience that supports every employee—not just those at a desk.

So when you are looking for digital solutions for your workplace, make sure that they offer native employee apps and are optimized for those who work on the go. 

💡 Related: What is an Employee Engagement App and Why Your Company Needs One

6. Integrate Your Organization’s Tech Stack

According to research, 70% of workers report having to enter the same data in multiple systems to get their job done, and the main culprit for that is a lack of proper integrations between the solutions. This kind of duplication wastes time, increases the risk of errors, and creates unnecessary frustration for employees.

In another survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 326 executives were asked to choose the most important changes their organizations needed to make to succeed at digital acceleration. 49% picked integrating technologies into a more seamless system. This shows that integration is not just an IT priority—it’s a business-critical need.

As nicely put by Deloitte,

“By integrating the technologies that employees use, the digital workplace breaks down communication barriers, positioning you to transform the employee experience by fostering efficiency, innovation and growth. The key to success, however, lies in the effective implementation of a digital workplace strategy capable of driving true cultural change.”

When systems are connected, employees can move seamlessly between tasks without losing context or switching tools constantly. This leads to faster workflows and better collaboration.

Also, U.S. employees change through an average of 13 apps 30 times per day, according to Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index 2021 report. And 26% of surveyed employees say app overload makes them less efficient at work. This constant switching not only slows people down but also impacts focus and productivity.

So when choosing technology for your organization, make sure that it integrates with other core systems your employees use daily. You can either look for native integrations or open APIs to easily build your own.

The goal is to create a connected ecosystem of employee experience technology where information flows smoothly, tools work together, and employees can focus on meaningful work instead of managing disconnected systems.

7. Test with AI

AI-powered workplace technology can significantly improve the overall employee experience and boost employee productivity. When used effectively, AI helps reduce manual work, surface relevant information faster, and support better decision-making across the organization.

Let’s take internal communications as an example. Many teams still rely on guesswork when creating and distributing content, which often leads to low engagement and missed messages.

Advanced internal communications platforms leverage AI to analyze user activity, understand employee interests, and predict future engagement. Based on data, communicators can identify specific employee profiles, create segments (based on locations, job functions, departments, and many others), and get recommendations around what type of content employees are likely to engage the most with.

This is where employee experience technology becomes more powerful. AI can automate content targeting, suggest optimal send times, and even help create more engaging messages. It removes much of the trial and error, allowing teams to focus on strategy instead of manual processes.

As a result, every employee gets served content that relates to them, exactly like they do on their favorite social media platform. This makes communication more relevant, timely, and effective—ultimately improving engagement and the overall digital workplace experience.

Furthermore, AI can significantly improve employees’ experience related to information search – one of today’s biggest productivity killers in every organization. Employees often spend too much time digging through emails, documents, and disconnected systems just to find simple answers. Using AI, Haiilo generates responses instead of links to resources and documents, enabling everyone to find concrete answers straight from the company’s content and knowledge repositories. This not only saves time but also reduces frustration and helps employees stay focused on meaningful work. In addition, AI-powered employee experience technology can continuously learn from user behavior and improve the relevance of results over time. This means employees get faster, more accurate answers the more they use the system. Last but not least, Haiilo allows internal communicators to create content 10 times faster, allowing them to put more time and effort into real people’s problems and things robots can’t do! Instead of spending hours drafting and editing, teams can focus on strategy, creativity, and building stronger connections with employees.

FAQs about employee experience technology

1. What is employee experience technology?
Employee experience technology includes the tools and platforms employees use to communicate, collaborate, access information, and get work done. This can range from intranets and communication apps to HR systems and AI-powered tools. The goal is simple: make work easier, more efficient, and more engaging for employees.

2. Why is employee experience technology important?
The right employee experience technology directly impacts productivity, engagement, and retention. When employees have easy access to the tools and information they need, they can focus on meaningful work instead of dealing with friction or inefficiencies. Poor technology, on the other hand, leads to frustration, wasted time, and disengagement.

3. How can companies improve their employee experience technology?
Start by understanding what employees actually need. Gather feedback, review your current tools, and identify gaps or overlaps. Then focus on solutions that are easy to use, well-integrated, and mobile-friendly. The best employee experience technology supports daily workflows and reduces complexity rather than adding to it.

4. What role does AI play in employee experience technology?
AI is becoming a key part of modern employee experience technology. It helps personalise content, improve search, automate repetitive tasks, and provide smarter insights. For example, AI can recommend relevant information, streamline internal communication, and help employees find answers faster—saving time and improving the overall digital workplace experience.