Business decision makers, IT departments and employees are not on the same page on key elements in the work experience in the post COVID-19 era, according to a unified communications (UC) and customer experience (CX) market report commissioned by Verizon Business.
This lack of agreement can impact an organization’s ability to function efficiently. The inconsistency can be stark. For instance, 75% of business decision makers (BDMs) surveyed said that personal productivity had improved since before the pandemic, while only 38% of employees felt that way. Similarly, 71% of BDMs responded that employee well-being had improved while only 35% of employees shared that assessment.
The “Time to Change the Way We Work” report featured the survey, which was done for Verizon Business by Omdia, which found that IT decision-makers are “somewhere in the middle” between employees and BDMs.
Examples offered by Verizon Business on questions related to whether the organization provided adequate tools and flexibility to succeed:
- Contact center technology (87% of BDMs vs 67% of employees)
- Collaboration and communication technology (93% of BDMs vs 76% of employees)
- Business systems and technology (94% of BDMs vs 74% of employees)
- Flexibility to work wherever they are most productive (91% of BDMs vs 76% of employees)
“Leadership all too often falls into a trap of viewing the business through rose colored glasses, which can result in a disconnect between enterprise expectations and employee sentiment around the solutions and disciplines necessary to stay competitive and drive workplace transformation,” Massimo Peselli, Verizon Business’s CRO, Global Enterprise and Public Sector, said in a press release about the UC and CX market report. “The more closely aligned business leaders and employees are, the more successful they will be transitioning during this period of ‘great experimentation.’ “
The challenge is exacerbated by different visions of the organization’s relationship to technology. The study found that 36% of BDMs do not view technology as a strategic investment, while 49% of employees say that outdated business systems and technology are barriers to success. Contact centers are an area where that disconnect is most acutely felt.
More than 1,100 BDMs, IT decision-makers, and employees participated in the survey.
