Measuring employee experiences to optimize a hybrid work plan
Dell Technologies tapped its own Digital Employee Experience Services in partnership with Voxxify to analyze and design a hybrid work strategy in Slovakia.
Business Needs
Upon completion of a remodel of its office in Bratislava, Slovakia, Dell Technologies wanted to entice as many employees as possible to return under an innovative hybrid work plan. The office was looking for the best way to identify employee needs, address any facilities or technology issues and enhance employee satisfaction.
Business Results
In partnership with Voxxify, Dell Digital Employee Experience Services:
- Designed a strategy to improve hybrid work and collaboration.
- Formally measured employee experiences to create an innovative plan.
- Implemented recommendations to address various employee workstyles.
- Fills 60% or more of the office on multiple days of the week.
- Continues to analyze results to prioritize recommendations.
The Dell Technologies office in Bratislava, Slovakia recently underwent a remodel and renovation. Executives wanted to entice many of the 3,000 employees based in the country to return to the office as part of a flexible hybrid work plan.
After considering whether to use an internal team to develop a plan and reach out to employees, project leaders decided to leverage Dell Technologies Services.
“We had many discussions about our hybrid work model and how it should evolve,” says Marcel Körner, senior director of global services pricing at Dell Technologies. “Initially, we considered using an external partner to better understand the challenges. But Dell Technologies Digital Employee Experience Services offered everything needed to create an environment for our team members to thrive.”
Exploring new ways of working
The Dell Technologies Services team knows what it takes to create an exceptional employee experience, and they approached working with the Dell Technologies Bratislava office like they would with any customer. The goal was to analyze and understand the existing hybrid work experience, to enable the Bratislava office to identify which experiences needed to be improved — and why.
A cornerstone of the effort was comprehensive measurement of employee sentiment. More than 60% of employees responded, with over 2,100 individual comments. To lead the effort, the Services team leveraged a platform from Dell Technologies partner, Voxxify, which specializes in employee experience measurement technologies.
“Before founding Voxxify, I was with Dell Technologies where I led a quarterly survey called IT Pulse to understand the experience of internal team members,” says Steve Fleming, founder and CEO of Voxxify. “We wanted a clear idea of how employees in the Bratislava office work and collaborate with colleagues. It was great to partner with Dell Technologies again so we could help design the best solution.”
As part of the process, Voxxify and Dell Technologies Services grouped people into personas, based upon sophisticated models of their workstyles. Individuals within the various segments often work somewhat similarly and have comparable wants and needs in terms of facilities and technology.
“For example, for team members who like to be in the office it was important to be able to easily network and collaborate with people outside of their day-to-day functions,” Fleming explains. “Our workstyle groupings help surface any specific issues that might need to be addressed and allow us to be more precise in our recommendations.”
To-date, Dell Technologies’ return to the office in Slovakia has been quite successful. With enough space for only around 1,200 people at a given time, the office is 60% full or more on Tuesdays through Thursdays. Height-adjustable desks are equipped with monitors, with some desks set up for office hoteling.
“The Voxxify measurement effort was very valuable,” remarks Körner. “It contributed to the discussions we were already having. Our goal is to repeat it annually.”
Increasing employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is integral to Dell Technologies’ success around the globe. The Bratislava office wanted to ensure that as remote employees returned to the office, they would be happy.
Using the Dell Technologies Services team to create, execute and manage the measurement engagement with Voxxify’s platform proved to be extremely beneficial. The results enabled executives to create four workstreams to address recommendations.
The areas of focus included:
- The need to update the handbook for managers and employees to reflect hybrid work considerations
- More clearly defining the value of coming into the office
- Support for employees’ mental wellness
- Optimizing facilities and technology to enhance the work environment
The algorithms and AI built into the Voxxify platform accelerated analysis of employee sentiment. The Dell Technologies Services team then interpreted and prioritized this data, along with Bratislava executives, to address opportunities to enhance the employee experience. The combined team leveraged easy-to-use dashboards enabling deeper dives to better analyze the data as well as specific comments and take action.
“While there will always be ways to improve, the good news is the employee experience measurements absolutely validated that Dell Technologies is on the right track with its Bratislava office redesign,” Fleming notes.
Closing the experience gap
Like any organization, Dell strives to close the experience gap — to make each office a more productive, comfortable and collaborative place to work. That’s why Dell Technologies Services is teaming with the Bratislava office to continue to analyze the data and identify ways to improve over time.
According to Fleming, Dell Technologies is one of the best at this.
“Dell Technologies takes the process seriously,” he states. “They’ve been checking the pulse of their workplaces systematically for years. And it shows.”
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