Prioritizing the Employee Experience: How Often Should Remote Employees Get a Tech Upgrade?

The modern workforce looks much different than it did a few years ago. The change has come most significantly where workers can get the job done virtually. With 45% of full-time employees in the U.S. working remotely either full or part-time, employee experience has become almost as much virtual as it is physical. In light of this shift, tech has become a major consideration in the employee experience.

For HR managers looking to streamline the employee experience, technology upgrades are a must now and then. But how often do remote employees need upgrades? The answer, of course, will depend on a host of business factors. Before you plan out your upgrade schedule, understand the importance of regular tech upgrades for a business’s bottom line.

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The Importance of Consistent Tech Upgrades

The importance of tech implementation in business cannot be understated. The modern economy is a data-driven landscape in which shoppers move between social media ecommerce and physical retail. Everyone benefits from the oversight and understanding that this digital hybridization creates. That’s because modern technology is creating greater communication standards while optimizing security.

For the remote workforce, little is as important to overcome as the communication barriers that arise in the course of virtual collaboration. Tech upgrades can solve these problems. That’s because the latest in workplace systems focus on boosting employee communication over virtual networks. These technologies include:

Project management tools
Cloud software solutions
Video conferencing platforms

All these systems and more can play a role in engaging remote workers through greater collaboration. This is a must for such workforces, where there is no shared workspace to help keep a team focused. Digital tools increasingly unite remote workers in shared environments like taskboards, brainstorming space, and conferencing sessions.

For middle-market businesses especially, the importance of technology is clear. Ninety-two percent of middle-market business leaders agreed that technology investment is crucial to customer attraction and retention. But the reasons for tech innovation go even deeper.

To remain secure, businesses must maintain a consistent update schedule for all existing software and digital services. If they fail to do so, compromises in security will arise by nature of the longer amount of time the tech has been out on the market. Hackers will have had more time to examine such a system for flaws. But updates correct that. In fact, more than 90% of software and operating system updates are to patch security vulnerabilities.

Remote workers receive an added boost to security with new systems. Whether you get the latest version of a legacy system or adopt new tools altogether, workers benefit from tech upgrades by means of enhanced security alone. If your software isn’t receiving consistent patches and updates anymore, it’s probably time to upgrade.

From here, determining a larger upgrade schedule for your technology will come down to issues of functionality, finances, and feedback.

Determining an Upgrade Schedule

Remote employees work more closely with technology than their on-site counterparts tend to. These tools and systems are integral to the digital economy and, in turn, enable more remote work opportunities. But for a truly successful investment, an update has to strike a balance between functionality and cost. This is true especially where expensive hardware is concerned.

Server farms and even network diagrams can significantly aid a business's ability to work over remote conditions. However, the high costs associated with some investments would outweigh the benefits, especially for smaller business models. Instead, big-ticket tech upgrades will need to be planned out long-term, with little day-to-day improvements made through research and innovation.

So if you plan to prioritize the employee experience, build your upgrade schedule around a budget for addressing points of complaint from remote workers themselves. In the course of HR operations, you should be collecting data on performance and feedback from workers. Since tech is such a large part of a remote worker's experience, this is a great source of employee experience data.

From here, you can prioritize tech upgrades that improve employee workflows. This can be your secret weapon in hosting a successful digital transformation since improvements to the ease of work will earn your employee’s approval. Common sentiment about a problem in need of fixing will also help secure funding from your organization’s executives.

By prioritizing these employee experience benefits, you’ll turn out bigger wins in employee satisfaction and productivity measurements early on. As a result, you’ll find it easier to

negotiate the budgets needed for continuous investment in cutting-edge tech.

Elevating the Employee Experience for Remote Workers

So how often should remote employees get a tech upgrade?

The answer should now be obvious: when the new tech will positively impact employee satisfaction enough to offset the cost of this new tech, that's when an update is required. If HR regularly surveys and talks to employees, this time will be revealed in employee pain points and needs.

Regular tech upgrades can positively impact the direction of a company where remote work is concerned. Prioritize a cutting-edge modern experience with technology that helps workers succeed. Increased job satisfaction and productivity will result.

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Prioritizing the Employee Experience: How Often Should Remote Employees Get a Tech Upgrade?

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