Creating a good DEX: collaboration in the digital employee experience explained

Earlier this year, the consulting firm Wavestone compiled its ten keys for an optimal digital employee experience in the year 2021. The timing of this list is especially relevant; the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic shook up every company’s ant farm last year, and remote work is here to stay regardless of whether anyone likes it or not. In short, the toothpaste is out of the tube, and it would benefit any CEO who is holding out to learn how to reckon with the new reality of work. The digital workplace.

# Successful digital collaboration - best practices

Among Wavestone’s keys is collaboration which, as you may be able to guess, the CKEditor 5 team agrees wholeheartedly with. They argue that collaboration initiatives “allow the organization to develop reflexes that are necessary for overall performance”, and suggest things like using platforms that simplify knowledge sharing. Of course, we at CKEditor have always been behind collaboration in knowledge management… and document management, not to mention Learning management, CRM, CMS, and more. All of these sorts of platforms serve the digital employee experience perfectly.

The conversation surrounding the digital employee experience is also highly salient. The last few years have seen an increased emphasis on improving the overall employee experience – of which technological environments are part. As customer happiness has been central to creating business value, the thinking goes that elevating employee experience can also be an essential part of creating that same value. The digital employee experience is one of the main components of the overall employee experience, as daily duties at work make up a portion of that experience, and require regular interaction with digital environments.

That collaboration is one of Wavestone’s ten keys has been established, but we see other keys that could be lived up to by employing collaborative aspects in software. Let’s go through some of them now.

# Simplifying and improving your digital employee experience

Wavestone recommends simplifying your company’s application landscape for employees by eliminating the back-and-forth of constantly switching between apps. Spotlight is an analyst relations platform that used to have such a habit. Their workflow was lengthy and tedious, and involved a lot of time aligning content from different sources, and required toggling between tools like Microsoft Office, Asana, and Evernote. Having lots of applications to work from is a waste of time and is not only ineffective, but irrational.

The way out of Spotlight’s irrationality required that they build their own editor that contained real-time collaboration technology. As a result, they could more quickly capture content like notes, schedules, and client program objectives. Spotlight’s managing partner Rick Nash cited the need to break away from constantly switching between apps as the very reason they sought CKEditor 5’s technology. “Collaboration is built into our application and we don’t need to use any other external tools, like Google Docs,” said Nash.

If you’re a business looking to grow quickly, the most rational way to do it is collectively. The extra cherry on top? Spotlight was able to diversify its revenue streams by turning its custom-built editor into a sellable product. Not bad.

# Building a better digital personalization within DEX

Here, Wavestone advocates for adjusting application content to the real needs of users, offering up the recommendation of reworking document repositories and collaborative spaces to coordinate workflows and projects. This is arguably one of the foremost considerations of the digital employee experience, as new routines have been forged in place of old ones thanks to waves of lockdowns. Employees may be reluctant to return to the old ways after so much time, and those who do may resent having to do so. It’s best to adjust to their preferences.

Real-time collaboration can help create spaces so people stay engaged and on the same page, which is true whether you’re spearheading a business project or other large-scale venture. Swiss organization Foraus was not only looking for a way to coordinate work with their Policy Kitchen project, but also for a way to scale their operations. Their case was especially challenging; not only did they have participants spread out over vast distances, but they had to get on the same page to create policy proposals and other documents. What’s more, they were using a multitude of tools like Facebook and WhatsApp to arrange meetings and events. In order to evolve, Foraus needed the digital environment that real-time collaboration can provide.

CKEditor 5 was able to equip Foraus with collaboration technology that allows easier coordination of work by letting multiple users edit a document at once. They can also comment, track changes, and format their proposals by adding tables, graphics, and videos. Policy Kitchen benefitted in multiple ways, including a massive boost in productivity, a decrease in idle time, and — you guessed it — improved collaboration.

# Not only personalization, but customization

Of course, personalization also extends beyond just the functionalities. In order for a platform or application to take off, it needs to be intuitive for its users. That’s exactly what freelance project management software Plutio needed when they came calling for CKEditor 5’s rich-text editor. What they asked for in their integration was seemingly very small and specific — a side-facing toolbar rather than the default top-facing one. However, that tiny change meant the world for Plutio, as their users can enjoy a clean and uncluttered interface that shows them only the features they need, when they need them, and where they can best see them. Plutio founder Leo Bassam said as much when we checked in on him for our case study. “CKEditor allows us to customise Plutio to work for our users,” he added.

As you can see, there are multiple components to the digital employee experience. It happens that CKEditor 5 can answer the challenge of helping a diverse array of companies and organizations to tailor solutions for the more technological aspects of that digital experience. If you’re a company whose internal software needs increased functionality, or a software vendor whose product could be boosted by the capability of real-time collaboration technology, CKEditor 5 is the solution for you. Check out our free online demo and get in contact with our team today to see what we can cook up for you!

You can read more on the topic of collaboration - a vital part of digital transformation and cutting-edge workplace technology - in our blog posts:

• CKEditor helps: Collaborative policy in government
• 5 best collaborative writing strategies for 2022
• Collaboration journey of CKEditor 5 - What were we up to
• Bringing collaborative editing to any application
• Data compression in real-time collaboration
• 7 reasons why your LMS needs a better and collaborative WYSIWYG editor
• Lessons learned from creating a rich-text editor with real-time collaboration