Half of employees would leave their jobs due to bad digital tools

Research from digital consultancy YaYa has found that 50%[1] of workers would leave their current roles due to bad digital tools. In addition, 58% said the tools they use at work come a poor second to the apps they use in their personal life.

A lack of employee involvement during the design process was cited as a key reason for the failure of these digital tools: only 10% of workers said they or their colleagues were consulted at this stage – and only 8% were actively involved in the design process.

Furthermore, many of these digitals solutions aren’t achieving their desired objectives within the workplace: 50% of respondents said that the new tools they were given made no difference or actively harmed their ability to do their jobs.

Phill Bolland, co-founder at YaYa said: “Pre-pandemic, we knew that 70%[2] of digital transformations failed. With Covid-19 accelerating the need for digital change, it’s crucial that businesses adopt the right mindset. When companies use an engineering-led approach to technology, this often results in badly designed and poorly adopted solutions.

“The businesses that navigate changing times successfully aren’t obsessed with technology; they’re obsessed with understanding human behaviour. What’s more, the knock-on effect of this failure on people is clear: half of employees surveyed said that they’d leave a job due to poor digital platforms.

“By adopting a human-centered approach to the creation of digital tools, businesses can make it easier for employees to do their jobs. If companies understand how different people and their customs, habits and behaviours influence how they interact, they can tailor their solutions to each of these user groups – and this is the key to successful digital innovation.”

YaYa has developed four steps to help businesses succeed at people-centered digital transformation:

 

  1. Understand the needs of your user groups – tailor the tools to your users to make their jobs easier, including everyone from the boardroom to the shop floor.
  2. Prototype. Test. Learn. Repeat – prototyping with users ensures the right problem is tackled in the optimal way, reducing time and development costs.
  3. Build engagement with users for seamless change management – design the change with the people living it so it solves their problems and is easy-to-use.
  4. Make work tools as easy to use as consumer apps – develop a solution that’s as easy-to-use as consumer apps – the end result must match users’ capabilities.

 

Bolland concluded: “Companies too often approach problem solving from a technical perspective. By blending end-user empathy with a data-led approach to problem solving, businesses can avoid investing in the wrong solutions and see a tangible return on their digital investment.”

To read the full report from YaYa: People centered design at work: how to design digital tools your employees love, click here.