For companies across industries, worker expectations have grown exponentially. Many who enjoy the flexibility of remote and hybrid work expect seamless technology and tools. Meanwhile, their peers in-office also expect efficient technology, processes, and support.  

“Productivity, minimizing downtime, and enabling employees to be able to access things when they need it and how they need is really paramount.”

Says Troy Baldwin, product management director at CompuCom. “It’s always been important, but Covid accelerated the need.” 

In this new norm of an increasingly distributed workforce, it’s critical for enterprises to get the employee experience right. Yet many companies struggle with employee engagement, satisfaction, and turnover due in part to outdated technology or persistent roadblocks to change.  

With the right solutions and technology, however, enterprises can ensure their workers are engaged and happy, and have experiences that are productive, connected, secure, and seamless. Ultimately, happy workers lead to better outcomes for companies.  

The Challenges

Workers across sectors continue to have abundant choices in the job market as the Great Resignation continues, while employee expectations have drastically shifted. 

Some 50% of respondents to a Gartner survey said the pandemic changed their expectations for their employer. When employees talk about their on-the-job frustrations, outdated and hard-to-use technology almost always tops the list.  

Employees want their work devices and tools to be modern, up-to-date, compliant, secure, and hassle-free.And workers want this seamless experience from day one. They expect a smooth and hassle-free onboarding process that gets them up to speed and working right away. When their equipment breaks or malfunctions, they need an immediate fix, and for outdated equipment to be replaced without effort on their end or long wait times. 

“From day one, people have to have the tools to at least start to function—a computer, email,” Baldwin says. “Folks are leaving because they didn’t have the tools they needed or the tools they wanted.” 

For companies that fail to address a poor employee experience, there are often significant consequences. Enterprises may suffer from the high cost of continuously having to recruit and onboard new staff. 

Replacing staff members also isn’t a quick or easy task. By some estimates, the average time to hire last about 43 days, and for some, it’s much longer. That’s time that could be better spent creating new, engaging experiences for current employees. 

On the flip side, there’s a significant upside and bottom-line impact to having engaged, productive, and happy employees. Employees that are satisfied with their work help maintain customer relationships, improve business outcomes, and offer better customer experiences.  

Despite how critical seamless technology and processes are for employees, however, IT talent comes at a premium these days. It’s difficult for IT departments to keep up with their day-to-day requirements, let alone deliver a seamless employee experience.  

The Solution

The good news is that managed services can simplify hardware refreshes and remote monitoring, taking some of the burden off IT. 

Compucom’s Modern Endpoint Management for the Modern Age helps companies shift from an office-centric approach to a work-from-anywhere model. It’s a concierge-style single source for provisioning, device management, and operational support.  Baldwin went on to say:

“When you package services together, companies have a much better experience. It enables the full breadth and understanding of the environment that’s very difficult for customers to do independently.” 

Using the service, companies can seamlessly manage devices’ complete life cycle, from procurement to end-of-life when devices are retired, resold, or replaced. The service makes remote monitoring, fixing, and managing all employee devices easy, including Windows, macOS, mobile, and BYO devices.  

Employees can access files and apps from anywhere, while security is ensured regardless of the multiple work locations. Onboarding becomes seamless, too, with distribution to new employees of pre-equipped devices containing applications and tools.  

As part of the holistic solution, Compucom has a long-standing partnership with Intel on the vPro platform, which allows for remote access of machines so repairs can be performed at any time.  

By tapping into the vPRO platform, enterprises lower maintenance costs when technicians don’t have to repair on-site or equipment doesn’t need to be sent in for repair. Still, dispatch support can be sent to a worker’s residence when necessary and a replacement device readily provided during repair to minimize downtime. 

Analytics tools and automation are a key part of the solution. If an event or an issue occurs on an employee’s device, an automation can be proactively kicked off to resolve the problem before the user experiences an impact. 

“We’re also constantly learning and constantly collecting all this telemetry data to understand where there’s opportunities for automation,” Baldwin says. 

Sustainability Savings

The journey to net zero is also furthered when rolling out gas-powered, CO2-emitting service vehicles for service becomes less necessary. What’s more, companies can also save energy with optimized power state management, turning devices on and off remotely to match usage patterns, reducing unneeded energy consumption and lowering utility costs.  

Compucom’s Device as-a-Service component includes flexible equipment leasing, “zero touch” remote device configuration, and convenient repair, refurbishment, and IT Asset Disposition services.Companies that have embraced the solution have: 

• Reduced support needs by up to 40%
• Lowered maintenance costs
• Improved staff productivity  
• Streamlined employee onboarding by reducing device setup time by up to 90%
• Created a better overall user experience  

One large financial company that ultimately approached Compucom for help heard from employees that log-in start-up times were taking 20-30 minutes each morning. 

“That’s a huge productivity loss for employees and the organization,” Baldwin says. “We’re at a place now where folks are not going to put up with that.”  

Compucom put analytics tools in place for the financial company to collect data to evaluate start-up times. They found the delayed start-up claims were true. Highly skilled employees were experiencing some of the largest productivity losses. 

Because of the analysis, the company implemented a holistic solution that included adjusting scripts and replacing aged-out equipment. The solution ultimately drastically improved start-up times and resulted in enhanced employee productivity.  

The Bottom Line

In today’s distributed workplace, where employees have more choice than ever when it comes to employers, it’s clear that a seamless experience with technology is no longer a nice to have—it’s mission critical. 

Companies that want to retain staff and ultimately provide the best possible service to customers will benefit from a managed service like Compucom’s Modern Endpoint Management for the Modern Age.

Learn more about Intel vPRO here.