The CIO Can Impact Employee Engagement and Business Performance

Effective Digital Workplaces Are Created with the Employees in Mind

Employee engagement refers to the relationship between an organization and its employees. An "engaged employee" is one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and is committed to the organization. And shockingly, 70% of U.S. workers are NOT engaged at work. How can the CIO help the entire organization improve engagement? The digital workplace created for employees is a key component of employee engagement. The CIO is charged with providing a technology environment that the business needs and the employees want, which is rapidly shifting to a cloud and SaaS stack that has frequent changes and much less control. It’s a tall task, but having visibility into cloud and SaaS software utilization allows you to maintain awareness of software that may not have been purchased by IT.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• Does IT Collaborate with HR? Determine what technology employees expect, and want to have provided to them, in order to do their jobs well.
• Is IT Proactively Managing Technology in Use? Employees often purchase cloud and SaaS software without IT's involvement. Ensure you know what is purchased and how it is utilized so IT can proactively support the organization.
• Do You Know How Employees Feel about the Technology in Place? IT needs to know how well employees like the current technology in order to continuously provide the best digital workplace experience.

Employee Engagement Impacts Financial PerformanceSpending time connecting with Line of Business owners in your organization, specifically HR, is a worthwhile use of time to directly influence the organization’s revenue growth. According to Gallup’s latest research study:

“Engaged workers are the lifeblood of their organizations. Work units in the top 25% of Gallup’s Q12 Client Database have significantly higher productivity, profitability, and customer ratings, less turnover and absenteeism, and fewer safety incidents than those in the bottom 25%.”

Today’s IT leaders have an opportunity to impact two critical areas of revenue growth: Employee Engagement and Customer Experience. The strategic CIOs are already partnering with HR and Marketing Leaders to establish competitive advantages for their organizations via technology. The explosion of the Cloud is a perfect catalyst to get the conversations started across your organization. No department is better situated than IT to bring the entire technology stack into view and lead the organization’s cloud intelligence strategy. Your time will be well spent. According to training organization Dale Carnegie, companies with engaged workforces will outperform those without by 200%.Interested in learning more about how to be innovative with cloud software in your organization? Download Zylo’s ebook, “5 C-Suite Executives Weigh In On The Future Of The Subscription Economy” for insight from top SaaS leaders.Also, check out these blog posts for more resources on SaaS:Does The CIO Really Need to Control The Entire Tech Budget?2017 Budgets Down? Innovative CIOs Get Strategic With SaaS