If there is one thing that sees new technology scrapped from a company its that no-one is actually using it! Change is hard and employees, especially ones who have been with a company for a long time, tend to get stuck in their processes and are often skeptical of anything that challenges the way they have always done things.
So what can you do about it? If your company is prepared to invest the time, money and resources into a new piece of tech they must also be prepared to invest in the employees who actually have to use it.
We’ve put together a few quick tips on how to best encourage your employees to invest in the new tech, ensuring you get the most return on your investment.
Staff involvement results in staff investment
Often tech is implemented across a company after upper management has made a decision to invest in it. The problem is, it is rare for these individuals to be the ones who actually use the tech on a day-to-day basis! This tends to result in tech that doesn’t quite fit the reality that employees experience, resulting in them being less likely to adopt the tech.
This is why it is essential to include your staff in the process of choosing, testing and implementing the tech into the business. Including employees in this process allows them to tweak it to suit their ACTUAL needs and to ensure that the tech is able to provide the efficiencies to the employees that they have been promised from upper management.
On this note, its also important to continue to involve staff AFTER the implementation of the tech. Encouraging employees to offer feedback on the way the tech works once it is in the workplace allows for continuous improvement in the tech and, therefore, more likely for the it to actually be used!
Training is key
If your employees don’t know how to use the tech, they are less likely to use it. It’s important to ensure you implement a training plan for your new tech to ensure all end users have proper, indepth instructions on how to utilise all of the features to their full potential. This needs to be an ongoing process as well, not just a one time activity. New updates and features need to be made clear to employees to ensure they are always in the loop about what the tech is doing to improve their lives.
Incentivise
Finally, its important to understand that tech adoption can be less about convincing employees that the tech will inevitably increase productivity, and more about giving your team a reason to use the tech, outside of productivity requirements. For example, if you are introducing a workplace community portal then you can introduce a competition for workers to submit photos, etc. where they can win a small prize for the best entry. Not only does this give them a reason to use the tech (everyone likes a prize!) but also lets them become familiar with the tech in a more causal capacity.
Monitor to improve
One of the most important parts of encouraging employee adoption of tech is monitoring employee usage of the tech and making improvements based on this usage. It helps to have in app analytic tools (such as TOKN’s dashboard analytics – more here!) to give precise information to the management team about who, when are how users are utilising the apps. This transparency is important to boost change management and keep management informed, enabling them to make better financial decisions and investments.
Introducing new tech into a company is never easy. It’s important to have a solid implementation plan to ensure that the tech is introduced properly, showcasing to employees the benefits of the tech in the workplace.