Make or Break – How Apps Will Impact Your Hybrid Employee Experience

The pandemic fundamentally changed the workplace. Organizations, rightfully so, made significant investments in technology to support the remote workplace. Here we are at the peak of inflated expectations for hybrid; employees expect a hospitality-like experience with personalized flexibility, and organizations want to maximize in-person interactions. Application vendors are riding the wave by adding new features or positioning their product as the app that solves the challenges of hybrid. But the reality is that much about humans, including the way we work, is unstructured and unpredictable.

Many employees are returning to the workplace to find there’s an app for literally everything – 6 or more just to get to their desk. We have seen a 250% increase in investments in workplace applications such as workspace booking and the markets for workplace experience applications like badging, lockers, health attestation, parking, employee communications, and even lunch, is in a significant growth phase. Not only are these apps proliferating across employee mobile devices but they’re often secured with a wide variety of methods leading to frustration.

Technology has gone from the great enabler to the great inhibitor.

My advice, don’t worry too much about having an app for every foreseeable need. Invest in key tactical applications you’ll need day 1, such as a method to ensure that workspaces are available on planned office days. Then spend the first 3 months of hybrid listening and measuring, how are employees using the space, what’s going well or not. Then prioritize the applications to make your hybrid great.

Resources for Gartner Clients:

Demand to Support Hybrid Employee Experience Is Driving a Transformation of the Workplace Markets

How Digital Workplace Leaders Can Deliver on the Promise of the Hybrid Office

Future of Work Reinvented: Rethinking the Workplace