Three-fourths (75%) of IT leaders believe they can offer a consistent end-user experience for workers both in the office and offsite, yet 84% of respondents stated that they don't have a comprehensive measurement tool to track that experience, according to a new report from Nexthink, in collaboration with Pulse, QA titled Growing Pains.

The report highlights a clear disconnect between how IT leaders are spending and the impact it has on the employee experience.

In fact, while IT teams are planning to increase their budget and spend more in 2022, 56% of respondents will only spend 1%-10% of their budgets on employee experience tools.

And research shows that unreliable IT service and equipment is playing a major role in the Great Resignation, making finding a way to track experiences valuable to overall employee retention.

To attract and retain the workforce of today, IT leaders need to find proactive ways of monitoring for digital disruptions before it impacts employee experience. To create the positive digital experiences employees expect, IT leaders need to have complete visibility across applications, systems and devices — whether at home, in the office or somewhere in between. IT leaders cannot deliver a positive digital experience without first understanding the challenges employees face and the sentiment of their experiences.

Key findings from this study demonstrate:

■ Most businesses are planning to invest more in 2022 than they did in 2021 — 50% of business leaders plan to invest "somewhat more" and an additional 2% plan on investing substantially more in 2022.

■ The majority of business leaders surveyed felt lukewarm at best about their current employee survey tool — 66% claim poor response rates is the biggest challenge they face with their current employee survey tool, while 48% report they have no one to manage the survey process.

■ Contrary to their efforts to prioritize employees' digital experience, IT leaders do not have the proper tools or process in place to track the success of these efforts — 68% of leaders we polled either don't use a Digital Employee Experience (DEX) index or they only rely on a single metric. When asked if they'll use a DEX Calculation in 2022, 36% of leaders said they're either unsure or not planning on it.

"You can't enact change if you don't understand the problem," said Yassine Zaied, Chief Strategy Officer at Nexthink. "Employees have options and have set standards for themselves that organizations will need to live up to in order to retain talent. Whether they are remote, hybrid or in the office, they expect positive digital experiences. To get there, IT teams need to take a hands-on approach to monitoring and preventing digital issues from disrupting employees from getting their work done."

Leaders and IT teams should see themselves as the architects of the new digital workplace where employees are at the center. By focusing on their experience, IT teams can also drive the customers' experience. Every software tool that is being used, every Windows update, password reset, network connection — all of it plays an important role in shaping a company's productivity, employee and customer satisfaction, and profitability.