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Three effective ways to get your employees on board with a new tech solution

TEch
7 min read

Three effective ways to get your employees on board with a new tech solution

Seven out of ten technology launches fail to meet their strategic goals. How can you ensure your employees are engaged for success?

Written by Lorraine Hughes, StaySafe

Worldwide spending on technology is projected to reach $3.8 trillion in 2021. Many of these investments will be made to solve challenges and streamline processes – but how much time and money is wasted because of a lack of employee engagement with new ways of working?

No matter how careful your procurement process is, or how high your expectations are, a new product or service will not have the impact you hope for if staff don’t log-in and use it. 

The vast majority of companies expect to see a return on investment within 12 months of implementing a new technology solution – but how many actually see this ROI? 

Research shows that 70 percent of digital transformation programs don’t reach their stated goals – globally, that is an estimated $2.6 billion of tech investment under-performing every year. 

So how can you ensure that your employees get on-board with new solutions and products? 

Having recently revolutionised our own onboarding process, here we have shared our top three strategies to secure employee engagement and ensure your new tech roll-out is a success. 

On-boarding

The top two reasons that customers abandon a tech solution are: 

  • they don’t understand the product 
  • they don’t obtain any value from it

It is particularly important that users don’t abandon a tech solution when it is business critical. For example, if people don’t understand how to use a lone worker solution or use it incorrectly, they may not get the immediate assistance they need in an accident or emergency.

However, on-boarding solves both these problems.

On-boarding is part of the process of implementing a new solution. It is two fold – the logistical roll-out and then getting employees up to speed and engaged with the new product. 

On-boarding should be fully supported by the solution provider. As with successful recruitment on-boarding – where great employee onboarding can improve employee retention by 82% – a fully supported on-boarding process for a new technology solution yields improved results for both the client and end-users. 

On-boarding should take you through log-in and set up processes and the customisation of the solution to ensure it is set up correctly and is suitable for your business needs. It should also ensure you have all the knowledge and tips you need to get the most from your investment. 

For example, when getting our clients on-board with StaySafe – an app and cloud based hub that is used to keep lone workers safe – every client has a dedicated Account Manager who works with them to fully integrate the solution into their business and be on hand on an on-going basis to answer any queries. This includes working closely with clients to configure settings and customisations, including managing any integrations with third parties. 

You also need to get employees up to speed with the new solution and create buy-in.

This can be done through effective communication which helps users to understand why you are implementing the solution and – most importantly – how it benefits them. Choosing a range of both on and offline communication methods, like emails, webpages, posters, texts and face to face meetings helps to ensure your messages reach all your staff. 

The user onboarding process for StaySafe also includes sending personalised sequences of emails to new app users to help them get to grips with the new solution and encourage them to log in. The emails are based on user behaviour – for example if they have logged in or not. 

Our personalised emails achieve an average open rate of over 70% (the average open rate for emails is 15-25%) and most importantly, a high percentage of employees act on our emails. For example, during a recent client on-boarding process, a short series of automated emails resulted in an additional 707 of the clients’ employees logging in and using the app. This means our on-boarding process resulted in a 39% increase in active users in just 5 days. 

In pre-COVID times, we have attended roadshows for our clients to launch our app – currently, as well as supporting clients with their in-house communications, we also attend webinars or host video introductions to help support our clients to get their employees on-board.

Training

Once you have the logistical implementation in place and employees know what to expect – you need to start training staff to use the new solution

One of the most effective ways to facilitate training for a technology based solution is to have the training accessible within the solution itself. Online tutorials and suggestion pop-ups ensure that users become familiar with how to use the solution from the first time they log-in, rather than being left to navigate through themselves. 

In-app or in-platform training is a great way to ensure that staff are trained how to use a new service and is resource light for employers as the training is built into the product. This should then be supported by the solution provider, who can provide extra support directly to employees if needed.  

The StaySafe app features interactive in-app training, which walks users through how to start a lone working session within the app and how to trigger a panic alert. This is also supported by user guides, online articles, training videos, emails and webinars to help users who still need extra support to get up and running. For a solution like StaySafe, where employee wellbeing depends on correct and consistent usage of the app, ensuring that users fully understand how to use the solution is paramount to their safety.

On-going communication and support

At the beginning of an implementation it can be all systems go – people are excited by a new product and all seems well. Then things can start to tail off. Employees can run into issues and be discouraged, others may fall back into old ways of working; some may simply not use the solution at all. 

To ensure that a new tech product becomes embedded into your organisation it is vital that:

  • Employers have visibility of usage so that they can follow up with unengaged staff 
  • Employees have somewhere to go to ask for help if they need it 

Re-engagement is also important. If someone hasn’t logged in to the solution for a while, it is imperative that this is flagged and addressed. This can be done through access to dashboards and usage reports, helping employers to quickly identify and rectify any issues before they become embedded behaviours. 

StaySafe customers also receive scheduled reports which enable managers to identify which members of their team are not using the app and follow up with them. Our Account Managers also have regular calls with clients to help identify any areas of improvement, such as gaps in staff training or high numbers of false alarms. 

In addition, within the StaySafe Hub, inactive users and users who haven’t completed their training are also sent a series of re-engagement emails – similar to the emails we use during the on-boarding phase – to help get them back on track.Likewise, if an employee has a problem with the solution, access to a dedicated support function is important, so that issues can be resolved quickly – whether that is a forgotten password or trouble navigating the system. The StaySafe Customer Success Team can be contacted with any queries via webchat, email and phone and currently hold a positive feedback rating of over 95%.

Case study: Local Authority increases user engagement by 137% 

One of our Local Authority clients has achieved excellent results through our new on-boarding and training process. We have worked closely with them to identify unengaged users and provide training, including our in-app training, emails, video content and tutorials, online drop in sessions and user guides. This programme of engagement and training has resulted in the number of active users increasing by an impressive 137.5% and the average number of lone working sessions run by their employees rising from an average of 600 to 1530 per month. 

They have also reported that the new reporting functionality within the Hub and the scheduled reports from their Account Manager ‘have made all the difference’, as it enables them to identify users who may need additional support and offer them more training, or reassign inactive users who may no longer need an account – helping to keep the solution cost efficient too.

Our commitment to engagement

At StaySafe we are determined to ensure that your investment in our lone worker safety solution is a success, as we know your employees’ safety depends on it.  

When it comes to lone worker solutions, on-boarding, training and support of both users and responders is crucial in ensuring that employees are using the solution properly and will receive help in an emergency – every time. 

Using our experience from 1000’s of implementations our Customer Success Team will support you to effectively integrate StaySafe into your business through our tried and tested program of on-boarding, training and support.

Key takeaways

  • Most technology solutions do not achieve a positive ROI 
  • Engagement, understanding and usage is key to ensuring that the roll out of your solution is a success
  • With lone worker solutions, ensuring staff are properly trained and using the solution is imperative, as failure to do so can leave them at risk
  • Onboarding, training and on-going support should be provided by the solution provider to ensure staff use the solution properly and consistently  
  • When executed properly, engagement and training programmes can achieve excellent results in improving the understanding and usage of lone worker apps 

StaySafe works with every customer to successfully on-board, train and support their employees to ensure that all staff are protected.

Find out more about how we would make your StaySafe implementation a success

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Lorraine Hughes

Lorraine Hughes

Lorraine has enjoyed 12 years supporting customers in the lone working market, joing StaySafe 8 years ago. A lone working expert advisor, Lorraine offers her years of experience for each customer, ensuring the best lone working solution for the safety of staff. Lorraine is responsible for our EMEA region, with a wealth of clients across all sectors.

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