How FedRAMP Authorized Technology Solutions Can Bridge the Government Employee Experience Gap

As the public sector continues to lag behind the private sector in employee experience, the need to empower agencies to safely and effectively use technology to advance their digital workplaces is more crucial than ever.

Earlier today, we announced the expansion of three additional AvePoint products – all in our Modernization Suite – to Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) moderate authorization to help government IT leaders ramp up the employee experience.

In this post, we’ll discuss:

• The state of government employee experience (EX)
• New additions to AvePoint’s FedRAMP (moderate) authorized tools
• How to improve public sector EX with workforce analytics and EdTech

Let’s get started!

Government Employee Experience Trails Private Sector

According to Forrester Research, government employees’ experiences continue to have plenty of room to improve – especially when compared to their private sector peers.

• Only 44% of government workers say they feel recognized and valued, compared to 57% in the private sector.
• Only 38% of public sector employees say their manager is a “great coach and mentor to me.” More than half, or 52%, of private sector employees agree with that statement.

The same research from Forrester uncovered similar patterns related to enabling the modern digital workplace.

• Only 48% of government workers say their organization provides an environment where they can be productive, compared to 61% for private sector workers.
• Only 27% of government workers say they have enough flexibility to decide where they want to work, compared to 46% of private sector workers.
• Only 45% of government workers say they have the mobile technology they need to do their job, compared to 61% of private sector workers.

A clear disparity in the employee experience between the public and private sectors exists, and government IT leaders can help reduce the difference by using analytics and upskilling tools that are FedRAMP compliant.

Additional FedRAMP (Moderate) Authorized Tools

This year, we added more products to our FedRAMP (moderate) authorization as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company. The security controls of these SaaS solutions have been rigorously tested and are approved for use within all federal agencies.

The additional products for 2024 are:

• AvePoint tyGraph, which offers advanced workforce analytics;
• MaivenPoint Examena, an AI-enabled examination tool; and
• MaivenPoint Curricula, which enhances continuous education experiences.

All these products are part of the AvePoint Confidence Platform’s Modernization Suite, which aims to unify data, optimize business processes, and improve the employee experience.

What does the addition of these Modernization Suite products mean to your government organization?

These products can support the digital transformation efforts of over 1,000 AvePoint customers in the public sector, including the U.S. Treasury Department, IRS, and NASA.

So, whether you’re a federal or state government, or even a government contractor operating in Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) or higher, you can leverage our new FedRAMP (moderate) authorized tools to initiate digital transformation efforts and improve the overall employee experience.

Workforce Analytics: Lead a Data-Driven EX Strategy

By analyzing user activity and engagement, public sector organizations can run an employee experience strategy that’s based on actual data. AvePoint tyGraph provides workforce analytics for Microsoft 365, giving IT leaders a detailed view of digital collaboration and productivity across the organization.

Here’s how you can use this information to drive employee experience.

1. Support Effective Communications with Insights

Research from McKinsey found that employees who feel included in more detailed workplace communication are almost five times more likely to report increased productivity. The same study, however, also discovered that more than a quarter (28%) of employees describe the communications they receive as vague.

Communications teams need information on what initiatives are working and what’s causing internal exposure.

With AvePoint tyGraph, you can recommend communication creation and delivery actions. Use sentiment analysis of posts and messages, as well as topic and keyword analysis of conversations by community, to get a pulse of how communications are landing.

2. Raise Intranet Usage and Adoption

Intranets are a critical cog in the modern digital workplace, serving as hubs for a distributed workforce. While Microsoft SharePoint can provide basic analytics out-of-the-box, SharePoint admins and portal owners need cohesive, contextualized insights.

By looking at SharePoint site engagement and activity data, you can take steps to increase usage and adoption. For example, you can identify which departments have extremely low intranet activity and launch customized training for them. AvePoint tyGraph allows you to measure and monitor page load performance, user churn, and devices used to access the intranet, among other metrics, to ensure the health of your critical employee experience platform.

Check it out: 10 Metrics Every SharePoint Admin Should Monitor

3. Understand IT Investment Usage and Adoption

Today’s government IT leaders are in charge of guiding their organizations down a sustainable infrastructure path, while also ensuring security, cyber resilience, and data governance. This tall order requires visibility into the usage of new software deployments and other IT investments.

As stakeholders look for adoption and usage metrics of Microsoft 365, IT leaders can struggle to provide insights, especially when data is scattered across multiple tools, if available at all.

With AvePoint tyGraph, you get a single view of your Microsoft 365 adoption, so you can minimize costs and maximize existing investments. It consolidates your data from Teams, Viva Engage (Yammer), SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive. The long-range perspective allows measurement of active and engaged users over 1-2 years, not limited to 90-day experiences. In-context audience analytics also provide an understanding of business areas’ behavior, segmenting adoption by role, region, hierarchy, license, and Microsoft 365 group.

EdTech: Upskill and Reskill Employees

Deloitte surveyed government executives globally on how the pandemic impacted digital transformation for their organization and determined the seven pivots that can help governments reach digital maturity.

The biggest pivot after data mastery and infrastructure flexibility and security is having digitally savvy, open talent networks. Deloitte defines it as “Retooling training programs to focus on digital competencies, and staffing teams through flexible, contingent talent models to rapidly access in-demand skill sets and flex the organization’s workforce based on the organization’s need.”

Compared to less mature organizations, digitally mature agencies are four times more likely to indicate that digitally savvy talent positively impacts their organization, Deloitte added.

Creating a culture that prioritizes digital dexterity, or the ambition and ability to use technology for better business outcomes, is simply critical for government bodies to mature digitally and improve the employee experience.

Here’s how you can use our latest FedRAMP (moderate) authorized products to do that.

1. Centralize Training for Everyone

MaivenPoint Curricula provides a centralized hub for training content. Integrating seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, Curricula enables employees to access training where they already work; this eliminates distractions and the need to head to multiple learning platforms to access content.

From the side of overburdened government IT teams, this centralization of training makes it easy to assist and empower Learning and Development (L&D) teams to run their programs without having to turn to IT with numerous technical requests.

2. Plug the Talent Drain

While compensation is the No. 1 reason for public sector employees wanting to stay, career development is the top reason for wanting to leave. Advancing along a career path and improving their skills along the way is important for government employees.

You can use Curricula and MaivenPoint Examena to promote lifelong learning in the public sector. Aside from centralized training, it’s also easier to conduct certification or compliance programs with Examena. Examena allows teams to schedule and plan exams seamlessly, as well as register learners in any course. Data remains fully encrypted and secure.

3. Upskill Employees with Digital Expertise

Training bridges the technology and skills gap to provide the career development government employees crave.

By using Curricula as a Learning Management System, you can also gain access to AvePoint’s Microsoft 365 Training. This training, which includes over 1,000 hours of easy-to-digest, bite-sized content, covers Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, and other collaboration tools in the Microsoft 365 suite. It’s designed to help your end users practice better communication and collaboration using your IT investments. Not only can this help your employees upskill to meet today’s demands of constituents, it also enables you to ensure your agency is making the most of its investment in Microsoft 365.

A Commitment to Modernizing the Public Sector

IT leaders in the public sector have their work cut out for them.

Creating a clear path to digital maturity requires not only migrating data – it also means supporting an employee experience strategy with reliable adoption analytics and upskilling employees to achieve digital dexterity and drive digital workplace enablement.

Since receiving its first FedRAMP (moderate) authorizations in 2021, we now have more than 20 products that meet the rigorous security controls federal agencies demand. This is part of our continued cyber resilience strategy and commitment to all customers and partners.

Public sector employee experience may be lagging, but with the addition of AvePoint tyGraph, MaivenPoint Curricula and MaivenPoint Examena as FedRAMP (moderate) authorized solutions, government IT leaders have the opportunity to bridge that gap.

 

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