Recently, I wrote about the perception gap that exists between how businesses think they are doing, regarding the delivery of great customer experience, and how customers perceive the performance of brands. However, this is not the only perception gap that exists and hinders the performance of organizations in their pursuit of delivering better customer experience.

According to PwC’s recent Tech At Work and employee experience research report, a gap also exists between how leaders perceive the effectiveness of their technology at work choices and how employees perceive those technology choices.

PwC’s report finds that while leaders say that they choose technology with their people in mind, their employees don’t agree. In fact, according to the report, 73% of the 12,000 employees from around the world that were surveyed say that they know of systems that would help them produce higher quality work. But, they also report that executives and leaders are not tapping into their collective intelligence.

I explored this with Carrie Duarte, Workforce of the Future Leader and a Partner at PwC, and she told me that one of the primary reasons behind this gap was that executives and leaders don’t have a clear and accurate understanding of how their people use technology in their jobs and what tools they need. She went on to say that many leaders often have a hard time understanding what it is like to do particular jobs, especially if it involves new technology.

This leads to a situation where many organizations are spending millions and millions on new technology at work but many of them are not achieving the productivity and performance gains that they are expecting. In turn, this is hurting their ability to improve productivity, performance and the overall employee experience.

To combat this, Duarte recommends that leaders:

1. Take a step back and think about what technology your workforce really needs,
2. Investigate what your employees daily experience with technology at work is really like, and
3. Make sure that you are reflecting their voice and experience when you’re thinking about major technology investments.

Doing so will help employees latch on to new technology, get excited about it and engaged with it. That, in turn, will help reduce employee turnover, increase engagement, performance, and productivity as well as helping fuel a better customer experience.

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Listen to the whole conversation with Carrie on the RARE Business podcast, which contains more than 300 other interviews with leading authors, entrepreneurs, and CX leaders.

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This post was originally published on Forbes.com here.

Thanks to Pixabay for the image.