The term “digital workplace” has been in use for some time now, but we firmly believe that we have arrived at an inflection point where the previous hype is now reality – where the low cost/high performance solutions and devices first available in the consumer space will now take hold in the enterprise.
We are using the term digital workplace to describe the set of capabilities – a desired end-state if you will – an employee has available to them that will help drive employee engagement and allow them to be informed, knowledgeable, and more responsive to customers, be they internal or external.
We define the digital workplace as an environment where employees are able to quickly and easily share what they know and find what they need with consistent experiences across devices and locations.
The environment described here has both physical and virtual elements. The physical aspects include mobile devices and kiosks and potentially other to-be invented delivery mechanisms. The virtual elements are delivered via software applications running on these devices. The types of solutions one may find in this environment would be content management, collaboration, social, and enterprise search integrated with (system of record) applications such as HR, CRM, and finance/accounting.
In the simplest terms, the digital workplace is a place where employee engagement and happiness is found by delivering the right information, to the right person, at the right time. This is not just a nice-to-have but necessary in order to meet continually escalating customer expectations.
These rising expectations are requiring companies to be more agile and innovative. The free flow of relevant information (i.e. reducing friction) has a direct impact on company agility – a sort of rapid company-wide “sense and respond” capability that leads to service improvements, ideas for new offerings, etc.
From the employee perspective, they feel like the tools and information available to them are smart enough to understand who they are, what they do, where they are, and what they need.
It is important to note the technology has helped create the problem of information overload, so a more thoughtful approach is the answer, not simply more technology.
It’s easy to image a scenario whereby all the latest cool tools are dropped on the employees’ desktop that connects them to all their colleagues as well a vast storehouse of documents and other content. The potential downside to this is a situation where the employee is subjected to a constant deluge of interruptions and endless time spent searching for documents.
Studies have shown that on average a worker loses over 2 hours of productivity per day due to distractions and interruptions. To address this, workers need to be in control of the information flow and the interactions with their colleagues, so that what is presented to them on daily basis is relevant to their job, their current project, and the customers they serve.
The more effective enterprise search is, for example, the less reliance employees will have on their colleagues to answer questions or locate relevant content. Additionally, by offering presence awareness capabilities where employees can proactively notify others of their current status, location, and availability they are better able to control and organize their time to help minimize interruptions and focus on the task at hand.
Employee Experience And The Digital Workplace
So what elements of employee engagement can the digital workplace realistically impact? First let’s look at the essential elements of the digital workplace that we refer to as the “four c’s”: content, collaboration, communication and context.
- Content – This deals with where your organization’s content is stored, in what form, how “findable” is it, and how “shareable.”
- Collaboration – Refers to the ease with which people (individuals or teams) can connect with one another to quickly resolve issues, get questions answered and develop new ideas.
- Communication – Addresses the degree to which robust communication capabilities exist that can reach all employees in a variety of formats and channels based on the purpose and nature of the communication (i.e. instant message, email, newsfeed, phone call).
- Context – This refers to the degree to which the overall experience is personalized and relevant to each employee – i.e. right information, right time, delivered to the right person.
You can think of the four c’s as representing the starting point for evaluating the maturity of your organization along the path to the true digital workplace. This evaluation should not be done in the abstract but tied closely to the needs and aspirations of your key stakeholder groups: customers and employees.
By understanding the customer experience first you establish the proper context for the employee experience as the two are obviously intertwined. Your definition of the customer experience, supported by a core set of principles, will help establish the foundational principles for the employee experience.
A simple example of a customer experience principle in practice might be: “any customer inquiry to a call center is resolved with a single interaction” – the old “one and done.” So you want to make certain these front line folks have at their disposal the knowledge necessary to make this happen.
A good employee experience involves having the right information, readily available to respond to the customer’s inquiry on the spot. In this, scenario the customer is happy because he/she gets their issue resolved in a timely manner.
