Demystifying Digital Workplace Complexity for a More Productive Workforce
The concept of a digital workplace has picked up steam ever since the COVID-19 pandemic forced thousands of companies worldwide to shift to a completely remote mode of working for their employees. The scale at which this transition happened and with no preparation time meant that enterprises needed to be at their killer best in enabling seamless adaption of the new normal of work. A Gartner survey points out that over 68% of C-Level executives have agreed that they have active involvement in enabling a digital workplace within the organization.
Read more: 10 Tips for First-time Remote Managers to Handle Their Teams Effectively
On the business front, the enterprise world is witnessing a massive shift to digital that was unprecedented and driven mainly by the need from customers who are now more digital-savvy and demand more digital-friendly services for all their needs. The COVID-19 pandemic was an accelerator to this phenomenon as now people rely on digital for pretty much all needs ranging from shopping to education, banking, and entertainment. Nevertheless, the pace and scale of growth in the digital ecosystem have also put enterprises in a tough spot requiring them to accelerate their operations into the digital realm. In other words, they need to adopt digital workplace solutions to remain competitive.
From customer interactions to internal celebrations, nearly all events have now transitioned into a virtual model. These add up the digital complexity levels in the organization that already had a long list of digital workplace solutions to help them out even before the pandemic made its impact felt. Simply adding newer tech into the digital enterprise ecosystem can negatively impact workforce productivity. A business needs to execute an effective digital workplace strategy that can help employees leverage the right software tools and work more efficiently in their daily routine.
Read more: 10 Benefits of Using Business Communication Apps to Future-Proof Your Company
Here are some tips for building a digital workplace strategy to ensure that digital workplace complexity does not reach extreme levels and negatively impact workforce productivity:
1. Create awareness
The first step in ensuring that your employees have a firm grip on the digital ecosystem within your organization is to build awareness about the ecosystem. Employees need to be trained and made aware of the need for each tool or the digital workplace solutions that the company invests in and how they can perform their roles better with their aid. Awareness building should be a continuous activity wherein different teams can be segregated based on the applications they need access to and regular sessions on new features, updated functionality, and usage instructions to be followed during different phases. The process should start from the employee on-boarding stage itself, and companies need to keep a tab of their activities that promote awareness.
Download White Paper: How A Digital Workplace Streamlines Business Performance
2. Focus on employees instead of tech focus
While enterprises love to boast about having the latest tech on board in their digital landscape, the practical use of the solution should empower employees to do better in their jobs. Just because a new platform has the latest tech stack, it does not really need to be in your organization. Evaluate software based on the usability it has for your employees, the scope it covers for your unique digital workplace needs, and the business purposes or challenges it can address.
3. Define business goals and metrics for digital workplace solutions
A critical issue that leads to digital workplace complexity is the lack of understanding of the enterprise’s goals. Most organizations do not know why they need to adopt a digital solution or integrate it into their present ecosystem. They also fail to understand how the new digital workplace solution can help them measure progress with the right metrics to evaluate their competence. By defining quantifiable goals for the business and creating relevant metrics to measure progress, the organization focuses on utilizing digital solutions for their intended purpose or outcomes. For example, one key goal for bringing in a digital collaboration tool is to minimize the number of physical meetings or utilization of meeting rooms. For this goal, the metric evaluated could be the number of meetings that have been done online instead of utilizing a meeting room.
Read more: An 8-Point Checklist to Enhance The Modern-Day Digital Workplace
4. Establish communication guidelines
When communication between folks in different hierarchical and organizational structures happens, there will be situations where these could be confusing and ultimately create trouble for the organization. One such challenge for employees is that they need to pay attention to multiple channels when communication happens virtually and through different media like email, intranet, organizational VOIP.
You can overcome this challenge by including proper guidelines in your digital workplace strategy. Set the policies on which medium to use for a relevant topic or context of communication. The policy should also include which information is to be communicated through which medium. For instance, an organization-wide policy update information should be circulated throughout the company and hence would be wise to publish it via email or the company-wide intranet.
5. Fostering decentralization
In the traditional enterprise ecosystem, decisions were mainly made at the C-Suite or leadership level with very little autonomy for staff in lower hierarchies. But today, the scenario is different as successful organizations focus on empowering staff at all levels to reduce dependencies and make their own decisions for tasks that impact their operations. When digital workforce solutions are incorporated to help employees, this principle of decentralized decision-making needs to be considered. By enabling employees to have a fairer share of participation in an enterprise’s decision-making, they can innovate faster and scale up efficiency without delays. Your digital workplace strategy should focus on incorporating tech that empowers employees to take ownership rather than be plain users.
Read Case Study: How Fingent Achieved Breakthroughs in Collaboration with InfinCE Digital Workplace
From enabling better collaboration to fostering an engaging environment for employees, a digital workplace is a crucial pillar for a sustainable future in the business world. Reports show that over 77% of organizations have prioritized digital workplace as one of their key goals for growth. As the workplace embraces a host of digital solutions, businesses need to ensure that their productivity and efficiency aren’t affected due to overly complex digital environments. Creating the perfect digital workplace strategy combined with a world-class digital workplace orchestration platform like InfinCE can bring out the best in your people. Chat with an expert to learn more about InfinCE.
