From the archive. First published on LinkedIn, Nov 29, 2017.
Most businesses today simply can’t keep up with the way information is created and how technology is utilized. Traditional workplace models can’t keep up with the way businesses work today.
A Digital workplace exists because employees want to work in the same way they live. Its time we reshape our mental model of how we view the workplace. Our philosophies are born out of not only our experiences, but also how we have organized those experiences. We call this “organization” our Mental Model.
Another way to think about Mental Models is that they act like job descriptions. “What is a Workplace” . When you try to answer those questions, your mind fills with images, assumptions, and stories that, for you, represent what is a Workplace?
Gartner recently identified todays Digital workplace as “a business strategy to boost employee agility and engagement. The idea is simple, the wholesale transition to digital business models requires employees to have the ability and desire to use existing and emerging technologies for better business outcomes.”
Why Adopt a Digital Workplace Strategy?
· Employee Engagement: Gallup’s rolling survey of employees currently pitches engagement at only 30%
· Talent Attraction: Most employees would opt for a lower paying job if they could work away from the office
· Business Impact: The Digital Workplace is a Business Enabler and is the core of a complex digital ecosystem.
· Growth: By taking ownership of the Digital Workplace, Executives become enablers of the digital transformation
· Stewardship: It is estimated that 60% of all corporate real estate sits unemployed at any one time.
Starting point to the Digital Workplace
The starting point of the Digital Workplace Transformation journey is an assessment of the company’s current maturity about the Digital Workplace best practices. In this assessment its critical to evaluate the following areas:
· Companies culture: Companies current view of technology as an strategic asset or simply cost center
· Historical and present Company Insights: How well a company uses customer and business data to measure success and impact strategy
· Current Usage and view of Technology: use and adoption of emerging technology.
· Company Alignment: How aligned a company is to support digital strategy, governance, and execution.
Key Steps to your Digital Transformation Journey
· Step #1: Develop a Digital Workplace Strategy: A sound collaboration strategy that puts the digital workplace at the heart of end user experience.
· Step # 2: Develop a common organizational language: A well-defined Information governance strategy around people, process, technology, and standards will create a common language that will facilitate, protect, and collaboration and information.
· Step # 3: Drive operational excellence into digital execution: Be prepared to be agile and nimble as an organization to adjust, adapt, and overcome the process of change to allow the organization to grow and evolve as the business dictates.
At the end of the day the Digital workplace is about maintaining one’s relevancy to two critical assets of any organization: employees and client base. As more and more executives take ownership for their company’s digital transformation process, they are noticing that their efforts have had a direct impact on innovation that sent ripple effects that have a wide-ranging impact on people, process, and technology.
What is a digitally transformed organization?
· Agility with better to Speed to act: Empowering employees to work anywhere, anytime, on any device
· Leveraging Information & technology: Leverage Information & technology to create a better work experience and shift IT from IT to Strategic Asset
· Digital Dexterity: is inherently a multifaceted endeavor spanning many areas that help make the employees more collaborative, analytical, mobile, innovative and creative.