Part 2

11 Benefits of an Effective Employee Experience

Building an effective employee experience through a compelling digital workplace provides a win-win situation for the organization and the employees. Employees can complete tasks quicker and more seamlessly. Teams can collaborate and communicate more effectively. Organizations as a whole can retain employees, drive efficiencies, and ultimately, increase productivity and profitability.

Here are the major benefits of a great employee experience:

1. Increased Productivity Through Time Savings 

A strong digital workplace returns time to employees by helping them navigate content quickly and complete tasks more efficiently. It improves both simple and complex processes, sometimes through automated approaches. Collectively, the time saved for organizations can be significant, allowing for increases in productivity. Even returning one hour per week per employee can positively impact an organization’s output.

2. Reduced Costs 

A great digital workplace provides multiple opportunities to reduce costs. By standardizing and streamlining tools and applications accessed by employees, legacy and duplicate systems can be retired to cut spending on IT licensing and maintenance. Costs can also be minimized by eliminating waste in manual processes and retiring ineffective print communications to drive self-service.

3. Happier Employees 

We all know how frustrating and disengaging poor technology can be. When this impedes your workday, it becomes much more difficult to execute on your tasks; it’s no surprise that employees get discouraged. Alternatively, a digital workplace that works smoothly, efficiently, and actually adds value, will contribute to a much happier workday.

4. Nurturing Organizational Culture 

An impactful digital workplace should reflect and cultivate a positive and more cohesive organizational culture to drive a real sense of purpose and community. Effective leadership communications, the ability to connect with colleagues, open dialogue, personal development opportunities, and the ability to celebrate success all contribute as well.

5. Increased Employee Retention

Highly functioning technology that generates happier employees positively impacts a company’s ability to attract and retain talent, particularly for millennials and younger generations who have stronger expectations for digital work. Improvements to processes such as employee onboarding can also support retention, cultivating a strong sense of company culture right from the start.

6. Automation and Process Improvement 

There are always significant opportunities to improve, transform, and automate processes throughout any organization. The digital workplace can help to drive these improvements, reduce costs, increase productivity, and even enable broader digital transformation. The digital workplace also helps to standardize processes and ways of performing tasks.

7. Better Communications

Today’s internal communications are complex, multi-channel, and often, two-way. All employees should be engaged, including those harder to reach who don’t regularly work at desks. The digital workplace enables effective internal communications but also allows communities, teams, and individuals to communicate better with each other.

8. Flexible Working

A true digital workplace allows people to work from any location and at any time. Supporting flexible working can increase productivity, engage staff who have commitments outside of work, and ensure the better utilization of space in the office.

9. Better Collaboration 

Collaboration comes in many different shades – team, real-time, and project collaboration for example. The digital workplace enables individuals and groups to work closely together, regardless of location.

10. Workforce Enablement 

The digital workplace enables employees to carry out their roles more effectively by accessing the right content, tools, educational resources, community groups, and more. A great digital workplace helps employees excel in their roles and develop professionally.

11. Better Adoption 

Because a digital workplace environment makes it easier for employees to access the systems, applications, and information they need (and when they need it), barriers leading to the better adoption of digital tools are eliminated.

PART 3

Addressing Employee Experience Priorities for Each Stakeholder

The digital workplace can positively impact all parts of your organization. Every function and line of business will be keen to make sure it helps them achieve their goals. That means every stakeholder will have a unique viewpoint! A key characteristic of a successful digital workplace program is that different functions and stakeholders need to work closely together to achieve a shared vision. Working closely with a comprehensive team with different perspectives, opinions, and interests is simultaneously rewarding and challenging. If you’re coordinating a digital workplace program, it is essential to understand what the individual motivations and interests of all the different stakeholders are. You need to be able to answer the question “What’s in it for me?”

Let’s look at some of the typical perspectives and interests of different stakeholders and functions.

IT Stakeholder

Perspective: The IT Stakeholder would like to deliver an excellent tech experience and make IT more accountable, while reducing costs, with control over applications and security.

Objectives: 

• Provide a strong user experience of workplace technology to increase engagement with the IT function.
• Increase adoption and demonstrate ROI in technology investments such as Office 365 and collaboration tools.
• Standardize tools across the organization and reduce costs by eliminating duplicate tools and redundant legacy applications.
• Reduce shadow IT and associated risks.
• Ensure there are effective cybersecurity and data security.
• Provide an environment and approach for easily rolling out new tools but with governance in place.

Communications Stakeholder

Perspective: The Communications Stakeholder wants to ensure that the digital workplace delivers communications to all employees, so everybody is informed and engaged.

Objectives: 

• Increase employee engagement through effective communications.
• Provide a platform for genuine two-way dialogue with employees to drive engagement.
• Deliver effective leadership communications.
• Support a positive organizational culture.
• Provide an effective platform to identify employee sentiment.
• Drive targeted and relevant communications to specific groups, including harder-to-reach employees.

HR Stakeholder

Perspective: The HR Stakeholder is interested in maintaining efficient HR processes while supporting an excellent employee value proposition to attract and retain talent.

• Support employee self-service and manager self-service relating to HR processes through transactions and content, helping to reduce costs.
• Provide a strong employee experience to support the organization’s employment value proposition, helping to retain talent.
• Drive adoption of HR systems and schemes.
• Provide a platform for talent development through access to learning resources.
• Provide an efficient onboarding experience for new starters, again helping to retain employees.
• Support flexible working options to reflect the organization’s employment value proposition.
• Support a positive organizational culture.

CEO/Leadership Stakeholder

Perspective: The Leadership Stakeholder wants the digital workplace to support organizational strategy and objectives while enhancing a positive culture.

Objectives: 

• Support the organizational strategic agenda, for example, digital transformation.
• Deliver effective leadership communications.
• Provide an effective platform to identify employee sentiment.
• Increase staff productivity and engagement.
• Help to support a positive organizational culture.
• Drive values and behaviors which will support organizational purpose and strategic change, (e.g. innovation, collaboration, and agility).

Finance/Operations Stakeholder

Perspective: Stakeholders from finance and operations want the digital workplace to increase productivity, deliver ROI, and reduce costs.

Objectives: 

• Standardize technology and tools to help reduce costs.
• Help to increase productivity.
• Support innovation and customer service to help drive revenue generation.
• Support effective project management and related processes.

Marketing & Sales Stakeholder

Perspective: Stakeholders from marketing and sales are interested in a digital workplace that improves customer service and enhances the brand.

Objectives: 

• Use the digital workplace to support processes which will improve customer service.
• Provide support tools, customer data, and product information for sales staff and customer support agents.
• Drive innovation to help produce new products and services.
• Ensure the digital workplace reflects organizational brand.
• Provide access to tools which support brand compliance.
• Potentially open the digital workplace for customers to access (e.g., external portal).

Lines of Business Stakeholder

Perspective: Stakeholders for lines of business want the digital workplace to support and enhance specific LoB needs, processes, and services.

Objectives: 

• Improve specific processes and support collaboration.
• Ensure local applications are in place to support specific needs.
• Drive targeted communications for individual LoBs.

Real Estate Stakeholder

Perspective: The Real Estate Stakeholder would like the digital workplace to help reduce real estate costs and align to the physical environment.

Objectives: 

• Support activity-based working and desk booking.
• Increase meeting room utilization.
• Support remote working to allow for more efficient space allocation and reduction in real estate costs.
• Support remote working to reduce travel costs.
• Harmonize digital workplace with the physical workplace to drive smart buildings.
• Meet environmental obligations.

Legal/Risk Stakeholder

Perspective: Stakeholders from legal and risk divisions want the digital workplace to be legally compliant and reduce risk.

Objectives: 

• Help reduce risks particularly caused by shadow IT.
• Ensure environment is legally compliant, e.g. data privacy [MS1].

Part 4

7 Strategies for Making the Digital Workplace a Priority at Your Organization

The first step to formalizing any digital workplace program and moving towards making a business case is to begin getting key stakeholders to talk about the digital workplace. Starting discussions and getting the topic on your corporate agenda is an important first step in laying the foundations for action. The digital workplace probably won’t be a familiar concept to many, and it might be regarded as something only IT needs to worry about, or perhaps something to do with the intranet. Your stakeholders are more likely to be aware of the issues that a great digital workplace can fix or some of the individual opportunities it can bring. Ultimately, you want to get the right people around the table, excited about the possibilities of a great digital workplace, and committed to doing something about it.

Here are some ideas on how you can get the digital workplace on your organizational agenda:

1. Get the right mindset and be persistent

Having the right mindset is critical for getting the digital workplace on your organizational agenda. You need to take a holistic and strategic view, working together with different stakeholders with a variety of views. You are likely to need to be persistent and have patience, as not everybody will immediately “get” the digital workplace concept.

2. Be informed and arm yourself with data 

It really pays to have data about your workforce and the potential the digital workplace can bring. Having compelling or even worrying information can grab the attention of senior stakeholders and gives you credibility. How much time is being wasted by employees? What costs may be reduced? How engaged are employees? Are there positive examples of how parts of the digital workplace can impact productivity? What are your competitors doing? Being informed will help to bolster your message.

3. Develop a compelling vision for the digital workplace

Developing a vision for the digital workplace is a great way to get your stakeholders excited about its possibilities. A vision should illustrate wider benefits but also be highly tangible, giving an idea of how daily work can be transformed. It also helps if your vision balances ambition with something that is achievable. You don’t want a vision that stakeholders perceive will never happen.

4. Be inspired by other digital workplaces

There are some excellent examples of companies producing compelling digital workplaces. These can provide inspiration for you and demonstrate the "art of the possible" to your stakeholders. Conferences, awards, networking groups, professional peers, and vendors’ customer networks are all excellent sources for finding out about leading digital workplaces.

5. Meet the individual needs of your stakeholders

As we’ve already established, different functions have different priorities and interests for the digital workplace. Meet individually with your stakeholders to explain how the digital workplace can help them advance their own agenda. Don’t underestimate the importance of targeted, stakeholder management.

6. Hold a workshop to get a consensus on the best way forward.

Ideally, you’ll get the key stakeholders in your organization engaged and excited about the possibilities around the digital workplace and get a consensus on the best way forward to make it happen. Holding a workshop to brainstorm and determine a high-level vision, or even just to agree on next steps, is a great starting point.

7. Develop parts of your digital workplace to show what success looks like

Digital workplaces are always a work-in-progress. Even though you are trying to get a digital workplace on the agenda, you may receive push-back if there are parts of the initiative that already work well and do not seem to impose any problems for the organization.  For example, you may already have a great intranet or a strong IT services portal. It is important to remember though, that companies are ever-changing and therefore, so must their tools.  Extending good maintenance practices or providing a proven example of a different digital workplace environment can illustrate the power of a more comprehensive approach.

Part 5

7 Steps to a Digital Workplace Strategy

The 7 steps to implementing a successful digital workplace strategy

Here are the 7 steps to a successful digital workplace strategy:

1. Work out who needs to be involved

First, plan how you’re going to form your strategy. Work out who needs to be involved, both from the perspective of getting involved in your user and stakeholder research, but also in giving input and signing off on your strategy. A digital workplace reaches all parts of your organization so there’s potentially a wide group of people involved.

2. Carry out user and stakeholder research

Doing your research is extremely important. Get input from your stakeholders and the background on their plans. Undertake user research using a variety of different methods including user surveys, interviews, workshops, observation, and using any data analytics you have. There may also be valuable data and research previously carried out by others. It’s also worth spending time to gather other inputs including other relevant strategies already in place like your IT strategy, useful documentation, and other data such as IT helpdesk calls. External information such as best practices, what vendors are offering, and inspiring case studies are all very useful, particularly if you can speak to peers in similar organizations who may have already gone through a digital workplace initiative.

3. Crunch and analyze your data

You have all your data – now, it’s time to crunch the numbers to identify trends and find patterns. What are the issues that keep on coming up? What are the underlying problems? Where could aspects of the digital workplace make a real difference? What opinions keep on appearing? How could it all fit together? As you sort through your data you may get all kinds of ideas of what the real problems are and how to fix them. You may also need to go back and ask some of your users or stakeholders further questions.

4. Articulate your guiding principles

When your head is exploding with ideas, you’ll know it is time to try and articulate the guiding principles of your strategy! This is the core of what you want to achieve and might include four or five major “pillars” of what you want to accomplish. These guiding principles can be aspirational, but they should also be clear and tangible, so ultimately everyone can easily translate your strategy into actual actions, tactics, and projects. At the same time, you may want to revisit your mission and vision which encapsulates everything you’re doing.

5. Enhance the details in your strategy

At this stage, you should work to receive some input from your stakeholders to ensure that you’re on the right track with your guiding principles, then you can add more detail about how you’re going to make it all happen. This extra detail includes the tactics you apply to make the strategy happen, some more detailed objectives, potentially some KPIs, and a high-level roadmap. With your roadmap, it’s usually too early to commit to specific dates, but do indicate which are your priority areas. For example, there may be dependencies for your digital workplace which dictate the order of your roadmap.

6. Work with stakeholders to gather input

Now that you have a fully drafted strategy document, share the draft openly and circulate it to your key stakeholders. Ask for their feedback and input. Take time to explain it to them separately, if necessary. This can take longer than expected, but it is worth considering everybody’s views to form a robust strategy which everyone will buy into.

7. Iterate until a final version is approved

Your stakeholders are bound to have some opinions about your strategy. Even if they disagree with you it’s a good sign because it means they are engaged! Take on stakeholder feedback, tweak your strategy, and continue to share updated versions until you have a document that everybody is finally happy with. It may take two, three, or even four revisions, but it’s worth the effort!

Part 6

20 Business Case Elements for Your Digital Workplace

20 Elements to Include in Your Business Case

LET’S EXPLORE SPECIFIC AREAS YOU MAY WANT TO REFER TO INCLUDE IN YOUR BUSINESS CASE.

1. Easier finding of information

Research suggests that employees can spend several hours a week looking for information, sometimes unsuccessfully. A robust digital workplace with good searchability and userfriendly navigation puts key information all in one place, saving significant time. Previously, this information may have been held in disparate systems or lost in personal emails and documents. Time diaries and user surveys can be useful to estimate just how much existing time is wasted by your employees on finding the information they need to do their jobs.

2. Easier completion of simple tasks

Inefficient digital workplaces can mean employees need to go into different systems and applications to complete all the tasks they need to do. Centralizing simple procedures such as approvals and requests in one easy-to-reach place simplifies how work is carried out, saving your employees time. This can then be reallocated to more value-added work. It also means tasks, such as approvals, are more likely to be accomplished.

3. Process improvement and automation

Most organizations still have a surprising number of simple processes that are highly inefficient, often carried out by email, spreadsheet, or even on paper. The modern digital workplace offers an array of options to eradicate inefficient processes using everything from simple forms and workflow to building an app. Digitizing remaining processes drives efficiencies, reduces costs, and makes life easier for both administrators and employees. The collective gains from process improvements can be highly impressive and could be a central part of a business case, particularly if you are an organization where there are practices waiting to be modernized. The more specific processes and benefits you can identify and quantify in your business case, the better.

4. Saving on IT licensing and maintenance costs

Providing a digital workplace for your entire company allows everyone access to the core systems they need. Additionally, it provides your business an opportunity to retire creaking legacy systems or discontinue redundant and duplicate applications. You may also be shutting down several different local intranets. The reduction in IT licensing costs and associated maintenance costs can be highly significant and are often a major part of the business case for digital workplace projects – for example, introducing Office 365.

5. Standardizing processes and applications

Providing a digital workplace for all employees usually means that there is an opportunity to standardize processes, applications, and ways of doing things throughout your company. This means you can eliminate inefficient local practices, reducing risk and costs. You can also empower staff, so they can perform at their very best. The ability to quickly standardize processes and applications also helps efficient onboarding and assimilation of new acquisitions and offices. Of course, standardization should never mean “lowest common denominator” – your digital workplace still needs to provide different, targeted views and experiences for different groups.

6. Promoting employee and manager self-service

Employee self-service (and the related manager self-service) for IT and HR-related processes help to reduce the pressure on IT and HR staff, and significantly reduce costs. If employees can find information and complete simple transactions themselves, everybody wins. The digital workplace supports self-service by making it easier, digitizing common tasks and helping employees to find the information they need. A business case could cover reduced costs in HR and IT, the reduction in time for issues to be resolved for employees, and show how busy support staff can spend their time on more value-added activities

7. Reducing shadow IT and cyber risks

The digital workplace can reduce cyber and data security risks which are caused by employee use of shadow IT – unauthorized applications principally designed for consumers but used for work purposes. These systems may not have the robust, enterprise-grade security which needs to be in place and may expose your company to serious data breaches. Often the root cause of using shadow IT is that employees need to get things done, but don’t have access to applications that help them to do what they need to do. A digital workplace should provide employees with all the tools they require, helping to dramatically reduce the need to use alternative applications.

8. Supporting your employee value proposition to retain and attract staff

Every employer wants to be recognized as a great place to work and the digital workplace enables this. Having an excellent digital employee experience means you can support an employee value proposition which retains talent and makes it easier to recruit the best people. This could be even more important if you’re trying to attract and retain millennial and Gen Z workers who view a strong digital workplace as an important asset.

9. Enabling flexible and mobile working

A focus for many digital workplaces is to build a platform which allows staff to work from anywhere, at any time, and across any device. In turn, this supports flexible working options to allow people to work from home, for example, or get things done when traveling. This can drive efficiency and help employees be more productive. Flexible work can also be an important part of a company’s employee value proposition, meaning employees can have a better work/life balance – critical for staff with young children or who care for elderly parents. It also means that businesses can hire from a larger talent pool of remote workers. All these reasons can potentially contribute to a digital workplace business case

10. Reducing real estate costs

Allowing flexible work also means that companies can reduce their space allocation and associated real estate costs, supported by more people working remotely. Through the ability to book desks or rooms, the digital workplace can also support activity-based working and better meeting room utilization, again helping companies to make better use of space.

11. Improving customer service

Even though digital workplaces are internally facing, they can also have a strong impact on customer service. This can be a powerful argument in a business case as the push for investment, which directly links to customer revenue, tends to stand out. Customer service can be positively impacted in numerous ways - for example providing tools and content to customer service agents to speed up calls and improve service. Stronger collaboration between different teams can also help to provide a more consistent service to customers, or help support account management programs, especially in a global context.

12. Reducing travel costs

The digital workplace promotes online collaboration and communication. Online meetings can reduce the need for travel which translates to reduced costs, although face-to-face meetings are still important.

13. Enabling and developing staff to carry out their roles

Employees need access to the best knowledge, learning resources, and other content to help them carry out their roles. Dashboards and business intelligence with actionable insights will also help your staff to make the best decisions. A digital workplace that brings these resources and smart reporting to employees can empower staff to carry out their roles more effectively and encourage personal development. Multiple benefits flow from a more knowledgeable workforce.

14. Improving onboarding experiences for new hires

A strong digital workplace has the potential to enhance the onboarding process for new employees. Making the experience of joining a new company both more efficient and welcoming will reduce employee turnover at a critical time and allows new hires to quickly get up and running in their roles. There are an incredible number of benefits that support the power of a strong digital onboarding program.

15. Driving a positive, one company culture

A focused single digital workplace environment can help you drive a positive “one company” culture. Global companies and those built up through acquisition find that a unified platform to access information, news, applications, and employee collaboration, is a powerful tool to nurture a new cohesive organizational identity or to reflect the positive aspects of an existing culture. You can also drive a true sense of community.

16. Driving innovation and agility

A good digital workplace provides an effective platform and supplies the tools that help drive innovation and agility. The benefits from this can be massive, including better delivery of technical projects and the harnessing of powerful new ideas. For example, staff on projects may be able to access tools such as Kanban boards to help drive agile methodologies. Ideation tools which allow staff to share and vote on ideas, or for businesses to seek responses to challenges, can also produce significant results.

17. Improving digital literacy

Highly effective digital workplaces allow employees to get used to using digital tools and give your workforce digital confidence. A digitally literate workforce can be very powerful in inspiring more collaboration, driving innovation, encouraging customers to use digital services, and adopt new ways of working

18. Effective internal communications and dialogue for all employees

Effective internal communications within the digital workplace are complex but have a significant impact. Successful communication involves multiple channels and tools. It should include personalization for relevant and targeted messages which allows for the ability to create a genuine dialogue between management and employees. It should also support multiple languages to reach global employees including frontline staff who work in factories, retail outlets, or in the field. Good communication underpins everything from employee engagement to minimizing risk.

19. Team, community, and real-time collaboration

A strong digital workplace helps to break down organizational siloes so that individuals, teams, and communities can collaborate effectively, work efficiently, and improve specific processes. Great collaboration can drive team effectiveness, better project management, improved customer service, and more.

20. Processes specific to you

Your organization may have a major process or activity which will be enhanced by a great digital workplace. Be specific about these improvements in your business case especially if the benefits can be quantified.