The digital workplace reimagined
Elevating the human experience to unlock productivity+
Employers have invested in more digital ways of working, but there’s little evidence these technology solutions are moving the needle on workforce productivity+. By redesigning the virtual and hybrid workplace with humans at the center, organizations can improve the worker experience and deliver real business results.
There’s more to the digital workplace than simply providing workers with online access to office applications. Read the Deloitte report featuring Gartner® research, to learn more.
A historic shift in the future of work
In today’s world, digital tools are used to connect the complete workforce. Further, for much of the knowledge workforce, their digital experience is their workforce experience. But in a hyperconnected world where workers may affect market performance as much as customers do, many organizations have not yet addressed how their workforce can carry out their work optimally—and how that affects their outlook—in the digital environment provided for them.
It turns out that there’s more to the digital workplace than simply providing workers with online access to office applications. Although most organizations were able to quickly pivot to remote work—no small accomplishment under the adverse circumstances they were dealing with—for many it was business as usual overlaid with piecemeal digital solutions.
To go from looking digital to living digital, the workplace must be redesigned to operate in synchrony and connect all workers to those that they work with when, where, and how they need it—regardless of location, device, or time zone. Making the shift requires connecting worker experience to business outcomes. By putting workers at the center of design, it becomes possible to create a digital workplace that transforms how people collaborate, get work done, and ultimately do business.
Productivity+ refers to the range of business outcomes that a modern digital workplace enables. These include productivity as well as innovation, inclusion, connection, collaboration, purpose, engagement, wellness, and beyond.
From looking digital to living digital
A robust digital workplace enables business outcomes and amplifies my workforce experience by augmenting my ability to do work, increasing my ability to collaborate across physical and digital places, providing insights and linkages to my organization’s mission, connecting me with the people I work with, supporting my growth and development, and enhancing my well-being and sense of belonging.
Business outcomes are measurable, quantifiable goals that the organization intends to achieve. They provide direction, help organizations prioritize initiatives, and clarify what success looks like. Everyone in the organization should know the business outcomes to aim for and their personal role in bringing those outcomes to fruition.
By focusing on outcomes, you can avoid reactively bolting technologies onto existing processes. Instead, you can focus on delivering intentional, meaningful, and measurable business results via seamless and integrated solutions.
A workforce experience reflects the sum of a human’s lived experiences at work and how the workforce feels about their organization. To deliver an effective digital workplace, organizations need to focus on the factors that drive a great workforce experience. They include:
- The work I do
- The people I work with
- The places I do work
- How work affects my life
- The company mission
- The sense of belonging I feel
- How I grow as a human
The result is a workplace that reflects the digital interactions in workers’ personal lives—on demand, social, and comprehensive—in their online work experience.
As an employee, you might say, “A seamless digital workplace provides integrated solutions for me, for my team, and for my job.” More specifically:
- Solutions for me enable personalized self-service so you can readily complete tasks for yourself, such as enroll in benefits or open an IT support ticket
- Solutions for my job let you quickly and securely access the digital tools you need to carry out your duties. Think access to an electronic health record system if you’re a clinician, or access to the customer relationship management system if you’re a sales representative
- Solutions for my team seamlessly connect you to your colleagues and organization. Examples include general business utility tools like video conferencing, project management, and collaboration
Technology capabilities are important to understand because they enable the solutions you provide for your digital workplace. Vendors tend to describe their capabilities differently, so here’s a common taxonomy to help sort them out.
- Seamless entry: Provide you with access to digital tools, whether onsite or remote
- Sprinting and sharing: Boost your productivity and innovation by giving you a rapid, seamless, and cohesive way to interact with others
- Sensing and sentiment: Apply business intelligence, automation, and data insights to help the organization be more responsive to your needs
- Service and support: Provide personalized guidance and attention, streamline worker experience, enable access to physical spaces, and empower well-being across the organization
- Specialty: Enable core business operations and industry specific jobs for a seamless and personalized experience
Laying out the vision
When it comes to a productive digital workplace, it’s one thing to understand the architectural elements. It’s another thing altogether to combine those elements into—something that is sound, durable, fit for purpose, and delightful to the user.
A robust digital workplace delivers on these criteria:
Start with the specific business outcomes you aim to achieve with the digital workplace.
The digital workplace maturity model
A maturity model is a way to measure progress. It allows organizations to determine where they stand today and what changes they need to make to get to higher levels of performance.
The digital workplace maturity model has four levels of workforce experiences and technology capabilities:
As organizations adjust to a new normal, they’re beginning to ask whether the virtual environment is as effective as it could be in helping their workforce be productive. This isn’t just a matter of having the right technology. A digital workplace must be designed around the needs of the people in it as they carry out the business of the organization. Read the full report from Deloitte featuring research from Gartner®
