Remember the early 90s, when the mobile phones were not there. The only way to communicate to an out of office employee was landline phone or personal message via a colleague. Today there is no distinction between professional and personal lives as we are always connected.
In the age of Uber, Netflix and Airbnb disrupting traditional industries like Taxis, Video, and Travel; it is a required for organizations that their internal work environment also has a digital disruption.
The workplace is changing at an extraordinary rate. Employees have embraced the latest mobile devices and digital technologies at home. They now expect and demand the same in the office. As the latest digital natives join the workforce, having these kinds of tools and applications in place is more important than ever. Improving customer service is the end goal of a digital workplace but the first step is to bolster the employee experience. Organizations are creating digital workplace by integrating e-mails, instant messaging, social media tools, and internal applications.
From Baby Boomers to Gen Z, today’s workplace contains a mixture of generations. Everyone has grown up with very different environment, technological and cultural experiences but still, all face similar challenges at work such as information overload, and daily changing technology. Employees want to be connected across devices and with their colleagues and processes during their workdays With digital enablement, IT service departments are most benefited with services like virtual desktops, software upgrades, remote support are possible.
As a digital workplace, many organizations are moving from a physical office or cubicle to a more flexible, open workplace that leverages digital technologies like social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing to create a digital workplace that senses and responds to the information needs of employees – anytime, anywhere, and on any device.
By adopting digital workplace, an organization gets diverse benefits:
- Increased employee productivity – with direct communication via digital channels with partners, colleagues, and customers
- Increased employee retention – due to increased engagement the retention has gone up. Many companies qualify for best place to work
- Increased talent attraction – the flexibility coming from digital, helps attracts the best talent, who would like to be free from 9 to 6 physical cubes and give their best creativity to organizations
- Increased satisfaction – this is a no-brainer, as employees get to enjoy full internet connectivity and communication, they are happy at work and off work
- Increased compliance and governance – with remote connectivity, today IT governance is easy, no need for physical presence of help desk
The potential benefits of digitally enabling both staffs and the business mean that organizations will go a long way in satisfying their end customer, which is the very purpose of being in the business.
