Eight Steps To The Digital Workplace

Clint Boulton explores how to to craft a workplace that boosts engagement and agility.

True digital transformation goes all the way through to the core. And that includes an often overlooked aspect: the workplace itself.

Yes, modernising IT systems, overhauling business processes and stacking talent benches are crucial undertakings. But such initiatives lay bare a chicken-and-egg problem that many CIOs must scramble to address: that good customer experience first requires a good employee experience in the form of a digital workplace, says Gartner analyst Carol Rozwell.

What is the digital workplace? It is a business strategy aimed at boosting employee engagement and agility through consumerisation of the work environment, Rozwell says. Think of your one-size-fits-all-users ERP or expense management applications and imagine the opposite user experience. Your digital workplace should help individuals and teams work more productively without compromising operations. It should include computers, mobile devices and productivity and collaboration applications that are web-based and sync in real time. Such tools should, for example, mimic the ease of use of Uber and Airbnb and the social aspects of Facebook and Instagram. IBM, for one, has undertaken a massive transformation of its workplace to lure new tech talent.

“The idea of the digital workplace is to bring that same simplicity and intuitiveness to employees when they’re doing their mission-critical work,” Rozwell says. Maybe you’ve heard your CIO peers talk about “getting ahead of shadow IT”? They mean facilitating, rather than prohibiting, consumerisation.

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