Collaboration in the Digital Workplace: How to Maintain Momentum

For today’s CIO, beginning to create a digital workplace environment is an important step in the digital transformation journey. Once a digital workplace is established, maintaining momentum while driving maximum productivity and collaboration presents an additional set of challenges. How can businesses ensure their digital workplaces will meet the expectations of their employees today and in the years to come? CIO.com recently published a great article on the key things businesses must consider when it comes to building a collaborative digital workplace. Here are the top tips for CIOs:

• Be Pragmatic: Executives need to assess how mature their company is with regard to digital collaboration, and stick to a realistic roadmap that outlines which technologies and practices will be implemented, and when changes will take place. Most importantly, any new solutions or protocols that are introduced must align with the company’s strategic imperatives.
• Concentrate on Business Applications: When reimagining workplaces for the digital era, companies must fully understand what tools their employees need to be most productive and to encourage teamwork. Consider how specific collaboration technologies – like instant message services, video conferencing and VoIP – might foster collaboration in your business, and how your backend network technologies can support them.
• Focus on the Future: Any digital workplace strategy should involve some degree of flexibility – with the rate at which technology and employee and customer expectations are changing, it’s possible that current technologies and best practices for collaboration may not be relevant within the next year. CIOs should approach digital workplace initiatives with an eye toward what the future might look like.
• Keep Moving Forward: CIO.com recommends that executives should not rest until they’ve found the workplace solutions that work best for their companies. When you do find the right tools, it will be well worth the time invested in testing new solutions. Solicit feedback from employees in as many groups and business units as possible in order to determine what will best serve your workforce.

Where is your company on the digital workplace journey? How collaborative is your current environment? You can read the full article via our Gigabit Thinking blog here, and find out how Vodafone can help you prepare for the future here.