Future-ready Workplace through Digital Transformation
The future of work is rapidly changing with automation, digitalization, changing skills-ecosystem and workplace priorities. The shelf life of skills have been halved, flexibility and empowerment are the new work preferences, agile ways of working are being adopted and existing practices of talent management, retention, and attraction are being questioned. We need to be ready for the futuristic workplace and a lot can be achieved through digital transformation.
What is Digital Transformation of the Workplace?
It is nothing but integration of digital technology into a physical workplace including all areas of the business - right from operation to delivery. It also involves cultural changes in the organization by experimenting new processes and doing away with traditional practices. This allows the creation of a virtual equivalent of a physical space where all employees can connect with people using various digital tools and systems and come up with ideas within as well as outside, thereby empowering them with their preferred service on their device, at any time and anywhere. While it may seem that a digital workplace is dependent only on software, it requires the support of people, processes along with certain policies and procedures.
Benefits of a Digital Workplace
Apart from being futuristic, there are other benefits of a digital workplace that can eventually help businesses reach new heights. Some of them are:
Key Areas of Digital Transformation at Workplaces
When you plan to go digital in your workplace, your vision and strategy should align with your business’ digital transformation goals. It primarily would include improving employee experience, efficiency, better data management, enhanced security, etc. It would require a thorough planning and creation of a roadmap in order to create a coordinated move between sales, marketing, manufacturing, HR, IT, R&D and all other branches of an organization. Here are some of the key areas where digital transformation can be applied to revolutionize the workplace:
1. Employee Experience
While delivering optimum results to customers is our end goal, we need to keep in mind that employee experience in today’s world is of prime importance. Through digital transformation, we can create smart workspaces offering opportunities of collaboration with other employees as well as for individual concentration. Creating online spaces to recognize employee contributions can also be an effective way to measure employee experience. This enables a healthy atmosphere and creates a more enthusiastic and engaged workforce.
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2. Metrics
Digital business metrics may be hard to calculate and maintain, however it can be an effective way to keep track of workforce effectiveness, employee retention, agility and other information that you can later use to refine your business or management approach. Organizations can use digital tools to create a digital scorecard and maintain HR, IT and business metrics.
3. Business Processes
Digital transformation in a business would require overhauling of some old, traditional processes. However, this would require analysing and studying where employees spend a maximum amount of time and recognize key business processes that require automation and digitalization. In these cases, cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things can be used to automate routine tasks and enable enhanced productivity and efficiency.
4. Information
A lot of employees’ time goes in searching, consuming and sharing information and this is usually a taxing process, therefore slowing down the overall time of the task. Through digitization, organizations can make these processes seamless by providing real-time synchronization, easy mobile access to a file-sharing system. Creating an immersive atmosphere with video conferencing systems and other technologically advanced features, an organization can create an efficient digitally-empowered workforce.
5. Employee Upskilling
AI has come a long way in the field of L&D and can play a crucial role in upskilling or reskilling employees within an organization. With evolving technologies by the day, it is imperative to keep your workforce ready with updated skills. Training them physically may not always be effective and can be a lot more time consuming. AI-led training can offer candidates an opportunity to work on real scenarios and help in on-the-job skills development.
With the industry landscape changing at a rapid pace, organizations need to undergo a digital overhaul to be able to survive and continue to attract customers and talent, alike. It has now become imminent to business leaders and enterprises that digital transformation is a long-term investment. While all organizations may not be able to evolve digitally at a similar speed, the sooner they begin the easier it will be. The digital workplace will continue to evolve with time and organizations would have to transform their workplaces faster and with purpose and direction.