The promise vs. reality of the digital workplace

A great digital workplace ensures:

• productivity and efficiency;
• effective communication and engagement – with and among all employees;
• smooth collaboration – intra and cross-teams;
• continuous organisational learning; and,
• safeguard of contractual obligations and rights.

Despite these promises, a gap exists.

For a few years, organisations have been investing in the creation of digital workplaces – frequently without a clear strategy, even more frequently experiencing many drawbacks.

Too many tools, separate and unintegrated, represent:

• no focus point, making it hard to communicate, lead and engage effectively, above the deafening and distracting cacophony;
• poor user experience, with people unsure of which tools to use for what and how to properly use them;
• inefficiencies due to interrupted workflows time spent looking for answers;
• avoidable mistakes due to spread, duplicated, erroneous, unstructured and “privately-shared” information, and inability to leverage the whole;
• additional pressure on internal teams, having to validate, support and oversee the functioning and security of the varied array of tools;
• exaggerated storage and licensing costs.

In addition to these issues arising from the plethora of tools, many organisations are not yet fulfilling the digital workplace promise because of a combination of these:

• unsuitable combination of tools;
• lack of knowledge and guidance on how to use their existing tools to maximum effect;
• poor governance;
• lack of leadership; and,
• inadequate work practices.

Coming from different angles and driven by varying motives, organisational areas are now challenging the digital workplace, keen to improve it and see it fulfil its promise.

Boards and IT want more value for their bucks, i.e. reduce costs and/or have more people taking advantage of the available technologies.

Internal communications needs to cut through the noise of too many channels, to find better ways of communicating to the whole organisation, keeping all staff informed and engaged.

There is an aspiration to improve digital dexterity and leverage digital technologies to create and satiate the appetite for continuous development.

Most covet the promised land of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) but the “house” is not ready for it and there is a real danger of “garbage in, garbage out”.

Leaders want to remain relevant, stay close, and keep oversight of progress, risks and opportunities – even when leading distributed teams.

This is the second of 3 posts. The first one looked at what is a digital workplace and what use cases it should respond to. The next one will include strategies for bridging the gap between the promise and the reality of digital workplaces.

If you are really curious, you can access the full article here.

At Social Now 2024, Adriana Jacinto will show how to understand people, to then design targeted interventions which nudge them towards the use of digital platforms; and Fabio Frota will show how to use Copilot to save time.