How Do You Empower a Remote Workforce? Centralise Information

Guest Blog by Sébastien Ricard, CEO, LumApps

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Collaboration

Published: September 23, 2020

Guest Blogger

The transition to a fully remote workforce has been complicated for many companies – especially as they juggle multiple digital workplace bumps, such as managing their remote workers, recalling them to the office and keeping people safe in the transition process.

To overcome these bumps, your digital workplace solution should help streamline your operations, empower your remote workers and ensure productivity. But how do you pick the right solution?

How do you measure the impact of a digital workplace?

Measuring the impact of adopting a digital workplace is difficult, and most firms aren’t doing it. In fact, they throw so many technologies into the mixing pot that most digital projects fail. It’s no surprise then that many employee communities do not have measurable and operational strategies. They continue along with crossed fingers, hoping that everything works. However, when technology is implemented to empower and improve the experience of remote workers, they can overcome several challenges.

To begin, enlist feedback from your entire organisation on what goals your business is trying to achieve. Common key performance indicators (KPIs) for this stage include:

  • Overhead cost reductions
  • Revenue generation
  • Customer service improvements
  • Employee retention and attraction
  • Employee experience
  • Brand reputation
  • Innovation

Once key stakeholders agree on the specific areas for improvement, you can begin to measure whether your current digital workplace is a success – or if it needs significant improvement. Retention of information, collaboration availability, cost savings, and feelings of positivity, productivity, and empowerment are all lead indicators of how your digital workplace is performing.

Here are six strategies to measure your digital workplace’s impact:

  1. Identify your top business goal
  2. Rethink your ROI
  3. Create a baseline for where you are now
  4. Pick the best data points for your unique workplace
  5. Consider a variety of personas
  6. Track and highlight insights – both good and bad

After determining your measurements of success, the full list of benefits of a single digital workplace will become more apparent.

What are the benefits of a digital workplace?

A digital workplace is a deliberate, constantly updating approach to empowering your employees to work remotely. However, there can be too much of a good thing. Companies around the world report they use an average of 16 SaaS applications, but a more simple solution is necessary to maximise communication, productivity and collaboration. There are tangible and quantifiable benefits to implementing a single digital workplace solution rather than relying on a variety of technology systems.

To empower your remote workers, you need to centralise the information they use. Your digital workplace solution can give your remote workers the tools they need to collaborate, connect and excel in their responsibilities. If you have various systems, pooling information becomes exceedingly difficult, and your employees have to juggle multiple applications just to complete one task.

A single digital workplace can also reduce manual processes, bridging the gap to enablement and access.

Digital Workplaces Connect and Engage Employees

Organisations that have implemented intranets and internal social media have seen an increase in employee satisfaction, an 87 percent increase in employee retention, and an increase in access to the 64 percent of employees who would take a lower-paying job if it meant they could work remotely.

Additionally, unexpected benefits that some businesses have seen include broader project knowledge and a new employee perspective of how they view the company. After the implementation of a digital workplace, employees often have more empathy and understanding of what other teams are doing because they witness more closely the intricacies of and connections with other teams. Thanks to the increased collaboration, they also celebrate the success of other groups more, share knowledge about little-known topics and solicit feedback from employees across the entire corporation.

Digital workplaces are credited with increasing workplace productivity – not just by centralising access to apps and data, but also by helping employees reduce wasted time. Unproductive meetings cost companies billions each year, with two out of every three meetings considered unsuccessful. By empowering conversations outside of structured meetings, remote workers are able to leverage alternative collaboration methods, like instant messaging and video conferences, to solve issues and address pain points.

Ultimately, your digital workplace solution should bring all the apps, tools and information your employees need to succeed into a single, centralised location.

How do you choose the best digital workplace solution?

It is essential to choose wisely before you deploy a single digital workplace solution. Before attempting a mass transition to a new system, your company should first develop a comprehensive set of goals they wish to accomplish.

The four major components your digital workplace solution should cover are:

  • The three Cs: communication, collaboration and connection
  • Access to technology
  • Compliance and governance that help control risk
  • Analysis of past and current data

Additionally, your solution should enhance your organisation’s culture by accommodating the experiences you value. For example, if your employees enjoy social media-like communication, find a solution that implements similar experiences, such as comments and like buttons.

Finally, your digital workplace should:

  • Be in a secure environment
  • Empower remote workers by leveraging their strengths
  • Bring viewpoints and perspectives from others
  • Enable deeper levels of learning in a variety of formats
  • Increase engagement amongst team members
  • Improve communication across all levels of the company

Ultimately, your digital workplace solution should make it easier for your company to centralise important information and apps, allowing for more efficiency and greater collaboration. Armed with the right solution and a productive team, you will be able to grow and adapt to changing business needs while preserving quality and empowering success.

 

Guest Blog by Sébastien Ricard, CEO, LumApps
Sébastien Ricard has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, creating major companies in Business Intelligence and Cloud. Passionate about technology, he’s one of the cloud pioneers in Europe and the US, as the creator of gPartner (distribution and integration of Google Enterprise in Europe) and LumApps (worldwide editor on the Digital Workplace market). Sébastien is currently founder and CEO of LumApps, leader in enterprise communications. He created LumApps in 2013 and joined the executive presidency in 2016 to help the company develop worldwide (EMEA, USA, JAPAC). Before LumApps, Sébastien was Founder and President at gPartner, where he spent 5 years building the company into a European leader in Google Cloud solutions distribution in EMEA. He sold the company to Devoteam in 2014 (now Devoteam G Cloud). Before gPartner, Sebastien also created 3 other business intelligence companies, including Actiware and 3 tiers Limited, sold to Keyrus group in 2001 and 2004 respectively.

 

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