Tackling the main challenges in Digital Workplace Management

In an era of unprecedented change in the way we work, organizations across the world are embracing digital transformations like never before. While some or most parts of work over the last two decades have been digitized, few organizations were ready for the seismic shift seen recently in terms of integrating multiple apps, tools and work cultures to create a cohesive and efficient digital workplace. Some organizations have become extremely good at it. Most haven’t. So what are the things that organizations do to get digital workplace management practices right? Let’s find out.

The top 5 challenges in digital workplace management and solutions

Perfecting digital collaboration

Digital transformations are easy. What isn’t so easy is getting your entire workforce to collaborate seamlessly on it. Not so optimal collaboration results in an inefficient workplace and as we all know, that’s where productivity begins going downhill.

The solution

While it’s imperative that you put together the right set of tools or procure an efficient platform that will make up your digital workplace, what’s more important is to ensure it comes with a great set of collaboration features that will help your workforce perform better.

Optimizing digital work efficiency

Regardless of how good the tools that make up your digital workplace are, it all ultimately boils down to how your workforce handles it. It is important to understand that a workplace is made up of people and technology is merely a tool that will help them deliver work at a pace that you consider efficient.

The solution

Any initiative towards optimizing digital work efficiency has to begin by factoring in both people and technology to ensure you build a well rounded digital workforce that isn’t entirely dependent on technology and is instead built around it.

Addressing knowledge gaps

The keystone of digital work management is ensuring your workforce is geared to operate the technology and tools that make up your digital workplace. Organizational workforces mostly have a mix of employees of varying experiences and operational agility.

The solution

Clearly defining each strata and developing training programs that address their knowledge gaps in the tools and platforms you use will go a long way towards ensuring your employees are up to speed and can work efficiently together towards common goals.

Aligning a siloed workforce

The blight of digital workplace management if you ask any manager are siloed teams and conversations. While this is true even with regular workplaces, digital workplaces tend to compound the problem by adding the complexity of not having your entire workforce in an office.

The solution

It is important to pick digital workplace technologies and tools that enhance intra and inter team collaboration. Further, it is also important to train your workforce in agile work methodologies and create flatter hierarchies where employees can interact happily with each other in the absence of a fear of technology or poorly managed oversight.

Resolving complexities

How complex your digital workplace management practices are depends on how your workplace is built. Do you use too many tools and apps that can’t talk efficiently with each other? Are your employees spending more time logging in and out of multiple apps using passwords they can no longer remember off the top of their head?

The solution

If any of this sounds right, you have a problem that can only be resolved with tools that provide better integrations with each other. Many organizations have overcome this problem by investing in completely integrated digital workplace platforms that provide seamless integrations between tools and various third-party apps.

Fundamental problems with the average digital workplace

Using multiple tools as a digital workplace

When organizations use multiple tools to build their digital workplace, it is often beset by cost overruns and gaps in efficiency because employees spend too much time switching between apps to get work done. This manifests itself in a general slowdown of work and many issues arising from app integration problems. The easiest way to resolve this is to switch to a digital workplace platform that has all the integrated apps and tools employees need to work efficiently.

Lack of employee engagement

As we’ve already seen before, a digital workplace at its heart is run by people. And, people by nature come with their own set of intricacies and behaviors. A digital workplace to be truly efficient and productive needs a digital culture that helps them work in tandem with the technology that runs your digital workplace. A digital workplace platform with extensive social features like chat, channels, posts, comments and in-window work tools and applications helps in better employee engagement.

A downturn in productivity

Although digital workplaces are meant to be more efficient that regular workplaces, many organizations that have not taken cognizance of the points above continue to see a distinct downturn in productivity. While the effects may be very apparent with the switch to digital workplaces among these organizations, the situation only gets worse if not enough is done to stem the loss of productivity. With a digital workplace platform and the right kind of digital culture, any organization can harness the true power of digital work and the resulting uptick in productivity.

Lots of distractions

Working at a digital workplace comes with its own set of problems. Unlike an office where work is usually streamlined and monitored, digital workplaces rely more on agile processes and self-driven teams to enhance productivity. This can be a problem because there are a lot of distractions with digital workplaces. Anything from tab-switching to context switching to multiple apps creates a lot of distractions that eat into productive work time. The solution is to streamline all work with a single platform that reduces time loss, distractions, and increases productivity.

Complicated processes

Any digital workplace, to be truly efficient, has to be simple. The simplicity has to percolate into everything your digital workplace does in order to be effective. Most digital workplaces that run on multiple apps run into this familiar obstacle at some point in their digital transformations. When employees have to spend an inordinate amount of time sifting through various confusing processes to get work done, productivity is often the first casualty. The solution then is to find a single-window platform that has everything an employee needs to be efficient at work.

What is the ideal digital workplace?

An ideal digital workplace is an agile environment in which work processes are highly simplified, and the technology used doesn’t require a lot of effort to train and operate. Often, the solution experts recommend is to ditch multiple tools. The problem multiple tools represent is three fold. The cost of subscribing to and maintaining multiple tools, the time lost by employees switching work between them as they struggle with integrations and the distinct loss of productive time due to context switching.

The ideal digital workplace therefore is one that is a single-window digital workplace platform that gives your employees all the apps and tools they need within a single window so they need not switch between multiple apps to get work done. There are quite a few platforms out there that fit the description and one of those is Kissflow Digital Workplace Platform. It offers a wide array of feature-rich tools that integrate seamlessly with each other, powerful analytics tools to manage work better and a great collection of social features that will keep your employees happy, productive and delivering work at maximum efficiency.