According to a study, 67 percent [1] of the people use their own personal devices at work and over 70 percent [2] of company employees don’t work from their desk at least once a week. These numbers continue to increase as employees, especially millennials, report that they feel more motivated to work when they use their own devices for business purposes.
Millennials now make up for the largest section of the workforce and engaging them has become a top priority for businesses.
The changing demographics in the workplace is one of the main reasons why digital workplaces are becoming increasingly popular in organizations around the world.
In fact, every company is now operating digitally at least on some level. By adopting digital workplaces, businesses can greatly improve their overall productivity and efficiency.
What is a digital workplace?
A digital workplace is the set of tools that an employee uses to get work done. It is a rather broad term which can include any platform, software, or device that your employees use to perform their day to day operations.
The idea behind a digital workplace is to give employees everything they need to be productive, regardless of devices, software, and location and in turn meet the organizational goals of the company.
While its exact definition can differ, at its crux, a digital workplace is about putting the needs of the employees first and incorporating technology in business processes.
A digital workplace helps companies by:
- Improving employee collaboration
- Finding and sharing information seamlessly
- Incorporating agile working strategies
Benefits of a digital workplace
Improving employee engagement
When employees are disengaged, it doesn’t just lead to loss of productivity, it also increases employee dissatisfaction. Just giving employees a laptop and an internet connection and expecting them to work at an optimum level of productivity doesn’t work as well as we think it would.
It’s important for companies to leverage the power of digital workplace tools in order to foster engagement and actually help employees work faster and improve their productivity.
Enabling communication
While many organizations still continue to rely on email to communicate, going through dozens of emails every day creates more problems than it solves.
Using a standalone communication/ chat application may seem like a solution, but if it’s not well-integrated with the rest of your business applications, then it will only replace one problem with another.
Instead, digital workplaces help you in bringing context and intelligence to your collaboration and communications solutions.
Digital workplaces give employees access to the most relevant tasks, conversations, notes, and files that they may require to fulfill their responsibilities. This is far more effective and manageable than skimming through several emails and their attachments.
Putting emphasis on mobility and integration
Even if you have numerous digitized numerous business processes in your organization, if all of those applications are standalone and disjointed, then they may actually decrease the productivity of your employees instead of increasing it. Employees may end up spending too much time going back and forth between applications instead of actually doing their work.
That is exactly why collaboration and communication tools that offer seamless integration are crucial for an effective digital workplace.
At the same time, companies also need to have a mobile-centric approach when considering how employees can communicate with each other. In an ideal digital workplace, employees should be able to use business applications from their preferred mobile devices and have the ability to move to a different device seamlessly, without interrupting their current work session.
Mitigating any cybersecurity risks
Digitizing your business can also open up your company to a big set of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. That is why, before activating a digital workplace and giving its access to your employees, you should have all the necessary cybersecurity measures in place in order to protect your business applications and data.
It’s also important to note that these measures should be continuously evolved and adapted to always stay one step ahead.
Establishing an ideal BYOD policy to secure your company from an insider threat is also essential for digital workplaces.
Finding the right digital workplace for your business
An ideal digital workplace strategy starts by understanding your employee requirements and selecting the right tool that can align with those requirements.
Kissflow provides a unified digital workplace platform which is especially designed for minimal work disruption. Made for the modern workplace, it allows you to stay connected and it stores data securely on the cloud.
All forms of work like tasks, processes, projects, and cases can be easily monitored and tracked on one platform. The intuitive and user-friendly interface makes adoption and implementation easy.
Ready to give it a try? Contact us now!