What is Digital Workspace?
Finding a good definition for digital workspace may be a little difficult. But the idea behind digital workspace is that we make use of digital technologies (tools and platforms) to improve the efficiency of our work, at work. For example, if your field service team is provided with smartphones with internet and GPS features, they will find it easier to reach their customers’ locations to deliver product-related services like repair and maintenance. Or say, your security team can use walkie-talkies which will give them a significant edge in real-time communication which is a must if we are talking about a large office perimeter. Or for your business processes, using BPM software can enhance your operational efficiencies.
So, a digital workplace is an idea towards building a technology-driven workspace ecosystem, in big or small but relevant ways. Being a digital workspace can touch HR and office administration, customer support and services, business communication or communication at work, bookkeeping, supply chain and any area of business where technology can help in doing the task/process better.
Becoming a digital workspace
Now that we know the idea behind digital workspace, let us understand it better with 5 simple ways in which any organization could become a digital workplace –
1. Adopting digital communication at work, for work
Digital communication is probably one of the best examples of the concept of digital workspace at play. Real-time communication and connectivity, better coordination and collaboration and effective task management between teams and the team members have become the call of the day.
There are plenty of team communication tools available in the market like Flowdock, Slack, Zoho Cliq, etc. enabling instant and productive connectivity between team members or teams for better task management, coordination and collaboration.
To read more about various team communication tools, here’s a Forbes article for better guidance.
2. Maintaining IT-readiness
Merely having digital tools does not precisely make a business an effective digital workspace. To ensure that your company is indeed moving towards becoming digital, you also need to make your employees informed about the usage practices of the IT tools. IT training and workshops are one way to inculcate a sense of IT-awareness and best practices among your employees. They need to be educated about the different applications and software used by the company on a day-to-day basis, and also about data security and privacy. Equip your employees with the knowledge of cybersecurity and make sure they take data privacy seriously.
The IT devices and tools must be protected by firewalls and have strong encryption settings. Besides, they must be updated with the latest operating and security protocols. A regular and professional IT and digital systems audit can help a company keep its digital tools and technologies up-to-date and security threats at bay.
3. Having Employee Portal
Having an employee portal is another good initiative towards becoming a digital workspace. An employee portal is like the official account of an employee at work through which they can access their workplace-related information and statuses and interact with various support functions like the HR, finance, IT, administration, etc. Employees can carry out various basic activities like attendance sign-in and sign-out, apply for leaves or check its status, claim reimbursements, PMS, check salary status, etc. It varies from company to company what features they wish to incorporate in their employee portals.
4. Onboarding intuitive technology
With a plethora of technological tools for business and work, it takes a moment of intuitiveness to understand which tools or tool stands as a more simplified solution. There are too many software solutions competing in the market and many of them are not quite user-friendly. They have cluttered in the corporate space and come with the hassle of separate login credentials. An intuitive way out of this is to equip your business with an SSO (Single Sign-On) solution to reduce the start-points. This can be a single entry portal for employees so that they can get simple access to their work system without having to sign in on to multiple platforms. For example, by logging in to your Gmail account, you can access your mailbox, drive, contacts, calendars, and many other Google platforms, all through a single login.
5. Using AI & Chatbots
Chatbots are a great innovation to initiate communication with visitors to your website. You need not have a dedicated employee saying “Hi, How can we help you” 100 times a day. Automate it by using chatbots. Use human touch only when it becomes necessary. Most of the time, your visitors may not even reply to a chatbot but if he/she does, therefrom, you need to take it seriously.
Summing up…..
With the increasing impact of digital technologies on how business operations are carried out, it hardly remains a question if you should be going for digital workplace transformation or not. With digital business, a digital workspace experience seems complementary. What tools you choose comes second. What comes first is why and how you want the digital route to work for your business operations and activities. Once you have the fundamental answers, finding the right digital workspace solutions may not be that difficult. And to stay informed and updated on the subject matter, relevant digital workspace blogs could be a good place to start.