How to prioritize the employee in the digital workplace

Throughout 2024 and beyond, workplaces will continue to drastically change as the hybrid work model has become a standard practice, meaning companies have had ample time to ensure its workforces are suitably prepared.

However, this year it is expected that the ongoing demand for digital agility will only increase.

Whilst last year approximately 40% of European employees had some form of remote work flexibility, many organizations still are trying to find the perfect balance between the office and home to best manage their workforce.

With employees generally preferring the flexibility that hybrid working allows, employers are contemplating the best course of action to drive company cultures towards pre-pandemic levels.

Many businesses have attempted to encourage a culture of returning to the office, but this has been met with a lukewarm reception.

Nonetheless, the rapid deployment of more remote working tools during the pandemic has, in some cases, led to diminished levels of employee engagement.

This, in turn, has impacted business profits and overall company productivity.

By implementing a seamless tech-enabled (or digital) workplace that prioritizes employees, employers can drive collaboration and productivity, subsequently boosting business outcomes – whilst concurrently fostering and improving the organizational culture.

But many companies are left asking themselves where to begin?

The process of building a digital workplace

Undoubtedly, a smart and constantly evolving digital workplace has a plethora of benefits for workers and businesses.

At the forefront of many employees’ minds when considering their job satisfaction is corporate culture.

Whether the job is fully remote, in-person or hybrid, a supportive culture will always be pivotal and under constant employee scrutiny.

Therefore, it is imperative that businesses prioritize and promote diversity, inclusion, and empathy within the workplace.

Technology can play a key role in fostering these values.

Through the integration of workplace technology with human-centric strategies, companies can streamline internal workplace activities.

Team assembling, which is the process of an individual joining or leaving the company, becomes far more efficient.

Virtual desktop infrastructure, which enables employees to access their machines from anywhere, is not only cost- effective and experience enhancing, but can also foster a feeling of ‘belonging’ within the business.

To formulate an effective employee experience strategy, businesses should begin by collecting feedback from staff on the current processes, any frictions and overall employee experience.

An important aspect is assessing the existing company culture and values to ensure that they align with the desired levels of inclusion and proactivity.

As a result, businesses can create a consistent workplace ecosystem of analytics, solutions, and support.

How to do successful workplace modernization

While in theory this sounds like a good idea, what does successful workplace modernization actually look like in practice?

A great example which springs to mind is the use of a ‘cloud-first’ strategy which understands that workloads still needed to be placed in strategically arranged data centers.

This creates a highly functional IT environment, allowing staff to work efficiently on stable, resilient, and secure systems.

Such an approach has proved to be successful for marketing data and analytics company Kantar, which through its transformation in collaboration with Kyndryl, has managed to accelerate its actionable insights to its customers through its implementation of automated and streamlined provisioning of infrastructure.

Digital experience management (DXM), which involves overseeing and optimizing the user journey through tracking and feedback, is another great strategy to drives workplace modernization.

DXM optimizes employee experience and enables user issues to be proactively and automatically resolved, thus increasing employee engagement and productivity.

This means that, in some cases, thousands of workloads can be consolidated, reducing costs, and increasing overall business efficiency.

But this creates more questions for employers over the next year, particularly as the workplace continues to evolve.

How is the workplace set to develop this year?

Inevitably, cost will continue to play a significant role in the way businesses approach their digital workplace strategies this year.

With ongoing economic uncertainties, businesses will be looking to streamline their digital workplace transformation and ensure its practices are as cost efficient as possible.

Secondly, there is a growing trend amongst companies to consider employee experience (EX) as well as customer experience (CX) when making broader business decisions.

Whilst it is becoming common knowledge that good EX results in an improved CX, this transition can partly be attributed to a switch towards a hybrid working model.

Previously, discussions between businesses and their trusted technology partners were centered around the technical elements such as service level agreements, yet they have become more focused on EX – such as employee satisfaction, talent retention and productivity tools.

The next business hurdle will be to determine which technologies are fleeting trends and those that will become cemented structural business changes.

This is not an easy task, with the economic instabilities of 2024 making businesses even more cautious of unnecessary expenditures and investing in technologies that have the potential to be redundant in a few years or even months.

Therefore, organizations need to ensure that they invest in opportunities that remain relevant regardless of workplace changes.

For this reason, I expect that many businesses will be looking to implement measures to build long-lasting digital workplaces in 2024 which allow employees to collaborate and increase productivity, leading to long-term impact on not only employee health but also business health.

This due to the quality of interactions between employees and customers increasing, thus improving customer service and the businesses bottom line.