4 ways in which a streamlined digital workplace improves your employee engagement

eXo Platform Blog

We will end our employee engagement blog post series with this post, which focuses on your employees’ digital experience.

In a span of just a few years, technology has invaded our lives and our workplaces. Increasingly, your employees’ digital workplace is becoming at least as important as their physical workplace, and their digital experience an increasingly relevant part of their overall experience.

So why do we need a digital workplace?

While this question is commonly heard in board rooms, a better question would be, ‘What could we do with a good digital workplace?’

Indeed, even though you might not be aware of it, your employees already have a digital workplace and live a digital experience through whatever technology they use in their daily lives at work. But if you’re not aware of it, chances are that your employees’ digital experience is plain bad.

A good digital workplace helps you improve your employee engagement, by addressing all the common reasons for employee disengagement in one place.

  • Empower your employees and address frustrations with the workplace

A digital workplace, first and foremost, is a holistic tool enabling the employee to work efficiently, from anywhere. Employees feel empowered by their digital experience, not frustrated by it – the experience is user friendly and modern, and makes their life easier. What’s more, it allows them to work remotely when they need to.

It also manages company knowledge, simplifying the search for information and empowering employees to learn, to develop skills and also to contribute to the knowledge base.

  • Communicate so that your employees feel aligned with the company

Usually, a digital workplace improves your internal communications. Your internal communication messages are heard as they reach employees at their workplace, as opposed to a dedicated content intranet that never gets consulted.

Moreover, the flow of information is facilitated as employees react to this information and discuss it with each other within their communities and workgroups. These social mechanisms contribute to the establishment of a lasting and more open company culture, which prevents rumour mills and frustrations with lack of information or inconsistency in its delivery.

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  • Collaborate to improve your employees’ sense of belonging

Social connections and teamwork contribute greatly to an employee’s level of satisfaction with his/her experience at work. Digital workplaces facilitate collaboration initiatives outside of normal organizational and hierarchical divisions and make those initiatives more visible. Employees get an opportunity to socialize with a broader spectrum of colleagues and are exposed to a more diverse range of work.

  • Utilize the digital workplace to promote recognition programs and employee-engagement KPIs

As discussed at length previously, an impulse-reward mechanism is an important means of employee engagement. While recognition can be improved in many different ways, the digital workplace provides an ideal place for such recognition as it forms the focal point of numerous work interactions. Moreover, it usually comes with some built-in tracking capabilities that already gauge employee contributions.

Likewise, digital workplaces facilitate employee engagement measures that you can use as a guideline to measure progress in engagement.

To sum up, a digital workplace can improve your employee experience and your employee recognition, while boosting the level of employee engagement. Though it may not cover the entire employee experience, it nevertheless addresses a significant part, especially for knowledge workers. With current technological advances, more and more bridges exist between the digital workplace and the physical workplace – meaning that the digital’s impact on the physical is increasing.

Conclusion

In this blog, we analysed in depth the concept of employee engagement, its roots, and ways to improve it significantly. We also showed the importance of the digital experience and the digital workplace as the main lever for acting upon the employee engagement as a whole.

Digital Workplace Solutions

 

What is a digital workplace?

A digital workplace is a next generation of intranet solutions or intranet 2.0 that is based on three pillars: communication, collaboration and information. In a way this definition is true but it doesn’t cover the whole spectrum of the term.
Here are some definitions of digital workplace:

  • An evolution of the intranet
  • A user centric digital experience

See the full definition of digital workplace


Why do we need a digital workplace?

While this question is commonly heard in board rooms, a better question would be, ‘What could we do with a good digital workplace?’

Find out why do we need a digital workplace


How A Digital Workplace Can Improve Employee Engagement?

A good digital workplace helps you improve your employee engagement, by addressing all the common reasons for employee disengagement in one place.

  1. Empower your employees and address frustrations with the workplace
  2. Communicate so that your employees feel aligned with the company
  3. Collaborate to improve your employees’ sense of belonging
  4. Utilize the digital workplace to promote recognition programs and employee-engagement KPIs

Find out how A Digital Workplace Can Enhance Employee Engagement


How to launch an effective Digital Workplace?
  1. Understand users’ needs
  2. Identify your digital workplace ambassadors
  3. Build the digital workplace brand
  4. Training and onboarding
  5. Plan the big day

Find out how to create a digital workplace


How to be a good digital workplace manager?
  • Analytical skills and approach
  • Focus on employees
  • Communication and strategic vision

The success of a digital workplace project depends on a number of factors

Related Posts

I am the Chief Executive Officer of eXo Platform (the open source digital workplace platform), a company that I co-founded while in college and that I came back to after several years in the banking and consulting industry. I blog about modern work, about open-source and sovereignty issues. Occasionally, I also blog about my personal areas of interest, such as personal development, work–life balance, sustainability and gender equality.

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