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

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.

You may also like: 

• • The two pillars of employee engagement – from theory to practice
  • Common reasons for employee disengagement
  • Step-by-step guide to improving your employee engagement

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.