Article: How workspace digitization enhances employee engagement

Leadership

How workspace digitization enhances employee engagement

In last couple of years, digitization of workspaces has led to increased productivity, greater collaboration and security.
How workspace digitization enhances employee engagement

Workspace digitization, in last couple of years, has brought real value to employees in the form of improved productivity, greater working flexibility and convenience through mobility, collaboration and security. Any device, anytime, anywhere, helps employees access real-time information and collaborate more efficiently. At the heart of this lies cloud computing that delivers greater value to businesses and more convenience to employees while helping companies reduce their capital expenditure.

Working through mobiles using the latest technology is not limited to senior executives anymore. These days, every business realizes the importance of digitization and helps employees benefit from unified and real-time communication. Through simple things such as instant messaging, web conferencing, document sharing, secure net or management tools, employees get their job done more conveniently and effectively. It's an on-going transformation, a process where a company considers flexibility, cost, compliance and security before laying out a digitization solution.

Enhancing Employee Engagement

Technology is ubiquitous and cheap. Every employee lives a better digital life beyond his/her 9-5 work hours. The millennials’ video chats with friends on mobile phones, and receive recommendations on products and services at the touch of a finger. As far engagement goes, sharing and caring often happens digitally. Enterprises must realize this and digitize their workspace if they’re interested in retaining talent. Moreover, digitization changes the way people perceive work. Beyond office, home and travel, it significantly improves productivity, reduces cost, and encourages innovation. Workspace digitization makes the job a part of a larger lifestyle.

The young workforce is tech-savvy and ready to adapt new technology, even have a higher appetite for risks. Digital workspace provides them with an environment where their interests get the highest priority. This people-centric approach translates to better employee engagement, and reinforces the relationship between the company and the employees. Digitization improves the workflow as employees can retrieve information at will. It also increases the speed of information exchange.

What’s the Catch in Workspace Digitization?

#1 The shift is changing towards anything, anywhere, anytime. 9-5 sedentary work culture is a thing of past! Increasing competition and globalization are forcing us to deliver more than we did earlier. However, we must have some flexibility; this can be achieved through digitization.

#2 The number of devices connected to the Web will grow to 50 billion by 2020. In such a situation, you cannot just stick to desk phones and workstations. Workspace digitization is a must to gather intelligence from a vast number of connections and connection types. Digitization gives rise to a holistic approach to aligning business, technical and social drivers.

Devices in the Digital Workspace

To understand the digital workspace we need to understand the traditional workspace. Traditional workspace is about an assigned task, assigned space and assigned time. Whereas digitized workspace is free from those time and space constraints. Collaboration tools are exploding in the web space to break the barriers of time and space. They improve your work experience by offering real time or near-real time communications through voice, mail, video and text.

So, what broadly constitutes a digitized workspace? Must haves include personal laptops, VPN setup for work from home or work on the move, a host of co-creation tools such as a cloud office suite, digital document management, virtualization of workstations, and syncing of mobile devices with workstations.

Flexibility requires a full complement of office setup at home. Personal laptops and private network connections such as a VPN help employees a great deal in delivering their best. And syncing workstations with the mobile devices demonstrate higher engagement. These days, employees expect more from their jobs, especially in terms of tools and techniques. They need them to create and manage information, and succeed in their professional and personal lives. The move to mobility is must.

Working space in our current environment extends beyond physical rooms. Businesses now thrive on their ability to drive teamwork across time and distance. The explosion of mobile devices brings people together in virtual spaces where they can see, present, share and co-create. If done well, physical and virtual spaces seamlessly integrate and blur the differences of physical boundaries.

Technology is growing towards a unified digitized communication. In the modern workspace, you can achieve your goal and maintain growth if you build on trust-based management, flexible work environments and secure co-working. If a business wants to grab opportunities offered by digital transformation, it has to devote at least as much attention to the employee side of digitization or workspace digitization, as they do to technology.

Forrester Research revealed that in 2016, 63 million Americans worked virtually. 82% of those who telecommute experienced less stress, higher morale and registered increased productivity. Such type of decentralized working definitely requires more digital collaboration. But it’s worth it!

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Topics: Leadership, Employee Engagement, Strategic HR, Performance Management, #ChangeManagement

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