How to Design a Winning Digital Workplace

In the digital era, the demand for remote employees continues to grow. The hybrid work model is becoming increasingly popular in recent times. That is why building a winning digital workplace is the need of the hour.

According to market research, the global market size of the digital workplace was worth USD 27.33 billion in 2021. It is expected to grow by a CAGR of 22.3% by 2030. Most people have a perception that creating a digital workplace is all about using VPN and switching to cloud platforms. However, it is much more than that.

Continue reading this blog to explore the best ways to design a winning digital workplace.

What is a Digital Workplace?

Before you get into the details of how to build a digital workplace, it is important for you to know what it actually is. In simple terms, a digital workplace is a secure and connected work environment that is independent of time and place. It focuses on leveraging modern technologies to improve the capabilities of your business. 

Benefits of a Digital Workplace

Now that you have a basic idea of a digital workplace, let’s explore its key benefits.

1. More Flexibility

Increased flexibility is one of the biggest perks of a well-designed digital workplace. It allows employees to enjoy flexibility in work schedules. Your employees will be able to connect from anywhere and at any time. It ensures the optimum work-life balance and helps in improving employee engagement in a hybrid workplace. 

2. Improved Communication and Collaboration

Without effective communication, there is a chance of potential ambiguity and misunderstanding among your employees. As a result, streamlining your processes becomes challenging. Creating a winning digital workplace can address this problem in the best possible way.

It encourages two-way communication between the employees and all the stakeholders in the organization. It allows ideas and information to flow freely. With access to the right communication tools, improving communication and ensuring better collaboration among employees become easy.

3. Reduced Operational Cost

Through interactive chat boards and virtual meetings, the well-designed workplace helps in reducing overhead costs and travel costs. It eliminates the need for furniture and other equipment that are required for physical meetings. As a result, it enables your business to save more.

4. Increased Performance

An efficient digital workplace makes work more fun and enjoyable for employees. It helps in enhancing their overall performance and provides them with an exceptional experience.

Common Barriers to Success

Now that you are well aware of the benefits of a digital workplace, you must also have an idea about the common roadblocks that limit success. Irrelevancy is one of the main reasons why digital workplaces fail. If you do not prioritize relevancy, it can result in eventual breakdown or misalignment.

Therefore, it is important to ensure relevancy in terms of processes, people, and technology. Companies must invest in relevant technologies to build a winning digital workplace. Moreover, employees must be provided with appropriate training to use the technologies and deliver the desired results. 

Here are some of the common roadblocks that you must know.

• Lack of effective ways to share important business information between different departments
• Lack of clarity on how vital information is to be stored
• Lack of a knowledge-sharing culture in the organization
• Lack of qualified tech professionals
• Lack of access to relevant technologies and tools

Tips to Design a Winning Digital Workplace

By now, you have a clear idea about the digital workplace, its benefits, and potential roadblock. It is time to understand the best way to design a digital workplace. Let’s dive in!

Outline your goal

Once you are ready to get started with your digital workplace, the first thing you need to do is to outline your goals. Define the specific goals your business wants to achieve. The ultimate goal will vary from business to business.

For instance, your primary goal of creating the ideal digital workplace can be to improve collaboration or ensure better engagement of employees. Your goal can also be to increase the productivity of your employees. Having clarity about your goals will enable you to select the right path and avoid any kind of confusion in the later stages.

Moreover, it will ensure that your digital workplace strategy properly aligns with your goals. In case you are finding it hard to outline your goals clearly, you can take the assistance of the important stakeholders in your business. 

Assess your current workplace

Once you are clear about your goals, the next step is to assess your current workplace. In other words, you need to identify where you stand in the digital transformation journey. Conduct an exhaustive analysis of the current processes, workflows, and tools.

Identify the potential gaps and pinpoint how they affect the growth and success of your business in the competitive era. Moreover, you can also take a look at the approach taken by your competitors. It will enable you to easily move in the right direction towards creating a winning digital workplace.

Build an efficient remote team

After you have identified the existing gaps and come up with a strategy to address them, you need to build effective remote team. Make sure to include people who have experience and expertise in modern technologies. Your team should consist of IT leaders, HR professionals, and a management team.

The IT team will play an important role in deploying the latest technologies. Moreover, they will provide ongoing support to ensure that you make the best utilization of digital tools and technologies. The HR team will make sure to hire the right professionals for your digital workplace. They will keep the employees updated about the organizational changes and find ways to retain the best talents.

On the other hand, the management team will oversee all the business operations in the digital workplace. They will ensure that all the processes are streamlined. They are also responsible for important decision-making in the workplace.

Provide proper training

Once you have established a dedicated digital workplace team, it is important to provide them with proper training. Make sure to leverage adaptive, agile, and intelligent learning systems. It will enable your employees to acquire new skills and build an environment of continuous learning.

While implementing the advanced learning systems, make sure to prioritize security and governance. It will ensure that the systems do not affect the productivity of the employees in any manner.

Leverage virtual collaboration and project management tools

The next step is to leverage virtual collaboration and project management tools. Make sure to take into consideration the goals of your digital workplace and the expertise level of employees while selecting the tools. Choose the tools that come with a wide range of functionality but are easy to use.

One of the best workflow management tools you can leverage is Kanban. It can provide you with better visibility of all the projects your team is working on. It enables you to see how different tasks are moving and makes it easy to identify potential bottlenecks.

Kanban can prevent context switching and allow your employees to focus on one task at a time. It can improve the overall efficiency of your digital workplace and increase productivity.

Measure and improve

The final step is to measure the performance of your digital workplace. Analyze the results and find ways to improve your workflow. 

Conclusion

Now that you have a complete idea of designing a digital workplace, it is time to get started. Collaborate with professionals in your industry and boost the success of your business. With a streamlined digital workplace in your arsenal, you are ready to start getting more work down more efficiently.