My recent posts ‘What exactly is a digital workplace?‘ and ‘What is the difference between a digital workplace and an intranet?‘ generated some good discussions on Twitter and LinkedIn. I want to stay with the digital workplace theme for my last post of 2015 and bring in how you manage it.
What is the right governance model for a digital workplace? We know that a digital workplace is different from an intranet, even an advanced intranet, so how does that affect the way it is managed?
Maybe even more importantly is how you manage the transformation from an intranet to a digital workplace so you gain all the benefits and none of the drawbacks as it happens.
Who develops and implements the strategy?
Digital workplace principles need to be put into your own organisational context. A group of senior stakeholders, representing key business areas and functions across the organisation, can steer your digital workplace strategy. This enables a fuller, more complete picture of what is needed, the right direction to set, and who should lead, to be agreed and accepted.
What should everyone expect from a digital workplace?
Everyone should gain from a digital workplace although they will have different expectations depending on their roles and responsibilities. This can vary from being more productive because all the applications and information are now accessible through to finding news and discussions with people who can help you solve work problems online.
Being able to connect whenever and wherever you need to from whatever device you have also reduces stress, avoids delays and improve your quality of working life.
What standards are needed for a digital workplace?
A governance framework is needed with publishing standards forming a key part. Standards are needed for:
- Legal requirements: accessibility, personal information available
- Business requirements: usability, design, navigation, findability, ownership and information retention
- Employee needs: terms and conditions that encourage people to want to work in a digital workplace
- Security needs: confidential information protected, permissions model adopted
- Technical support: platform functionality, server support, agreed levels of service.
Gaining confidence working in a digital workplace
Anyone who plans to work remotely, especially if they are the first person in that team, wants to have the same or better experience than where they currently work. You gain confidence when the information and tools you need for work are always available to use. You feel confident that your personal information is there for you (and only you) to use still. You don’t feel any discrimination because you are working remotely from your manager, team, customers and other employees.
Only through consistently good experiences like this will it happen.
More information
For more information on how to develop the right strategy or governance framework I offer some great, practical advice, to help you in my book ‘Digital success or digital disaster?‘. You can try it first by reading the introductory chapter to find out more.
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