How to be more productive in a digital workplace

January 23, 2013 at 12:09 pm | Posted in application, benefit, collaboration, community, digital workplace, intranet, mobile, research, usability, value | 3 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

OK, so you now have a digital workplace strategy showing the direction you need to move in; a governance framwework to show who is responsible for what with standards, etc, to give you a fantastic online experience; policies and values that encourage you to use a digital workplace and benefit from them.

Now I will show how you can be more productive using a digital workplace:

Usability

It is critical that the time you use in a digital workplace is not wasted.  That means having clearly labeled information, direct route to the information, able to use the information whatever device (laptop, tablet, smartphone) you have, and be able to edit the information as well as read it.

And it’s not just information, you need to find people who can help you or you want to share some knowledge with.  Having an easy to use people finder helps as well as finding collaborative content in discussion groups with other people with similar needs or interest.

Finally if you are mobile your time is limited.  You need fast access to apps and services you need to use e.g. booking travel, hotel room, invites for meetings, hire care.  The list is long but you need to get to each task in a short time and complete each task quickly.

IT capability

You need to have the right tools and access to gain the full benefits from a digital workplace.  Your organisation needs to fund and provide laptops, smartphones, tablets as well as an internet connection and monitor screens for homeworking.  Having the right choice of devices means you can always use the digital workplace whenever you need to – checking people finder, completing tasks, sharing information.  This means you can be more productive and aim for a better work/life balance.  No more waiting to get to an office before you can do your work.  And with the right device you can do your work better, maybe faster too.

You need reliable access to your digital workplace when you need it.  If your organisation gets it wrong then you probably won’t use the digital workplace so much.  Your IT network needs to be reliable for speed and availability.  If it is frequently down for a hour or so you won’t trust it and become reluctant to use it.  If it is slow then you will vote with your feet and stay in a physical office where you can contact people and work better.

Security

You must be confident you have secure access to your digital workplace.  Your organisation needs to be confident it will not be abused by anyone away from their physical workplaces.  For example if you want to check your pay record online you want 100% confidence only you can do this.  Likewise if you need to access sensitive information online the organisation also needs 100% reassurance only those with the right permissions, like you, can use it.

To be fully productive you need to use these services with confidence about how secure they are in a digital workplace.

Involvement

Your organisation needs to develop and have available the things you need to do your work.  Research will be needed before your digital workplace can be used.  You should be involved and asked questions like:

  • What is the information you need?
  • What applications do you need for your work?
  • What collaborative tools do you to share?
  • Will any device work in your digital workplace?

All of these need to be addressed before you need them.  It may take your organisation time, effort, and money to research fully what is needed.  However it will be seen as an investment in the months afterwards when you start using your digital workplace because it helps you to be more productive.

Please contact me if you need my help or leave a comment on this post.  My next post will cover how the weather can help your digital workplace.

Help with intranets, digital workplaces, collaboration and SharePoint

February 7, 2012 at 9:19 am | Posted in benchmark, benefit, best practice, collaboration, content management, digital workplace, engagement, governance, homepage, intranet, mark morrell ltd, plan, publishing, research, SharePoint 2010, social media, standards, strategy, training, usability, user testing, value, wiki | 1 Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thinking about what is the best way to implement SharePoint 2010?

Are you looking for good examples of managing intranets?

Are you planning how to transform your digital workplace?

Maybe you want to use collaboration tools to increase employee engagement?

Now you can find helpful information on all these areas in one site.  It combines my first-hand experience managing BT’s intranet with my knowledge and help improving other intranets to show how you can improve your intranets and digital workplaces.

If I can help you further please contact me whenever you want to.

Get IT right for your digital workplace

August 15, 2011 at 12:00 pm | Posted in best practice, digital workplace, intranet, mobile, value | 2 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

In my previous posts on the digital workplace I have covered ‘Must have digital workplace principles’, ‘5 steps to a great digital workplace strategy’, 7 ways to engage people in a digital workplace, 4 factors critical to good governance in a digital workplace and HR policies to encourage a digital workplace.

To have a successful digital workplace (my definition is ‘work is what you do, not where you go to’) organisations must have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully. It becomes the natural way of working so everyone is more productive and your organisation more efficient with:

  • people work from any location as well as their office workstation
  • IT infrastructure for the same or similar experience
  • everyone can read news, collaborate, search and complete tasks
  • individuals choosing tools – RSS, mobile, etc. – that help them
  • organisations measure benefits and encourages digital workplace

Follow these ‘must have’ principles including strategy, engagement, governance, HR policies and IT infrastructure and you will have a great digital workplace.

IT infrastructure

These digital workplace principles won’t work without the right IT infrastructure in place.  This will include:

Equipment

Making sure people have the right kit to take advantage of the opportunities digital working offers.   Organisations need to fund and provide laptops, smart phones, broadband and/or wifi, tablets like iPads and monitor screens for homeworking.  All these are needed for individuals to do their type of work effectively.  The aim must be more productive workers who are happier because their work/life balance is better.

Connection

Access to the digital workplace when employees need it is the most critical thing to get right.  Get it wrong and digital working won’t happen – simple as that.  The network needs to be reliable for speed and availability.  If it is frequently down for a hour or so people won’t trust it and be reluctant to change their behaviour so the digital workplace strategy works.  If it is slow then people also will vote with their feet and stay in a physical office where the people they need can be contacted.

People must be confident they have secure access to the digital workplace and the organisation needs to be confident it will not be abused by anyone not in that organisation’s buildings.  For example if you want to check your pay record online you want 100% confidence only you can do this.  Likewise if you need to access sensitive information online the organisation also needs 100% reassurance only those with the right permissions, like you, can use it.

Services

Organisation must have developed and have available the things people need to do their work.  Research may be needed before digital workplace is implemented:

  • What is the information needed?
  • What applications are needed for their work?
  • What collaborative tools for sharing?
  • Are there mobile versions?

All of these need to be available when they are needed.  And don’t guess what they are – invest the time, effort and money to research fully what is needed.  It will be seen as an investment in the months afterwards when you see people using the digital workplace because it has all they need for their work.

Make sure these meet the needs of people using.  THEY MUST BE USABLE!  If not, you will waste a lot of potential benefits in time taken trying to use unsuitable tools.

All of these help create the confidence needed to encourage everyone who is able to, to move to a digital workplace.  This may need up front investment but the business case should show the savings made in office space, travel costs, time saved quickly justify the costs.

More on the digital workplace in my next post.

7 ways to engage people in a digital workplace

July 20, 2011 at 3:33 pm | Posted in benefit, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, intranet, mark morrell ltd, strategy, value | 7 Comments
Tags: , , , , ,

In my last three posts on the digital workplace I have covered ‘Must have digital workplace principles’ then focused on the first principle ‘5 steps to a great digital workplace strategy’ and lastly ‘Create a brilliant digital workplace with me’.

To have a successful digital workplace (my definition is ‘work is what you do, not where you go to’) organisations must have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully. It needs to become the natural way of working so everyone is more productive and your organisation more efficient with:

  • people working from any location (or mobile) rather than their office workstation
  • IT infrastructure for the same or similar experience wherever someone uses the digital workplace
  • everyone able to collaborate, search, complete tasks as well as read the latest news
  • individuals choosing tools – RSS, mobile, etc. – that help them
  • organisations measure the benefits and encourage you to use the digital workplace

Follow these ‘must have’ principles including strategy, engagement, governance, HR policies and IT infrastructure and you will have a great digital workplace.

I’m going to cover how people need to be engaged for a digital workplace to be successful.

Engagement

It is absolutely critical to your organisation to have people working who are fully engaged.  They are satisfied with their roles, happy with their work and their colleagues and look forward to working each day.  If not then the costs of lost productivity and extra time spent managing for the same or less output can be horrendous.

There are two audiences you need to engage:

  • For the success of your strategy: your stakeholders
  • For the ongoing success of the digital workplace: everyone

Stakeholders

You have to engage the people who will have biggest influence on your strategy and who will be affected the most.  These are your stakeholders.  They will represent the key functions of the organisation that are either the first priority and/or the biggest factor in whether it succeeds or fail.

Your stakeholders need to buy-in to your digital workplace strategy at the decision making level of your organisation.  You need to communicate clearly and timely what their involvement will be.  They won’t want any nasty surprises – just nice ones!

This is a similar approach to how stakeholders are engaged for successful SharePoint 2010 implementations.

Everyone

How do you get everyone to be comfortable with a digital workplace?  You need to make sure the ideal culture for a digital workplace is in place or planned for before you start.  There are seven factors you need in place for this to work:

  1. Everyone who will benefit is able to adopt this new way of working.  Some may already be working like this, some partly and others planning to.
  2. There is enthusiasm for working in a digital workplace.  It is seen as something positive, that people will want to do and be envious of those who already can.
  3. The culture in your organisation is strong on ‘doing things online’ so individuals can carry out their normal work tasks in a digital
    workplace.
  4. You are encouraged to share knowledge to help anyone in your organisation no matter where their location is or time zones they normally work in.  You may also be incentivised to do this.
  5. You can easily use the tools with no or minimal training to collaborate and share knowledge.
  6. Policies and processes that encourage everyone to use the digital workplace and don’t restrict innovation.
  7. Individuals can easily move from a physical location where they regularly meet their work colleagues to remote locations without feeling isolated because the digital workplace tools help to avoid this.

Applying this approach helps to create a buzz around the organisation for digital working.  People feel envious of those who have started.  There is impatience for everyone to benefit.

Organisations start to see improved productivity and levels of service, processes streamlined and absentee rates dropping.

In my next post I will cover how governance is another ‘must have’ principle for a successful digital workplace.

When will mobile priorities come first?

March 31, 2011 at 9:00 am | Posted in application, benchmark, intranet, mobile, publishing, SharePoint 2010, social media, usability, user testing | 8 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , ,

When will organisations start designing and creating applications, web pages and social media tools with mobile devices as the first priority before PC users?

More and more people are using smartphones for their work.  While travelling or working remotely from their normal place of work they need to use their intranet.

But we still design for PC users as the first priority.  This can mean it is more difficult than it need be when using a smartphone on your intranet wasting unnecessary time or having to involve others taking them away from their work.

When will the tipping point come and first priority be to check that anyone with a smartphone can have a great experience using a new intranet tool?

When the Intranet Benchmarking Forum last benchmarked BT’s intranet they said “BT’s intranet is designed to support mobile workers so it is fully accessible from mobile devices.  Mobile users use a text-based interface.”

People in BT can use their Blackberrys to:

With the rollout of SharePoint 2010 it is critical that people can use their Blackberrys to do this.  As you can see from comparing these screenshots showing SP2010 sites using a PC and Blackberry that is possible.

How long before the experience is as good or even better when you use a smartphone compared to a PC though?

Great intranets help make efficient people

July 28, 2010 at 7:46 am | Posted in application, benchmark, benefit, best practice, homepage, intranet, research, usability | 3 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

When I posted about the latest results for BT ‘BT Intranet 2010 benchmark results‘ I promised to give examples the Intranet Benchmarking Forum highlighted as global best practice.  The first three examples are:

The latest example covers how BT’s intranet improves efficiency saving wasted time searching for the wrong stuff or sites not being well organised enough.  IBF said the BT Homepage was excellent at directing people to tasks tasks that were completed successfully.

BT Homepage groups services and content functionally under the title ‘Essentials’ so people have everything easily to link to when completing an activity.  Here are some slides showing examples of what is grouped under each heading on the BT Homepage.  Users liked the changes when we asked for their feedback.

Research with users shows high satisfaction with the BT Homepage and 91% were satisfied with Essentials which was great news.

People also rely on the BT A-Z.  This is an index of all sites that have a BT-wide purpose and are cross-indexed if need be under more than one letter e.g. Group Finance is under G and F. 

I’ll cover our A-Z in a future post.

2010 BT Intranet user research update

May 21, 2010 at 8:53 am | Posted in application, benchmark, intranet, oracle, research, standards, usability | 1 Comment
Tags: , , , , , ,

I recently posted about the latest user satisfaction with BT’s intranet but forgot to mention one key area which really troubles me.  Self service applications.

You will know my concerns on their usability and the problems trying to improve it.  Well, the research confirmed all of these and showed me how much users are prepared to put up with because they have no choice.

But it is the huge loss of productivity because of the time taken completing tasks, asking helpdesks, colleagues or searching for online guidance or having to be trained to do these tasks which is my aim too.

I am working with my IT partners in BT and with our suppliers of self service applications like Oracle to improve the ‘out of the box’ usability.

This will take time but it is tackling the problem at the root source so should ultimately bring many benefits to BT and other customers of these applications.

Improving usability with Oracle

April 28, 2010 at 10:35 am | Posted in application, intranet, oracle, standards, usability, user testing | 2 Comments
Tags: , , , , , ,

Oracle is holding their first Usability Board Europe meeting on May 5th.  I’ve been to a previous Oracle meeting and am keen to improve the usability of all applications BT uses.

At this meeting Oracle and founding members will:

The usability issues I will be raising are:

  1. Out of the box usability must be high
  2. Better usability does not mean more features.  It means features must be more usable.
  3. Think of users when offering help.
  4. Don’t focus on making error messages better, aim to prevent users making errors.

I’m sharing some slides I plan to use at the meeting.  Anyone want to add anything?

Use accessibility as a lever to improve

February 3, 2010 at 2:45 pm | Posted in application, intranet, standards, usability, web accessibility | 3 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

I sometimes come across sites and applications on BT’s intranet which could be more usable.  I find it can be easier to pick up with the owner or developer about its accessibility as a lever to improve other areas such as usability.  Why you may ask?

Well there are some improvements which are a matter of opinion.  What is usable to one person maybe very unusable to another.  They are subjective.

But accessibility is NOT subjective.  Either a site is accessible or not.  Also in most countries there is a legal requirement for web services (this includes intranets) to be accessible.  The level required may vary.

Accessibility standards are available to everyone on the internet.  So whether a site or application is developed, published or managed inside or outside of your organisation, the information will always be there.

When a site or application’s accessibility is being updated it is a great opportunity to improve the usability and make other changes at the same time.

So ideally you can improve a site or application so it is legal and improved in other ways to give a better overall experience for all users.

Preventing accessibility problems as well as correcting existing problems is very important for your users as well as your organisation’s legal responsibilities.

I’ll post soon about what BT does on web accessibility.

Mark Morrell meets Oracle: update

January 29, 2010 at 9:08 am | Posted in application, intranet, oracle, user testing | 5 Comments
Tags: , , , , ,

I met with Oracle and other Oracle customers earlier this week.  This was the first of what Oracle hope will be regular meetings with their major customers in Europe.  The main focus was on content and document management product features and roadmaps.

I left with the impression that Oracle seriously wants to continue improving the usability of Universal Content Management by engaging with their customers through webcasts and meetings.  The next release of 11G using Fusion promises to move towards what I would like – a simple publishing experience which needs minimal IT involvement.

I would like the following to happen next:

  1. Oracle should hold frequent webcasts with customers to cover future direction of UCM and other products like E-Business Suite.
  2. Customer representatives should have more business users attending with their IT partners.  I was in a small minority at this week’s meeting.
  3. Intranet managers who are Oracle customers should make sure they attend these meetings.
  4. Intranet managers should improve their relationship with their IT partners so they are more involved in decision criteria on products so it covers usability and productivity costs during its lifetime.
  5. Meetings should focus more on how Oracle products can be used by customers than on the components that make up the technology.
  6. An agreed set of usability standards underpin the direction of product roadmaps.

We should never forget the goal is to make it easier for people to do their work by using technology that is giving best overall value to the business not to have the latest whizzy feature which doesn’t.

And that applies to any software from any vendor our organisations buys.

Next Page »

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,363 other followers