In our previous blog posts, we've explored how digital transforms traditional business models and improves customer experiences to accelerate business growth. We will now discuss how digital is enabling better ways of working.
A new future of work is upon us. Over the past three years, we've experienced rapid changes in how we live and work and have gone through significant societal shifts. It is now clear that the way we used to work has changed for many people. Switching to 100% remote work during the pandemic was not an easy task. It involved long video calls at all hours, endless emails, difficulties in collaboration across departments and fewer team recreation activities.
But, remote working has also offered the opportunity for better work-life balance, improved productivity due to fewer disruptions and financial benefits for both the workers and the businesses that save money from expensive office spaces. In fact, 77% of remote workers say they're more productive when working from home (CoSo Cloud).
And these benefits are the main reason why more and more businesses are embracing fully remote or hybrid working models. But, as with any change, they need to tackle challenges mainly related to collaborations, communication and employee experience.
Here is how, by using the right digital technologies, you can enable improved working methods.
Creating a connected digital or hybrid workplace
Using digital technology to improve ways of working is one of the main priorities for businesses in 2022. If you think you already have digital systems in place, you need to ask yourself: Does your current technology work for your people? Does it make their work lives better? Does it increase both employee satisfaction and productivity? If the answer is "No" or "maybe", it is probably because your business bought digital tools, branded them - if possible, sometimes trying to integrate other software - and then asked employees to use them. COVID-19 made things worse by adding more online tools and touchpoints. As a result, people are now tired and confused by using multiple tools for their day-to-day activities.
The future of work requires unified and ultra-connected hybrid digital/physical workplaces with technology foremost designed around people. To tap into the full potential of your people, you should not make technology decisions in a vacuum, and IT and innovation departments should talk to the rest of the business and listen to their needs. Additionally, creating the right ecosystem of partners to guide you through digital transformation, understanding your needs, showing you what is possible and ultimately deploying the right digital technology for your people is fundamental for the transformation of your organisation to succeed.
Design-led thinking and workplace analytics are crucial to creating better ways of working. Businesses should deploy digital platforms designed to provide personalisation to accommodate each employee's needs, automation, analytics, low/no-code interfaces, easy knowledge management and consumer-grade user interfaces. The goals are to significantly reduce organisation silos, improve internal communication and collaboration, and bridge the gap between employees and customers.
Digitally transforming the on-boarding and training process
If you are hiring, onboarding and training your staff digitally or hybrid, you know the struggle of sharing knowledge, creating and sharing training material, monitoring progress and providing feedback in real-time. And, if this struggle stops you from delivering the onboarding experience your new team members need and expect, you are more likely to lose them.
Millennials, in particular, expect to get on-the-job learning and training quickly and straightforwardly with real-time mentoring and coaching opportunities. However, most businesses don't have any digital mechanisms or use different tools for onboarding, training and managing knowledge. This makes it difficult for their new hires and existing staff to find what they need quickly and easily.
It doesn't matter if you work in a digital, physical or hybrid environment. You need to help your new hires hit the ground running by providing them with:
- The business mission, values, brand and culture
- Their role, what is expected from them and current ways of working
- Training and mentoring courses and objectives
- A central place to review, manage and store business knowledge
- An easy way to collaborate and communicate across the business
- Workplace analytics
How can you make this onboarding and training process easy and create a seamless experience for your people? You do this by putting everything in one place, a digital platform that can be customised to include everything your team needs. For remote workers, in particular, using a single platform to store all the core information and training courses with custom learning objectives and compliance and progress monitoring is a highly effective and efficient way to onboard and motivate them.
Using a digital platform to onboard and train staff enables businesses of all sizes and geographies to increase talent engagement, satisfaction and retention and significantly improve productivity.
Designing the new employee experience
Businesses need to take a more comprehensive view of the employee experience, considering physical, digital, and cultural interactions. Work is now more dynamic, agile and unconnected to physical locations. People seek more meaningful connections with their work, become less attached to their businesses, and more connected to their teams, careers, and communities.
To design the experiences that empower your people and business, you first need to understand your employees' expectations, needs and challenges. Workplace analytics can give you a holistic view of how your people work and the challenges they face, but you also need to talk to them and listen to what they say. It will enable you to design employee experiences that improve their work lives and empower them to grow and develop within your business, focusing on their satisfaction and well-being.
Especially after COVID-19, there is a much greater focus on employee health and well-being. Remote working has brought various challenges to people, including increasing stress levels, overworking, loneliness and lack of human interaction, communication issues and so on. Employers are now called to resolve these challenges and do more to protect their people.
Digital has brought opportunities to transform the way businesses track their employees physical, mental, and psychological health. Using digital platforms, employers can create bespoke environments that provide communication hubs for their people to talk, engage in recreation activities, share their challenges and get help from their peers and managers. You can create a positive, social atmosphere with a sense of community that has nothing to do with work and focuses solely on employee happiness and well-being.
A digital platform can be designed to monitor employee mental health by recording their mood and feelings to identify patterns of emotions and stressors and take proactive steps. Businesses can now use digital to make sure their people stay healthy even if they work remotely by encouraging them to sleep well, eat healthily and increase their physical activity. Businesses that fail to do that are more likely to lose significant people from their organisation, deal with more mental health sick days and lower productivity rates.
Digital transformation is not just about technology; it is also about putting people at the heart of everything you do. Use digital to meet your customers' and employees' needs and expectations by providing next-generation experiences, better ways of working and market-leading digital propositions. You now have the opportunity to take everything that has happened in the previous years, apply digital technology, adapt to societal trends and create the next normal - as you imagine it.
Let's create businesses with no silos, no barriers, no limits.
How to start with digital transformation
At Calls9, we help big brands and scale-ups launch, scale and build value through technology.
We have designed a process that helps you quickly see how your organisation can use digital to transform by understanding:
- How your customers and employees perceive your business to identify areas of improvement
- What the competitive landscape looks like, and what changes in your sector could affect your business
- How digital can enable new business models, better ways of working and improved customer experiences
At the end of the process, you will have a clear digital transformation strategy built around your specific needs and designed to help you improve your business, disrupt your market or enter a new one.
We then use this strategy to kick-start a programme of digital transformation.
Book a free consultation today
