Prejudices about what a digital workplace is and what it entails have hampered business processes and employees’ ability to connect, communicate, and collaborate.
The pandemic is rapidly driving the need for employees to improve their digital skills so that they can be productive from a remote location. Now, this has just been found digital ingenuity is enabling IT leaders to develop an ambitious vision of future of work and digital transformation in their business.
However, in many organizations, the vision of the CIO and IT team for the digital workplace is not shared and understood by stakeholders across the enterprise. Preconceived notions about what a digital workplace is, how it can be implemented, and how it uses technology hold back progress.
Here are five of the most important myths that CIOs and IT leaders face about the digital workplace and steps they can take to redress these misconceptions.
Myth #1: Digital workplaces and digital transformations are the same
Many IT leaders struggle to fully operate digital workplace strategy, due to the misconception that it has the same goal as digital business transformation. Digital business transformation is the process of harnessing the latest digital technologies and practices to create a powerful new digital business model. The digital workplace is a strategy that uses an intuitive and engaging work environment to enhance the digital skills of the workforce.
However, both digital transformation and digital workplaces require employees to have the ability and ambition to fully participate in an organization’s digital journey. As a result, digital initiatives can support overall digital transformation goals by encouraging an organization to review its processes to propagate change quickly and effectively.
Go beyond this myth by applying new change leadership principles to inspire stakeholders to embrace the cultural change needed to succeed in the digital workplace. When communicating with business leadership, demonstrate how digital workplace initiatives are helping to build digital businesses.
UNDERSTAND: Hiring Toolkit: Data Scientist (TechRepublic Premium)
Myth #2: Adopting digital technology in the workplace can be done without changing the culture
While the pandemic has made remote work and new digital tools a necessity, many organizations continue to organize work and make decisions the way they did when everyone was together. work in an office. For example, video meeting solutions and visual collaboration applications are now widely adopted, but most organizations use these tools to simulate existing communication and collaboration experiences before this. They are missing out on the opportunity to reap the full benefits of their new technology investments.
Organizations must accept the view that ideas can be created and shared, decisions reached, and problems resolved without meeting on a daily basis — face-to-face or virtual. Reduce meeting frequency by discussing topics with workflow collaboration apps, or reduce meeting size by sharing transcripts and transcripts. Visual collaboration apps can do more than simply emulate a physical analog boardroom whiteboard, but only if organizations recognize and accept that ideas, creativity, analytics and planning can happen in new ways. Accepting cultural change along with technological change is essential to success.
Myth #3: Collaboration happens when everyone works together at the same time
Many leaders are treating face-to-face collaboration as the last vestige of the pre-pandemic workplace and are eagerly anticipating (even forcing) a return to the office. A common assumption is that the best collaboration occurs when employees in the same location, even digitally, work on a common task.
However, research shows that synchronous and asynchronous methods of collaboration are almost equally effective in achieving team innovation. The most effective measure of collaboration success is the ease with which employees can produce something with others and the confidence they feel in achieving common goals.
Hybrid collaboration cannot succeed without putting design intent into practice working together. Ensure equal and efficient access to collaboration by designing a new purpose-built work hub at the heart of your digital workplace framework. Accelerate adoption of new collaboration methods and increase trust by using collaborative work management apps to visualize work and optimize employee interactions. Enable teams to test new collaboration styles, grow communities, and strengthen relationships by introducing social and knowledge-sharing collaboration tools.
Myth #4: Citizen developers can’t create meaningful technology that works securely
IT organizations have long considered anything built outside of IT as risky “shadow IT”. Especially when citizen developers build an app or automate a workflow, it tends to be met with skepticism. The myth that meaningful technology work should only be done by IT, but the reality is that citizen developers contribute to key business goals, such as improving business processes, decision making, and so on. determination and even the ability to face customers.
Technical expertise is becoming more widespread among business users outside of the IT organization. In fact, a survey by Gartner found that 62% of business technologists are highly technical and advanced users of specialized technology creation tools, such as code development technologies. low and no code. Tasks performed by citizen developers include integrating data streams, designing analytic models, creating and training algorithms, and even creating new software functions.
IT leaders must take the work of citizen developers seriously. Help them securely build apps with access to the training, data, and other resources they may need. Work with business unit leaders to redesign and redefine technology delivery and accountability models through forming integrated teams. Facilitate a community of practice for citizen developers across departments to share knowledge and solutions they’ve built to scale efficiently.
UNDERSTAND: The COVID-19 gender gap: Why women quit and how to get them back to work (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
Myth #5: A single technology solution can act as the new work center
The new Work Center enables organizational connectivity, communication, and collaboration by bringing together disparate team productivity apps. No single solution from any technology vendor is the complete answer; The new work center will require different capabilities to meet the diverse needs of employees.
Take a competency-first approach to understand the capacity needs of each function, business unit, and team of employees in the workplace. This includes the process, data, and technology needs needed to achieve the desired business results. A competency-first versus typical technology approach ensures that all “buy, build, sunset” decisions are made with an employee-centric, focused lens. focus on results.
Tori Paulman is Senior Director of Analytics at Gartner, Inc. on topics including digital applications in the workplace, employee experience, and the future of work. Tori will present further insights into the future of the digital workplace as keynote speaker for Gartner Digital Workplace Summittakes place June 21-22 in the Americas.
