Editorial
Digital workplace experience (DWE) has gained prominence in the last few years and picked up momentum post pandemic. In 2022, Gartner predicted that within the next three years, 50% of IT organizations will have established a digital employee experience strategy and team — a major increase from 5% in 2021. Now that is a metric worth a double take! The primary motivation for this drive and investment is the direct link between positive DEX and increased productivity, improved customer experience and ultimately increased revenue growth.
But when it comes to actually establishing and scaling a new digital workplace experience practice, what is that secret sauce for a thriving, human-centered one?
While there are several different approaches; here is a four step process from my own experience building a digital workplace practice ground up at Workday.
Starting a New Puzzle
I was hired into a role that never existed. The role was created in response to the urgent need for structure in a chaotic environment with many tools and no owners, and to have a team to be accountable for and take ownership of a critical focus area. The lack of a central digital workplace experience team was called out as one of the key reasons for the negative employee digital experience, suboptimal content experience and plummeting employee productivity, causing frustration.
The oft repeated questions that employees asked were: Where do I look for content? Why does it take so long to find something I am looking for? Is the content I found trusted? How and where do I search for content with so many disparate enterprise sources? Which is the main or central repository for trusted enterprise-wide content? What tool do I use and when (there were too many tool options with overlapping features)?
I was going to build a new team that would act as the connective tissue between Digital (us, the owners and accountable party); our partners in IT, HR and Employee Communications; our stakeholders in Product and Engineering, Finance, Sales, Legal, CX; and assisting teams from Security and Accessibility. And all of this would be to ultimately design and deliver the best digital employee experience, enabling 18,500 Workday employees to collaborate, innovate and be productive from anywhere.
The first step for me was acknowledgment, followed by acceptance. Acknowledging that this was a big, hairy, audacious goal, and a marathon (not a sprint) helped set the stage for the next step.
While every company is different, the way we began solving it was by thinking about this challenge as a puzzle. After data analysis from user surveys, user interviews, benchmarking studies and understanding the unique landscape and dynamics of the company, I came to the conclusion that we need to be able to fit four key puzzle pieces together to successfully create the beginnings of a new digital workplace experience practice. I believe that logically combining these four main components will ensure that you have the strong pillars in place for a new practice to thrive in a dynamic environment.
Related Article: Who is on Your Digital Workplace Dream Team?
The First Puzzle Piece: The Foundational Pillar
The first step in building a foundation is to establish a vision, also known as the end-state dream experience. It could be as simple as Disney's vision statement, "To make people happy," or more detailed like Tesla's, "To accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."
It's not easy to nail down a vision. In our experience, it took my team many thorough steps (and partnering and cross-functional alignment) to arrive at a well-formulated vision statement. It will be a painful exercise, but it is well worth the time investment. There will be times during your journey when having a stable vision that everyone agrees on will make it easier to stay on track and not be swayed by the whims and fancies of a few loud detractors or the latest "shiny object" (If my team is reading this, they will undoubtedly chuckle at this point, recalling my pleas not to be seduced by the "shiny object syndrome."). A vision helps you recenter during those initial weeks of rapid and fail-fast moments.
After that comes the strategy (the blueprint), which is the plan of action for realizing your vision. This includes planning and operations for achieving the desired end state as well as well-defined goals. When vision and strategy are in place, your team is ready to delve into the detailed plan, also known as the roadmap. Together, these three elements are the foundation on which your digital workplace will thrive.
The Second Puzzle Piece: KPIs, Processes and Change Management
The second part of the puzzle is operational elements, which include goals, key performance indicators (KPIs) such as NPS and eSAT, processes such as agile delivery, and a robust change management framework that can be executed, reused and reimagined throughout the entire lifecycle of your practice. For example, in our case, we learned that a fusion agile waterfall methodology worked better than a purely agile or waterfall model.
Related Article: 20 Years on and Agile Remains Elusive
The Third Puzzle Piece: Security and Access Management
The third puzzle piece is made up of two critical components: security and access. It is very difficult to strike a balance between keeping systems secure and providing an optimal user experience. Completely trading usability for more robust cybersecurity fails, because forcing employees to go through multiple sign-ons and authentication steps reduces overall digital employee experience satisfaction. As a result, it is critical to keep security and access in mind while setting ambitious experience-related goals to see what is possible and feasible given overall security controls.
The Fourth and Final Puzzle Piece: Digital Tools Ecosystem
The fourth and final tier comprises the digital platforms that are an integral part of an employee's everyday digital experience. Consider the entire ecosystem of tools and platforms that your employees use, including typical collaboration platforms, digital and physical signage, and conferencing room technologies that employees use from the pre-hire stage to the active employee to off-boarding stage.
The final tier can contain hundreds of apps. However, even multiple apps can be categorized into one of three buckets: communication, task or content management tools. This includes everything from messaging apps, intranets, document management, knowledge management, and self-service tools.
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You will require a well-conceived and scalable collaboration tools strategy that aligns with the overall vision of the larger digital workplace. Your strategy must connect the dots to the larger vision of digital employee experience. It must be skillfully executed in accordance with the larger umbrella of overall company-wide employee experience and engagement (not just the digital part, i.e. DEX). From experience, I know that this part is time-consuming (sometimes spanning several quarters), but is critical to achieving the end-state goals of a thriving digital workplace.
When these four puzzle pieces started coming together, I began to see the beginnings of our new digital workplace experience team and practice take shape. However, while this four-step plan worked for us, it may not work for every company or situation in the same way. You may need to adjust certain areas or processes, and even edit, add or remove them as needed. However, I hope that sharing my team's experience will give you guidance on how to get started with building a new digital workplace experience team at your company.
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