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Your company’s digital workplace maturity impacts many aspects of your success: employee satisfaction, productivity, customer retention and innovation. While technology is the foundation, organizations also need the right leadership, culture and practices in place to effectively use the technology and improve the workplace environment.
However, a digital workplace maturity does not simply happen. Leaders must set the tone by supporting a digital culture as well as defining governance and standards. And remember: digital workplace maturity isn’t a one-time project, but a continuous process with an ever-changing target.
Table of Contents
- The Constantly Moving Target of Digital Workplace Maturity
- How Do I Assess My Digital Workplace Maturity?
- The Path to Digital Workplace Maturity
- Four Ways to Advance Digital Workplace Maturity
- Digital Workplace Maturity Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
The Constantly Moving Target of Digital Workplace Maturity
Research has found that while having a digital workplace is a priority for many organizations, most have a long way to go to reach maturity. Reworked's 2024 State of Digital Workplace Report found that 65% of organizations ranked the digital workplace as a critical or high priority, a 2% increase over 2023.
However, only 24% of organizations felt their digital workplace is “fully mature,” down from 27% in 2023. Additionally, only 13% report that their core digital workplace is fully implemented.
Making Science CEO Jason Downie, a former director of global client and agency solutions at Google, recommends viewing digital workplace maturity as a constantly evolving process instead of a destination due to the tremendous pace of technological evolution. What may be viewed as digitally mature today may reset to lower on the scale tomorrow, he said, because of new technologies, new consumer behaviors and new business models.
Related Reading: Understand Leadership Styles
How Do I Assess My Digital Workplace Maturity?
Before you can increase your company’s workplace maturity, you must first understand where you currently are on that journey.
Without this knowledge, it’s challenging, if not impossible, to take the right actions towards workplace maturity. Jonathan Phillips, co-founder at Lithos Partners, said organizations are focusing on workplace maturity now because they see the potential of technologies, such as AI. However, these companies realize that they can only unlock true value through enhanced digital ways of working, use of data and effective governance.
Phillips and his co-founder, Sharon O'Dea use a three-pronged approach with their clients:
People
Digital workplace maturity starts with the employees, so they assess maturity through skills capability assessments using end-user usage reporting. Job descriptions, training/skills frameworks, design, data, delivery, technology and governance all inform this assessment.
Key questions to establish the skills capabilities of your organization:
- How ready are employees to meet current needs?
- What are the skills needed to support future enterprise ambition?
- How does an organization meet those needs (recruit/upskill?)
- How are employees currently using tools?
- How ductile is the organization?
- How resilient ... or how able to respond to future challenges and opportunities? Is there a digital-first culture?
Platforms
While buying and installing platforms has never been easier, Phillips said creating a singular, productive digital employee experience (DEX) is increasingly difficult. The two common strategies around tech procurement bring their own challenges: hyperspecialized enterprise platforms are often most productive, but lead to application proliferation. On the other hand, deploying ERP behemoth solutions like Workday or SAP often requires compromising process. His team uses both heuristic analytics and its Digital Workplace Experience Study to assess platform maturity.
Key questions to ask when assessing your technology:
- What platforms are in use?
- How extensively are they used?
- How do they interconnect?
- How is success defined and measured?
Process
Many organizations feel like they are winning the workplace maturity game with the right people in the right roles with the right culture, mindset and time. However, Phillip said the key ingredient is process, which is how teams interact to build digital capability, resilience and execution. Lithos uses the DWXS and other discovery techniques to find ways the organization can improve how it develops and delivers digital solutions.
Key questions to assess the state of your processes:
- What is the governance model in place?
- How are decisions being made?
- How is success being evaluated?
Related Reading: What is Digital Employee Experience?
The Path to Digital Workplace Maturity
While it’s relatively simple to prioritize digital workplace maturity as an organizational goal, moving your company forward on its journey requires overcoming numerous challenges. Reworked's State of the Digital Workplace report found that 46% of organizations struggle with constrained budgets. Additionally, Downie said he also sees data privacy, compliance and security as significant challenges for many organizations.
Four Ways to Advance Digital Workplace Maturity
1. Start With Your Company’s Needs
Downie recommends you take a careful inventory of your current tech stack and your capabilities. You need to understand the company’s vision, mission and strategy for the short, medium and long-term in order to determine the changes you need to make to your technology to help meet your goals.
2. Invest in the Boring Bits
While everyone wants to focus on the latest tech and coolest innovations for workplace technology, you must first focus on solidifying your digital foundation, Iliya Rybchin, management consulting principal, strategy and innovation at BDO said. He recommends asking the following questions:
- Is your infrastructure stable, secure, and flexible?
- Do you have access to the data and tools you will need?
- Do you have the right policies and procedures in place?
- Do you have the appropriate people in the right places?
3. Focus on Culture
While it’s easy to focus solely on technology, companies with a high digital workplace maturity create an environment that supports employees to use the technology in innovative ways as well as continually focus on digital skills. Downie stressed the importance of creating a culture of experimentation with a test-and-learn philosophy. By giving employees the freedom to fail and the time to try new ideas, employees can often find new ways to use digital technology.
4. Look at How You Use Your Existing Tools
Phillips said many organizations excessively focus on platforms and technologies. However, maturity is not simply using technology, but how you use your tools and data. He recommends focusing on the extent that you are getting value from your platforms and people to deliver your organizational objectives.
Digital Workplace Maturity Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
While many organizations have made steps toward digital workplace maturity without a focused effort, true progress only happens when an organization prioritizes the journey. Only then can employees have the environment and tools needed. However, even in the most successful organizations, digital workplace maturity take a concerted and constant effort.
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Downie said executives often ask when the best time is to start moving toward digital workplace maturity.
“The answer is always the same: Start now, because you are never going to finish. You must look at digital workplace maturity as an ongoing process of indefinite length, with lots of twists and turns in the future,” said Downie.
Here are more ways to improve your digital workplace:
- Your Digital Workplace Needs a Shepherd. Here's How to Find One — If you want to keep your digital workplace strategy on track, you’re going to need all the help you can get.
- Close the Gap Between Value and Functionality in Digital Workplace Tools — The 2024 State of the Digital Workplace Report found organizations still struggle to optimize their digital workplace. How to overcome the biggest challenges.
- How I Built a Digital Workplace Practice From the Ground Up — Looking at the four puzzle pieces needed to start a thriving team.