Building new organisational models to achieve true digital transformation
Every organisation should be developing their digital workplace. It’s not about one, single solution, but about understanding all the many and varied tools and digital experiences staff need and have when working. Leaders and managers should understand that data is an asset, and should be looking for ways to use business intelligence to inform decisions and create new opportunities. The business needs pushing in new directions, but strategy and decisions need to be supported by relevant information, and considerate of employee productivity and satisfaction.
Yet here we are, 18 years into the new century, and many companies still don’t know how to define, manage, or develop their digital workplace. Too often, internal processes are antiquated, relying on laborious manual steps. Worse still, managers fail to grasp the true meaning of ‘transformation’, and don’t fully consider the people and process changes required when new technologies are deployed.
“Management doesn’t care very much about the digital environment of employees. Strangely, they care more about the physical environment but the digital workplace has been massively neglected. Senior managers pay no or little attention to their the intranet,” says intranet maverick and worldwide experienced consultant,Gerry McGovern.
McGovern will lead a workshop in partnership withIntranet Nowon 23rd January, in London, to address the cultural and tactical matters that must be considered so that ‘Your intranet doesn’t have to suck’. The workshop will look at how to effect change while creating task-based intranets that suit employees’ needs.
MARGINALIA spoke with McGovern to explore what organisations should be doing to ensure they create an effective, 21st century digital workplace. In this interview, McGovern suggests a radical change of leadership style and organisational culture, which puts the individual to the centre of attention. He gives practical examples, and also shares some emerging trends coming to the workplace.
GL: What is holding organisations back when it comes to their ability to create a digital workplace that employees find easy to use?
GM: The core problems are lack of management, focus, and engagement. There is a historical lack of respect from management for employees. Employees are given poor systems and expected to understand how and when to use them, even when things take longer and they can’t see the benefit.
If we compare the quality of internal versus external digital tools – enterprise software versus public consumer software – they are like night and day. There’s a vast difference in the quality of the experience they deliver.
Management doesn’t care very much about the digital environment of its employees. Strangely, they care more about the physical environment but the digital workplace has been massively neglected. Senior managers pay no or little attention to their the intranet; so employees struggle with subpar software and become disengaged, partly, because the digital tools they’re forced to use make everything so arduous and have steep, and costly, learning curves.
GL: What do employees need and want from their digital workplace?
GM: Employees expect just the basics from a digital workplace. People have been shown by Amazon, Google, and even Twitter, how easy things can be. So, they just expect things to work and to be relatively simple. They certainly don’t expect to have to deal with a torturous, horribly designed, IT system.
Most organisations are not delivering the essentials, and so employees are frustrated. It’s essential that information and processes are up-to-date and accurate. But the ability to manage and make information findable in most organisations is still terribly poor. It’s down to a lack of management; there are no quality controls, and no processes for removing out-of-date and irrelevant information from the intranet, the document management system, or the various project management ‘systems’.
