As the current COVID -19 pandemic has already started reshaping significant work trends, many companies need to give serious thought to workforce and employee management, staff planning, performance metrics, and other work strategies. Today, we are going to delve deeper into it.
One of the latest trends highly increasing these days, as discussed in one of our previous blogs, is remote working. In fact, according to a survey conducted in early 2020, around 83% of full-time employees, 11% part-time employees, and 6% of small business owners already started working remotely. Needless to say, during this pandemic, shifting to remote working is the best choice for maintaining all business operations normally while keeping people safe. And to make the most of this shift, companies should embrace, cultivate, and continue to develop digital workspace solutions.
Why has a digital workspace solution become necessary now? Today’s post will answer this question in detail. But before discussing why this has become a trend, what benefits your company can get from it and how to build this setup to embrace a smart work ecosystem, let us get to know first what digital workspace actually is and how it is evolving day by day. So, without further ado, let’s start the discussion.
What is Digital Workspace?
As the name suggests, a digital workspace is virtually equal to a physical workplace, enabling users to work from anywhere, boosting productivity, and bringing a revolution in how most businesses used to see perfect work environments earlier. However, digital workspace is not just limited to allowing employees to work remotely. It is a concept promoting mobility, flexibility, and productivity. It widens the remote working concept by grasping the technological advancements to diminish any remaining roadblocks for the end-users.
Digital workspace is not only about any individual employee who can access company systems from anywhere at any time. It is also about bringing everything to the table that helps an individual employee be productive regardless of the place, device, or app. How it is being used in today’s work environment – let me tell you in the next point.
Use Cases of Digital Workspace
With digital workspace strategies, many companies are empowering their employees and solving business needs successfully. Below are some common use cases of the digital workspace that can also motivate you to opt for this innovative solution for your own business.
Improvement in cargo delivery
Many transportation companies have chosen mobile digital workspace to make the worldwide cargo delivery process fast and easy. A secure digital workspace helps the companies receive reliable inflight data and design improved flight operations. Products like AirWatch, iPads, etc. help decrease operating costs and minimize long approval cycles with aviation authorities.
Better healthcare for patients
Digital workspace solution has given healthcare providers a platform to offer efficient and proactive service for meeting rising demand without increasing cost. They also get consistent and latency-free access to a unified platform that merges applications into one centrally managed catalog, making the employees more productive and improving patient care.
Organized mobile accessibility to business applications
Technology-driven digital workspace solution ensures companies have safe and consistent access to any business application regardless of which mobile device they use. A digital workspace acts as a single portal where companies can put all business applications and access in a hassle-free way.
Unified data management
With a digital workspace, companies can evaluate endpoint management solutions in Cloud to resolve everything remotely and reduce complications and cost by unifying system management on one portal.
In a nutshell, digital workspace gives you a chance to transform your business operation, employee experience, and work environment.
Why is Digital Workspace Trending?
Digital workspace is certainly here to stay and continuously evolving. It has become a necessity, especially during the current pandemic situation. It has a significant impact on the day-to-day work of business operations and employees’ work. Therefore, in other words, it is already trending. However, with time, some more trends are expected to evolve this integrated technology framework soon. So, let us have a look at top trends that can cause digital workspace transformation:
Top 5 Trends of Digital Workspace Transformation
1 Adoption of Cloud will be improved
According to statistics, the Cloud market has been continuously growing and increasing revenue for the last few years. Companies are moving their information technology framework to Cloud for improving their staff’s productivity. As of now, companies have plenty of options for smart technologies to opt for and make their business operations smoother. And these smart technologies are being more advanced with time. Adopting a Cloud solution will increase employee productivity, reduce cost, and make various business operations, like file sharing, data storage, etc. secure and easy.
2 Adoption of API and containerization will help in multi-cloud adoption
Adopting a multi-cloud strategy for business solves many business issues and helps in organizing work. But managing Cloud systems often seem challenging for many companies, especially when they move workloads from one app between multiple Cloud systems. It is expected that more companies will start depending on API-powered application development and systems to make the process of switching between different Cloud platforms easier. Such systems can help companies access real-time, better-managed data, and have a comprehensive view of their customers.
3 IT user experience will be prioritized
Many employees often find it challenging to keep up with technological advancements and integrate that into their daily workflow due to lack of training. And if employees start finding their company software usability incomprehensible, eventually they will think of changing jobs. As a result, companies will not only lose their workforce, but their digital transformation efforts will also be at risk. Therefore IT companies will adopt new software solutions and give the best to skill up their staff with tools to support training and real-time communication.
4 Remote workers will get more solutions
According to a survey conducted in March 2020, 35% of the global workforce occasionally work remotely, and 16% are full-time remote workers. After the Covid-19 pandemic, from hospitality to education, agriculture to construction, healthcare to retail, and more – in every industry, the frequency of remote working has undoubtedly been increased. Therefore, more companies will tap into advanced technologies to help remote workers in the best possible way.
5 Cybersecurity will be better
As technology is being more advanced, so are hacking, phishing, and other data breaching. To secure confidential business data, companies will put more efforts. With a digital workspace, enterprises can train employees to access confidential data securely, safeguard digital assets, design advanced security plans, and invest in tools that ensure consumer and employee data protection.
In a nutshell, the digital workspace will continue being on-trend. However, success depends on how proficient the employees are in handling technology. To make the most of the digital workspace, you should train your staff in using new technology solutions. Why should you do it? Because it will give you plenty of benefits in return.
Major Benefits of Digital Workspace
Let’s explore the benefits that your company is missing right now by not adopting digital workspace:
So, what do you think? Don’t you want to embrace digital workspace intelligence to grow your business? If yes, then you should hire a reliable digital workspace solution provider. But before hiring, if you are among those who often use the terms digital workplace and digital workspace interchangeably due to lack of profound knowledge, then first, have a clear idea about these two terms. Only after that, go for what works best for you from a trusted solution provider.
Digital Workspace vs. Digital Workplace
Before diving into the digital workplace vs. digital workspace discussion, let’s get to know what these actually are. The digital workplace refers to a digital environment created for all remote employees in a company. They can manage their work seamlessly and collaboratively in a digital workplace without actually being physically present. On the other hand, digital workspace includes digital tools necessary for remote workers doing their job. Such tools can be various software, communication tools, digital devices, etc.
Digital workspace and digital workplace both can help remote workers in many ways, but they are not the same. Let’s discuss the major differences between the two – digital workspace and digital workplace.
- Digital workspace is a fixed platform where all remote employees can work together. It acts as a central location where employees can easily access all business data and other resources. On the other hand, the digital workplace is a perfect replacement for physical workstations. In a digital workspace, employees can work individually. Also, when needed, they can communicate with each other. It is customizable according to what type of work employees are performing.
- Digital workplace provides technology-driven infrastructure, which is needed to improve employee engagement, boost productivity, and increase the company’s agility. On the other hand, the digital workspace, being a small part of a digital workplace, is where the actual work happens.
- The digital workplace directly impacts the work culture of a company by implementing digital solutions that can improve communication and collaboration between employees. To implement these solutions, a company needs to collect information on the crucial areas that require betterment and how the staff can manage work efficiently. Together with employee feedback, these data can then be utilized to launch new tools as an essential part of the digital workspace and boost employees’ productivity and efficiency. After analyzing digital workspaces, companies can correctly categorize workplaces’ potency to make employee experience better.
To implement digital transformation successfully in your company, bank on a trusted digital workspace solution provider.
How Digital Workspace Solution Can Help You
An excellent digital workspace solution provider can help your company to keep with advanced technologies and real-time collaboration. With endless possibilities of digital workspaces, your company gets a comprehensive plan and the right partner to be more productive, meet new goals, and manage a secure workforce. A renowned and reliable digital workspace solution provider helps you with:
Expertise
In assistance with expertise in everything, from cybersecurity, mobile app, IoT, Cloud technology, collaboration, etc., a reputed digital workspace solution provider understands your needs and offers a custom solution.
Experience
Just like high-level expertise, these providers have years of experience in the industry. Thus their custom solutions are perfect for your company, ensuring long-term adoption and business integration.
Industry-leading partnership
These organizations build solid partnerships with market leaders. Also, their staff is certified, proficient, and professional enough to ensure your best assistance through those partnerships.
Complete support
These organizations help your company get the ideal solution by analyzing your present work environment before designing a long term digital workspace strategy. In this way, you get a competitive advantage. They can also help you deploy and execute technologies that you are already using and support you with continuing management of your work environment and devices.
How to Build a Digital Workspace
To build a digital workspace, here are a few tips that you should consider:
Embrace the transformation
To bring change in your work environment, you need to embrace the change. You need to have the right attitude and sheer willingness to adopt digital workspace transformation and its consistency in your organization, from all types of employees, including executives, team managers, etc. along the way. To embrace the transformation, you need to discuss this among your team. You can conduct workshops, organize meet-ups, or have chats to communicate with each of your team members about how they can contribute to making this transformation easier.
Encourage your staff in sharing new ideas & betterments
Gone are the days when offices used to have mailboxes for putting opinions and suggestions in those. However, the need for this has not yet gone. Now to engage employees for bringing improvements to your company, you can choose better solutions. Opt for online surveys or anonymous message platforms through digital tools. Make sure both the feedback and what happens with that stay visible for all.
Give importance to user experience
You should always give focus on meeting the goals of your company and the needs of employees. Be it higher productivity, better work-life balance, smoother collaboration, or more socializing, you should find out the actual needs. Only then you can achieve better results in your business.
Explore a new way to lead
Digital workspace not just promotes remote working more seamlessly, but also changes the way leaders should act. With complete transparency of digital tools, leadership can be shared between teams. To make distributed teams that work together in a digital workspace free from any challenges in building a solid company culture, you need to introduce innovative ways of communication. Regularly collaborate with your teams, have chats with them, conduct one-to-one meetings when everyone is working remotely. With the right digital tools, this process can be smooth and easy.
Take care of cybersecurity issues
While planning to digitize your business, one thing you should always give importance to is cybersecurity. Often your focus may be only on making the digital transformation more manageable for your coworkers and clients. But it is also necessary to remember that once you go virtual, the chance of being hacked increases. So, to avoid data privacy threats, data breaching, phishing, ransomware attacks,etc., implement secure digital channels and connections, consider robust authentication protocols and get assistance from authorized and proficient cybersecurity service providers only.
Time to Move towards the Road of Creating a Smart Work Ecosystem
The Digital workspace defines the future of work. The best thing is, it is free from all limitations that usually a physical workplace has. Everything is just a tap away from the users. Thus companies should understand the demand of their remote employees and cultivate a digital workspace with a single aim of engaging and empowering a smart digital workforce. Needless to say, the more digital solutions your company will offer, the easier it is for the employees to ensure success in meeting goals.
Final thoughts,
In a nutshell, a digital workspace provides the necessary tools to make communication, collaborations, and connections better among employees. Implemented accurately, it can also help companies alleviate risks, follow regulatory compliance instructions, and finally perceive improved business value. So, without having a second thought, embrace digital workspace intelligence, enable a smart and efficient work environment, and ensure your business growth. If you seek any specialized and secure assistance, we are here to help you.
Author's Bio
Shoeb Ahmad, with an experience of 22 years in Digital World, heads Digital Marketing at Mobisoft Infotech. He has a rich experience in SEM, SEO, Social Media & other verticals of Digital Media. He also has been a consultant for a variety of industries, enterprises & startups. He loves reading & traveling. He often writes on various forums since he believes ‘Knowledge increases by sharing.’