According to a multi-national survey conducted by Unisys, employees at companies lagging in advanced technology (considered as technology laggards) expressed higher levels of frustration and staff turnover compared with companies that are considered technology leaders. More than half of the digital workplace, i.e. 58 percent of the employees in “technology laggard” organizations felt that it can create a negative environment in the workplace. The lack of technology required by the employees for their jobs makes them frustrated, thereby cutting down their productivity. Hence, businesses need to empower the workers and create an engaging work environment so as to utilize their complete potential.
Demand of the millennials
The new age employees especially the tech-savvy millennials, expect a workplace with the latest technology, tools, access, and connectivity for transforming their talent into action. Modern workforces utilize a combination of social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, and businesses grow when advanced technology is used extensively to enhance revenue and productivity. They work on laptops or desktops at office, use tablets to review documents during their travel, and then respond to mails via mobile phones while they are not at office. And then come back to office and present data to the clients on a digital screen. Be it the customer end or the IT support end, the level of engagement and communication of complex issues requires the presence of the latest technologies. The outcome of leader versus laggard dichotomy is that businesses that stay updated with the shift in technological advancement, survive and thrive better than the ones that fail to catch up with growing changes in the technological arena.
Updating an organization to newer technology, not only eases the business operations and its functionality, but also empowers the employees by providing them a modern workplace where they can be creative as well as become supremely productive. Failing in this step of the business can create a problem in retaining staff. Businesses that define the future with proactive investment thrive, and with the right technological investment, the workers stay satisfied, in turn retaining the right skills, knowledge and experience, that the business needs.
An empowered workforce requires a transformed digital workspace experience that spans the cloud, enables collaboration across secure perimeters and provides secure access to data and applications. Through transformation, organizations can harness automation and artificial intelligence to deliver more efficient service and support, predicting workforce needs and providing the right response in a timely manner at the point of action. Investment in the right areas allow a business to be part of defining how digital workers will evolve in the long term.
With automation increasing productivity and collaborative service experience driving user satisfaction. It also helps in the growth of the business. As the technology enhances the productivity and efficiency of our employees, the quality of the services that they provide gets better. It leads to extension in contracts or reference able accounts helping in getting new business which has positive impact on overall revenue growth.
Future of digital workplace
As mentioned earlier, today’s workplace has a growing digital divide, between technology leaders – organizations that have placed themselves at the forefront of technological investment; and technology laggards – organizations that have failed to invest in the latest technology or have invested in the wrong areas. While investing in the right technology is important to lead the business in the industry, it is also important to consider the security issues that will arise in the process. This necessitates finding the right partner for secure digital services to enable one to grow and succeed in the business.
The future of workplace is more than just laptops and tablets. The digital workplace is a constant evolution. Every day we see the rise of new technology and we need to understand its implications and how best it can empower our workforce before overlooking or adopting it. Businesses that thrive constantly keep updating their workforces with the best technologies that provide secure, omnichannel support, advanced analytics, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and identity authentication. We need to brace ourselves to upgrade to advanced technologies and make the most out of it.
Also read:
Cloud-enabled workforce models to disrupt and shape future Asia Pacific workplaces
KPMG reaps benefits of being an early cloud adopter