The Digital Workplace: An Introduction

What is a digital workplace?

The digital workplace — a combination of remote and in-person collaborators who need to communicate effectively — is here to stay. The pandemic accelerated the digital workplace trend, increasing the number of remote and hybrid employees and expanding video conferencing platforms.

But this transition to the digital workplace is not without its frictions. For example, many companies have cobbled together solutions that may have utilized a variety of devices and platforms that are incompatible and don’t always “work and play well” with one another.

Digital Workplace User Experience

And the user experience may not be all that you expected as employees with little remote experience may have struggled to learn when using devices or platforms with less-than-intuitive interfaces. Even employees with remote experience may have their collaborative contributions impacted due to poor audio and video solutions — whether they’re at home or in the boardroom.

Other friction points are connectivity — poor connectivity can leave employees feeling frustrated, lonely, or detached from their teams; scheduling and management — keeping everyone engaged and on time and ensuring there are rooms and devices ready; and security issues — a wide range of devices on company networks, machines accessed by family members with little cybersecurity oversight, and less-than-secure home networks, are all potential headaches for your IT department.

The solution to eliminating these frictions is to create a high-performance digital workplace. The right digital workplace seamlessly links team members anywhere in the world. While specifics can vary wildly there are some fundamental considerations when choosing a solution.

Key Considerations for a Digital Workplace Solution

Obviously, the platform should be easy to use, but also easy to deploy, support, monitor, and troubleshoot. And clear and concise training resources should be readily available. The solution should also include devices that are purpose-built and it should support enterprise collaboration. Specifically, devices that provide intelligent video, clear audio, localized AV options, intuitive content distribution, and effective video conferencing solutions.

As mentioned, scheduling and management are especially important, so the solution should include scheduling tools to ensure that rooms, desks, and equipment are all available.

Scalability is also crucial so that you can easily add and change spaces, as is making sure the platform is “future-ready,” meaning it can handle upgrades as new technologies are developed.

How to Choose a Digital Workplace Technology Platform

Next, you will need to think about your business-specific needs. Ask yourself what types of spaces will best serve your organization.

• How many rooms do you think you’ll need? Maybe a few huddle rooms and a larger conference space? Is a big boardroom or auditorium in the mix?
• Will on-premises or cloud functionality best serve your remote and mobile workers? How can you support — in real-time — every member of the team?
• What kind of operating systems and conference platforms will match your needs?
• What resources are being used to prop up what may be a legacy system?
• Are the costs of operating and maintaining those systems as technology advances beyond their capabilities?
• How can we make the solutions adaptable — “future-ready?”

And don’t forget to consider the distribution paths that will push organizational content to all devices, as well as the broadband paths and topologies that ensure that your corporate network won’t become overloaded.

Digital Workplace Management is Available with Yorktel

Today’s workplace is constantly changing, so the need for scalable, flexible platforms that grow, and change is critical.

For more information and a handy checklist of action items, our partner, Crestron has created an eBook “Keys to the Digital Workplace” that can be downloaded for future reference. Contact the digital workplace management experts at Yorktel  to see how your Digital Workplace can work for you.