Increasing profitability with a solid digital workplace strategy is the holy grail for most commercial organizations. How do you generate more revenue while managing costs and improving employee productivity in a sustainable way?

When Steve Jobs was the Chief Executive of Apple, he announced record profits. In theory, his ‘secret sauce’ was simple: that you manage your top line, strategy, employees and products, the bottom line will follow.

While investing in strategy and products is often standard business practice, creating a business case to invest in people can be tricky. However, the difference between long-term business success and failure so often lies in the hands of the employees and the tools they use. 

Are employees productive? How well are employees serving customers? Are they implementing the standards of online safety and security that you require? Representing the values and mission of your company? Motivated to do a great job, go the extra mile, and stay with you for the long haul? 

All of this starts by empowering your employees and offering them a positive experience and the tools they need to do their job effectively and efficiently. It starts with the digital workplace and a solid strategy.

Two main benefits of a digital workplace strategy

1. Digital workplaces empower employees 

People are complex, and many studies have shown that as long as people are paid fairly, simply offering more money does not lead to greater engagement. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true. 

Luckily, there are many other ways you can drive employee engagement. A study published by author Daniel Pink shows that employee motivation is determined primarily by 3 key factors: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

• Autonomy is the need to direct your own work. To be fully motivated, employees must be able to have some influence over what they do, when they do it and who they do it with.
• Mastery is the desire to improve. Talented employees seek to improve their skills through learning and professional development.
• Purpose is the need for people to see the bigger picture and understand how the work they do connects. Employees who believe that they are working towards something larger and more important than themselves are often the most hard-working, productive, and engaged.

Digital workplaces allow your employees to feel empowered, connected, and more productive throughout their workdays. 

2. Digital workplaces improve collaboration and communication

Harvard Business Review research reveals that, on average, 95% of a company’s employees are unaware of, or do not understand, its strategy. If the employees who are closest to customers and who operate processes that create value are unaware of the strategy, the chance of creating that sense of purpose is significantly diminished.

The way an organization communicates and collaborates is a critical component of the three tenants of engagement that Daniel Pink outlines. Digital workplaces can help align employees and departments and create a better environment for change, productivity and collaboration. 

Involving employees in conversations about strategic priorities creates buy-in, improved customer and employee experience, and ultimately profitable business growth. 

If it is so obvious, why is it difficult in practice? Is there a secret to success?

Why a digital workplace?

Propelled by new technology, the Digital Workplace is fast becoming the essential collaboration tool to create a new type of corporate culture where the principles of autonomy, mastery, and purpose thrive. 

Modern digital workplaces are as simple and effective as the best consumer-grade technology. In fact, anyone who has ever used Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter is likely to immediately find it easy and intuitive to use – no training required. Offering an easy to use and familiar platform allows your employees to jump right in and benefit from digital communication and collaboration so you can focus on the bottom line.

10 ways digital workplace contribute to profitability and success

While digital workplaces are a key tool used to create motivated employees, there are also many day-to-day examples of how they can contribute to business success. Here are the top 10 ways we see digital workplaces contribute to a company’s business success. 

1. Providing a salesperson with easy to find product information will enhance their ability to sell.
2. Enabling customer service representatives to find helpful information internally ensures they can satisfy customer requests more efficiently with a higher quality of response.
3. In a global organization, a multilingual digital workplace ensures that content can be readily exchanged between employees, regardless of the language they speak.
4. Enabling personalization of a digital workplace means that the information you need will often find your employees, rather than the other way round!
5. Integration with software like Microsoft Teams, Salesforce and Workday means that employees do not need to switch between screens and applications, saving valuable time and frustration.
6. Employees can easily share the key, approved information about organizations’ products, campaigns and culture via their personal social networks, reducing the cost of marketing while improving employee pride.
7. As Bot technology develops, digital workplaces enable every employee to have their own, no-cost virtual assistant to make their working lives easier.
8. Senior Executives can hold an online dialogue with customer-facing workers without key information being diluted through management layers.
9. Digital Workplaces can be used to ‘crowdsource’ critical business ideas including ways to save money and improve the customer experience.
10. Everyone in an organization can simultaneously hear about, contribute to and celebrate success.

Digital workplaces have come a long way since traditional intranets were first introduced. As technology improves, so do modern work capabilities. There are many benefits to implementing a digital workplace, as they provide you with the power to greatly contribute to business success and drive profits.