Create a Communication Strategy to Benchmark Your Digital Workplace

As more digital tools enter the workplace, organizations should pay particular attention to the actual, not promised, productivity within their workforce. According to a 2018 Deloitte study on global human capital trends, while survey responses indicated the presence of digital workplace tools are continuing to reduce the number of time-consuming in-person, text, and phone interactions, only 31% reported having an adequate communication strategy to implement them.

These findings beg the question about how the digital workplace tool market is aligning with business goals and positively impacting ROI. Naturally, this leaves companies wondering what tool to implement and why, and how to accurately measure ROI from implementation. Data is a good start, but without a way to adequately assess and communicate what it means for your business, the success of your digital workplace isn’t guaranteed.

Having a communication strategy in place is a good first step towards benchmarking your digital workplace. After all, companies can’t expect evolve and innovate without effective alignment around and deployment of workforce management technology.

Depending on your business and objectives, here are some of the most impactful KPIs to establish and measure as you plan for, implement, and evaluate your communication strategy with mobile technology for your digital workplace.

1. Increased employee engagement with mobile technology

Your workforce needs to know how new technology will directly affect them and their work. To better define this, and ensure the tools will be better received, start by surveying your employees about specific aspects of their job that could be improved. This aspect of your communication strategy goes a long way towards building trust in the new digital workplace tool, and gives your employees a personal stake in the rollout and success.

Establish the goals and outcomes for operations and workforce management with intentional involvement of your management teams and employees. For example, for predominantly mobile workers and non-desk teams, a SaaS-based digital workplace tool might be the best route to maximize organizational agility across locations, shifts, and departments, regardless of industry. Better and more varied forms of digital communication are making mobile and remote working one of the most significant digital workplace trends.

2. Improved workforce management for reduced turnover and higher employee retention rates in your digital workplace.

The frontline workforce faces considerable challenges when it comes to retention. However, 83% of employees who are offered learning opportunities through work are more likely to stay with their organization. Offering opportunities for employees to expand their professional development horizons is thus a retention magnet, and can be facilitated via your digital workplace tool.

Measure employee satisfaction and pay attention to retention for non-desk workers. Look at what would be most appealing and compelling for your workforce in terms of upskilling, such as diploma or degree completion assistance, or time-off and funding for advanced certifications specific to their role.

Use your digital workplace technology to measure what online video courses receive the most views, for example, and ask for feedback regularly to gauge the progress and engagement with these resources.

3. Better online reputation and customer reviews with improve operations.

Employee and guest experience are directly linked. As a customer, have you ever encountered a response to a question such as, “I don’t know,” or observe that the employee is unable to adequately respond to your query? Even in the best case scenario, this doesn’t bode well for the relationship with your employee or your customer. Given this, it’s vital to know:

• The hard and fast data on whether your frontline teams are empowered with the right information.
• If that data is readily-accessible to them throughout their work.

According to research on 2019 trends on how to improve the customer experience, gaps in employee knowledge and training is the main obstacle keeping companies from reaching their customer experience goals. In fact, 17% of competent companies (farther along one the company maturity scale) report this as the main obstacle. Look at external reputation and customer ratings, and track growth before and after new technology implementation to improve it.

Discovering and addressing knowledge gaps in your workforce is another KPI to pay attention to. This can be addressed in two key phases as you compile your communication strategy:

1. First, during the feedback gathering process to identify areas where more training is necessary, and then in making the case for new workplace tools based on these knowledge gaps.
2. Then, you can track if service scores are affected as you develop and implement new trainings and educational resources, and poll your workforce to see if the information is being retained and effectively distributed.

“If enterprises cannot plan ahead for and successfully execute digital transformation they risk losing their competitive advantage along with the opportunity for market share and revenue growth. To truly measure the success of digital workplace development, organizations must take a proactive approach and use data to qualify and quantify the demand for the roles, skills and technologies needed for digital initiatives.” –Alex Brower, VP Market Research, Cloud Academy

Download our “Internal Communications Strategy” white paper, to better understand how to convey the mission-critical information your workforce needs to best perform their jobs at an optimal level.