Formula for an Effective Digital Workplace Experience

There are lots of different kinds of formulas that have impacted the world as we know it today. There are the formulas behind soft drinks like Coca-Cola and Pepsi that are closely guarded. We learn the formulas for different color combinations as kids, like red + blue = purple, yellow + blue = green etc. And then of course there’s E=MC2, a formula that we all recognize as important, even if we couldn’t necessarily explain why.

But did you know that there’s also a formula to help build a better digital workplace?

(P+C)*E, or Productivity + Communication X Experience = an award-winning digital workplace.

This formula began to take shape from our experience with Liberty Mutual Insurance when, in 2013, the internal digital workplace team was tasked with improving the employee experience for the company’s global workforce of more than 50,000. Many of our disparate, employee-facing systems had become siloed, which reduced user satisfaction and lowered overall productivity.

It really solidified, however, when I served for several years as a judge for the DWG Intranet/Digital Workplace Award. It became apparent that the issues Liberty Mutual faced were common ones, and it was equally clear that forward-thinking companies were all solving them the same way – by building digital workplaces that focused on improving productivity and communication by improving the employee experience.

Ultimately, what we learned was that for employees to operate at their fullest potential, they needed to be abstracted from the technological complexity of the enterprise. That’s how we came up with the concept of the digital experience layer. Digital experience layers separate the user experience (UX) from underlying source systems, giving organizations the flexibility to control and design experiences that meet employees’ need for a simpler experience by helping them fulfill their intent (e.g. accomplishing routine tasks with fewer clicks) - all while maintaining investments in the best-of-breed business applications that keep business running.

Experience layers make it possible to pull together everything employees need to know right now, from alerts, forms and approvals to tasks and reminders, etc., all into a single cohesive experience that gives employees a more consumer-like way to interact with technology.

But this isn’t about just implementing technology and hoping it gets adopted. Providing users with a modern digital experience has to start with taking an experience-led approach to the digital workplace. Understanding what each persona in the workplace needs and then using that information to push personalized, contextual information to them so they don’t have to waste valuable time trying to find it themselves. If you can accomplish that, then you can provide a great experience for your workforce while still taking advantage of the best-of-breed systems and applications your employees and business rely on.

To find out more about how we accomplished this and to get insights into the eight digital workplace trends you need to know for 2021 and beyond, check out the Formula for an Effective Digital Workplace on-demand now.