The daily morning traffic jams, the 9 to 5 at the office and then struggling to get home again through the evening traffic jams – it's an outdated way of working. Employees, and especially the millennial generation, expect flexibility in their jobs so that they can partly choose their own working hours and workplace. If this isn't possible, it will be difficult for you as a company to succeed in attracting ambitious people and keeping them on board in the longer term.
Nothing is as deadly for productivity and customer service as demotivated employees. So give them a ‘Modern Workplace’ and in return you'll see nothing but benefits. In fact, ‘employee centricity’ and ‘customer centricity’ go hand in hand, and greater customer focus ultimately leads to the growth of your business.
Above all, a Modern Workplace means that your employees can work smarter and more flexibly. Achieving this requires a number of standard ingredients: a fast and secure network, software that runs in the cloud and is always available on all types of devices, and apps that enable your employees to collaborate and communicate with each other efficiently when working mobile. The right technology is very important for handling everything not only efficiently but also securely.
Do you want a Modern Workplace too? Then make sure you have these four characteristics:
1. Online communication & collaboration
Integrate all your communication channels so that your employees can use the same user interface to make phone calls, chat and meet online. This makes it very easy for them to switch from one communication channel to another. For example, someone having a phone conversation with a colleague can then also invite others for a videoconference where they work together on a document.
2. Mobility & multi-device
Make data and applications accessible on any device and at any time in a secure, user-friendly and well-managed way. Give your employees different devices, according to their duties and function. And given that work and private life are intertwined, they must also be able to use their own smartphones securely to follow what's happening at work, while their personal data remain private.
3. Productivity & digitisation
By storing data centrally and making it available through the cloud, you enable your employees to find information faster and your customers to get faster answers to their questions. Information is always up-to-date and there is much more interaction between colleagues, even if they are not at the same location. Set up digital, automated workflows so that documents are approved faster and projects are completed more efficiently.
4. Intelligent security
Give your employees access to their own digital work environment based on their secure log-in. Also make sure that the security does not compromise ease of use. The best way to solve this dilemma is to properly secure the central infrastructure on the one hand – for example through a reliable cloud partner – and on the other hand to protect information through access control by user or user group.