Trust is the foundation of every successful DWO
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 3:36 am
Support the 'employee experience'
A DWO is a digital reflection of the internal organization. All business processes and assets (people, information and digital resources) come together in the digital work environment, to make the organization work efficiently. Central to the DWO is the employee who is supported in the employee experience . The idea is that the better the employee experience, the more efficiently he or she can work. This leads to lower costs, more satisfaction, more knowledge sharing and innovation and a better competitive position.
There are organizations that are now experiencing first-hand that the customer experience (CX) can never improve without an optimal employee experience (EX). Employees are also directly or indirectly part of the customer journey. For example, think of an airline that fully focuses on an excellent customer journey. Sooner or later, every passenger encounters an employee at the check-in desk, the gate or on the plane. If that employee is not informed, not motivated or otherwise underperforms, the entire customer experience collapses like a house of cards.
A DWO is personalized when the environment is completely focused on the role, tasks, history and activities of each individual employee. It amazes me that there are still intranets that do not recognize the visitor. Even if you come to the intranet for the thousandth time as an employee, you are simply treated as an anonymous visitor who has to figure it out for yourself. While a little DWO or intranet could already know so much about each employee. This is a nice challenge for tools but also for the organization.
A digital work environment is an environment of and for people who work together in an organization. Decades of experimenting with digital resources have taught us that simply making tools available has little or no effect. Old-style knowledge management thought that you could convert people's knowledge into text. By installing a 'self-learning' search engine, everyone would be able to use that knowledge. No chance! Or the portal idea: we put all the tools together on a screen and then it will work out fine. Total failure! Or wait: we make our intranet 'social' by using Yammer, Lync, Slack or whatever and then people will automatically start exchanging knowledge with each other. Doesn't work!
Knowledge sharing is based on trust. “I know greece number you, I recognize you and I trust you enough to share my knowledge with you.” And the other: “I know you, I recognize you, I recognize your expertise and I trust your knowledge enough to apply it.” A DWO should help to build this trust. By bringing people into contact with each other, making them visible in the network, giving recognition for what they contribute. This is a challenge for tools but especially for the organization that must learn to trust professionals, let go of the hierarchy where possible and give professionals the opportunity to come up with solutions themselves.
A digital work environment should help build trust.
Professionals – because that is what I prefer to call employees – must also have confidence in the information they find, receive and share in the DWO. Information that is not consistent, that is not relevant and that is located in different systems all the time does not inspire confidence. If there is no confidence, professionals will come up with workarounds themselves , or will constantly ask each other “How did you do that again?” They do this via e-mail, external tools that are not supported by the organization or the old-fashioned telephone. This is one of the main reasons that many portals, intranets, social intranets and also DWOs are not successful.
A DWO is a digital reflection of the internal organization. All business processes and assets (people, information and digital resources) come together in the digital work environment, to make the organization work efficiently. Central to the DWO is the employee who is supported in the employee experience . The idea is that the better the employee experience, the more efficiently he or she can work. This leads to lower costs, more satisfaction, more knowledge sharing and innovation and a better competitive position.
There are organizations that are now experiencing first-hand that the customer experience (CX) can never improve without an optimal employee experience (EX). Employees are also directly or indirectly part of the customer journey. For example, think of an airline that fully focuses on an excellent customer journey. Sooner or later, every passenger encounters an employee at the check-in desk, the gate or on the plane. If that employee is not informed, not motivated or otherwise underperforms, the entire customer experience collapses like a house of cards.
A DWO is personalized when the environment is completely focused on the role, tasks, history and activities of each individual employee. It amazes me that there are still intranets that do not recognize the visitor. Even if you come to the intranet for the thousandth time as an employee, you are simply treated as an anonymous visitor who has to figure it out for yourself. While a little DWO or intranet could already know so much about each employee. This is a nice challenge for tools but also for the organization.
A digital work environment is an environment of and for people who work together in an organization. Decades of experimenting with digital resources have taught us that simply making tools available has little or no effect. Old-style knowledge management thought that you could convert people's knowledge into text. By installing a 'self-learning' search engine, everyone would be able to use that knowledge. No chance! Or the portal idea: we put all the tools together on a screen and then it will work out fine. Total failure! Or wait: we make our intranet 'social' by using Yammer, Lync, Slack or whatever and then people will automatically start exchanging knowledge with each other. Doesn't work!
Knowledge sharing is based on trust. “I know greece number you, I recognize you and I trust you enough to share my knowledge with you.” And the other: “I know you, I recognize you, I recognize your expertise and I trust your knowledge enough to apply it.” A DWO should help to build this trust. By bringing people into contact with each other, making them visible in the network, giving recognition for what they contribute. This is a challenge for tools but especially for the organization that must learn to trust professionals, let go of the hierarchy where possible and give professionals the opportunity to come up with solutions themselves.
A digital work environment should help build trust.
Professionals – because that is what I prefer to call employees – must also have confidence in the information they find, receive and share in the DWO. Information that is not consistent, that is not relevant and that is located in different systems all the time does not inspire confidence. If there is no confidence, professionals will come up with workarounds themselves , or will constantly ask each other “How did you do that again?” They do this via e-mail, external tools that are not supported by the organization or the old-fashioned telephone. This is one of the main reasons that many portals, intranets, social intranets and also DWOs are not successful.