6 Golden Rules for the Digital Workplace

Blog: Capgemini CTO Blog

Are you on the digital highway to success? That mysterious Digital Workplace we’ve been hearing whispers about in recent years has finally arrived. But what is it and how do we, at Capgemini Invent, use it to make tomorrow’s workplace so much better?

Digital Workplace is a concept that encourages businesses to use digital transformation to align technology, employees and business processes. Why the need? In order to improve operational efficiency and meet organizational goals.

In other words, Digital Workplace is a broad term used for a virtual complement to today’s physical office space. It includes the devices, software and platforms employees use to get their jobs done.

In an ever-evolving world where technology is everywhere, Digital Workplace is at the crossroads of employee experience, business processes and innovation capabilities. It is a multi-dimensional topic embracing the following three areas:

At Capgemini Invent, we’ve drawn on our deep expertise and experience of helping customers reinvent their businesses to create a list of 6 Golden Rules. If you’re looking to embrace Digital Workplace and transform your way of working, they’re a great place to start.

6 Golden Rules

#1 Engage executive committee members

Make sure the topic is tackled as a company-wide project, not an IT one, with full support at the most senior levels. It’s your ticket to the game.

#2 Digital Workplace for me

Ensure your target Digital Workplace is connected to business ecosystems and needs, reflecting the individual needs of different users – me. Make it as business- sector-specific as possible.

#3 Make digital disruption the norm

Embed core business process transformation from the beginning of your project. Business buy-in to disruptive change is the fuel that will make your project maintain its momentum.

#4 Change how users think

Do not train your employees to do the same things with different tools. Rather, embark on this journey with a real ambition for the Digital Workplace aligned with a long-term business vision and strategy. This is how to spread transformation at every level of the organization.

#5 Make employees eager to learn

Design an active upskilling approach that fosters commitment (gamification, serious games, etc.) focused on concrete business uses with measurable outcomes.

#6 Design security with simplicity

Educate your employees with new technologies in a “secure by design” spirit. Find the right balance between security requirements and user experience to foster adoption.

Getting The Right Focus

Remember, Digital Workplace is only valuable when it enables users to focus on what really matters. To truly achieve this goal, users’ core activities and main challenges should be addressed on a business-by-business basis.

Veolia – a Digital Workplace success story

French transnational service and utility company Veolia has successfully embarked on its Digital Workplace journey in partnership with Capgemini Invent.

The company wanted to promote new mobile and collaborative services in order to improve the user experience (UX) and productivity. We had just the right recipe. One that scored a 100% success rating, according to Philippe Benoît, Veolia’s Program Director, who stated:

“In a low maturity market, we had to find good solutions and partners to achieve our ambitions. With Capgemini Invent, we completed all our challenges: 100% of Chromebooks distributed, 100% of files migrated to the cloud, 100% of users trained and accompanied in the SATAWAD (secure, anytime, anywhere, any device) adventure.”

So, what did we do to get these results for Veolia? We began by implementing a new solution within the HR department.

A two-day hackathon aimed to tackle and improve Veolia’s employee journey via new collaborative ways of working: Promoting the project globally, solving real-life use cases, promoting cross-business unit collaboration.

The approach included:

Gamification – organizing a two-day adventure during which participants followed in the footstep of a hero on a quest to find hidden treasure
Mixed-profiles collaboration – building teams by mixing profiles to foster the generation of innovative solutions through an unusual set-up
Concrete solutions – defining a best practices GuideBook to share the key guidelines of digital and collaborative working globally

And the results? Two days of adventures, over 20 participants, three focus groups and one global output!

But, on a larger scale, the expected gains following the new solution implementation were:

Simplified access to information
Increased attractiveness for new talent
Enhanced employee experience
Continuous improvement

We helped Veolia foster new ways of working using Google’s G Suite and Veolia’s cloud platforms to complete the company’s digital journey.

And guess what?

All employees (~1.200 users) now work from a Chromebook
100% of the files have been migrated to cloud (12.5 Million files)
There has been a general adoption of G Suite tools: +112% Sheets, +210% Slides, +187% Docs, +138% Forms
Numerous events and training sessions: 700+ trained users (with four training sessions by user on average)

And we didn’t stop there! The Global Deployment is now in progress:

100+ sponsors and project managers, 400+ project contributors, 1000+ champions
SATAWAD week, hackathon, training and other team-building events

These results represent just one of the many Digital Workplace projects we have implemented in our clients’ offices to bring the benefits of new ways of working. Our target is always to reach an efficient operational model that meets organizational goals by equipping the modern workforce with the Digital Workplace tools it needs to add true value.

View the Veolia interview

To find out more about Digital Workplace with Capgemini invent, please get in touch.