Building your digital workplace

The concept of the workplace has been in constant evolution since the modern age. The digital workplace is a relatively recent concept based on new workplace technologies. With the developments of the internet and cloud-based data and computing, the digital workplace emerged, offering new possibilities to collaborate and to work more productively. Like accessing data and applications from anywhere, anytime and on any device, often saving travel time and costs.

From a more technical point of view, the digital workplace is a secured, virtualized platform, just like the office environment, but with digital applications, cloud computing, and other technology. That allows businesses to move work to that virtual space and offer workers all the applications, data and collaboration tools they need to perform.

With cybercrime statistics up every year, organizations should build in a workplace security strategy, to protect their reputation, customer data, knowledge and know-how from phishing, hacking and other security threats.

Teleworking or working remotely means that people can work from a distance and not necessarily in the office. Hence, the term teleworking is broader than homeworking or working from home.

We got to know working from home or homeworking during the pandemic. Homeworking refers to a situation in which people work from home. It is a more limited term than teleworking, which stresses the distance from the office and doesn’t confine work to the one location of a person’s home.

Hybrid work often refers to different forms or modes of working and collaborating in an organization. The different locations at which people perform their work makes their work hybrid.

With the advancements of digital workplace technologies, people can work from home, at the office or on the go (e.g. at a customer’s premises, on public transport, in a coffee bar). Workers can access data and applications on different devices. Who has never answered an e-mail or participated in a video call on his/her smartphone?

Discover all aspects of hybrid work in our e-book.New window

Some authors also refer to other practices in work organization, coming with hybrid work. Synchronous vs. asynchronous work or autonomy versus control.

A typical example of synchronous work is a meeting where different people discuss topics. The meeting can be face-to-face, in a meeting room, virtual via videoconferencing or hybrid with some people participating remotely and other people physically in a meeting room.

A clear example of asynchronous work is knowledge workers that produce a document and colleagues review it. That work can be done when it suits people best, when they have time to focus. That type of work demands another type of concentration than discussing in a meeting.

By discussing autonomy vs. control authors want to stress that in a more hybrid context, even more so when working fully remote, that the management should focus on the (quality and quantity) of the output and less on visual control (“Do I see my people working at their desk?”). Autonomy then means that people can organize their work and time schedule themselves. Of course, that requires different management behavior and new agreements between individuals, teams and organization.

Read more on hybrid work in our e-book.New window

Workplace-as-Service, or WPaaS in short, is also referred to as outsourced digital workplace services by Gartner. They define WPaaS as: “A digital workplace services strategy is a business strategy that leverages an engaging and intuitive work environment to boost workforce digital dexterity — the ambition and ability to apply technology to improve business capabilities. Although the digital workplace strategy itself cannot be outsourced, organizations can leverage service providers to deliver the transformation and manage the tools and capabilities necessary to transform the employee experience to make it more engaging and increase discretionary effort.”

Therefore, as an organization, it’s of utmost importance to have a clear vision and strategy for your digital workplace, i.e. on the tools and processes to support employees in a hybrid work environment and on the management of the software and hardware to run those tools smoothly and safely.

If you are planning to outsource your digital workplace, make sure to get quality offers from possible partners. Our Workplace-as-Service RFP Checklist may come in handy for that. There, you will find all useful information to include in your RFP, together with tips from our Proximus workplace architects. Check it out.New window

Workplace-as-a-Service (WPaaS) allows you to:

• free up IT specialists for more added value activities
• rely on a broad range of domain specialists, from workplace architects, to domain admins, over network, security, VOIP, video specialists, change managers, training & adoption etc.
• turn CAPEX into OPEX to move capital to more important investments (different, hybrid financial models are possible)
• make your digital workplace ever-evolving, integrating innovations
• guarantee the service quality with SLAs and XLAs

Read more about WPaaS

Most people know Proximus from its fixed and mobile networks. But Proximus also delivers advice, services and solutions on top of that network. Most of those solutions even work network independently.

You can consult Proximus and co-create new workplace concepts together. You can rely on a broad portfolio and ecosystem, from connectivity, over voice, collaboration tools, security, all the way to IoT, data and innovative smart workplace technology. It’s really an end-to-end value proposal built around your employees, to help them to work smarter and feel better.

You can rely on the support of more than 2000 experts in various ICT domains to build the digital workplace that suits your organization with the help of Proximus. We have all the building blocks that you need.

You can also source your workplace technology and end-user support as a service from Proximus, the so-called Workplace-as-a-Service (WPaaS).