7 questions for digital workplace leaders

Is your intranet eco-system is exploding in all directions? Is there a land grab between IT and Communication for the social media hat? Does your enterprise social network compete with your intranet? If so, you need to figure out what to do first and how to do it.

Can you answer these 7 questions?

1. What is the scope and what are the goals of your digital workplace?
2. Do your global banner and  global navigation help breakdown silos in the digital workplace?
3. Is your  start page aligned to your scope and goals?
4. How do you use community management to bring your digital workplace alive?
5. How do you get stakeholders to integrate social collaboration into their processes?
6. What kind of guidelines and support do you offer coworkers?
7. Who is (or should be) on your Digital Board and what is their responsibility?

I’m running a workshop around these 7 action areas called “Moving towards a social, collaborative Digital Workplace“. It takes place in  Stockholm February 2nd. (Organized by for Ability Partners.)

Start anywhere. Don’t wait for “the strategy”!

Every organization will have different answers to these questions. You can attack any one of these points fairly independently of the others. Ideally you start with point 1 but that’s not always possible. With imagination and perseverance, you can make headway on whatever point seems to be your best way forward.

New price for Digital Workplace Trends 2012

Announcement!

The new price for “Digital Workplace Trends 2012″ is  450 US$ / 350 € / 290 £.

You can read the table of contents, reviews, and much more on the Digital Workplace Trends website. You can even click here to move directly to the purchase platform. If you need a purchase order, get in touch directly with NetJMC.

And, don’t forget to download your free copy of the Executive Pack which includes the full 6-page Executive Summary.

Happy reading to all you digital workplace practitioners!

Who is in the Elite Digital Workplace leadership class?

Being part of the leadership class in Digital Workplaces means your organization can say “yes” to one of these 3 criteria: (more details here).

1. Our intranet or digital workplace is the way of working for our people.
2. Social collaboration is well-established in all or part of our organization.
3. We have a Digital Board, responsible for strategic decisions across all our digital channels, both internal and external.

Approximately one-third of the 456 participating organizations answered “yes” to at least one of the 3 criteria. Only 6 organizations  said “yes” to all 3 of the criteria.

When we look at their profiles, we see that having an outstanding digital workplace is achievable for all organizations. The Elite Six are a very heterogeneous bunch.

They are a mix of…

• Public service organizations and private companies
• Very large, medium and small organizations
• Floor-field organizations and desk-office organizations (definitions)
• Different sectors

“Digital Workplace Trends 2012″ pres featured on Slideshare

Slideshare featured “Digital Workplace Trends 2012″ on their home page today. It won’t be there long, I imagine so here is a link directly to the pres.

Looks like there are some other very interesting presentations there too!

Slide deck for Digital Workplace Trends 2012

You can view the “Digital Workplace Trends 2012″ side deck on Slideshare or download it for off line use.

Digital Workplace Trends 2012 – 10 key findings

How to purchase Digital workplace Trends 2012.

Download the Executive Pack and free sample pages.

See the Digital Workplace Trends website for more information: table of contents, participating organizations, reviews.

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1. Social collaboration experimentation is continuing but enterprise-wide deployment has not increased over the last 12 months.

2. Benefits observed from social and collaborative initiatives remain anecdotal and qualitative. The most commonly observed are “knowledge-sharing”, and “engaged, better informed employees”. The least common are “faster time to market”, “cost reduction” and “reduced time for training”.

3. Strong concerns remain about information quality and security, and the business value of social collaboration. New concerns emerge as organizations gain experience: re-creation of organizational silos on new social platforms, digital native versus digital migrant cultures, and language issues in multi-language global companies.

4. Half the 456 participating organizations intend to increase their investment in social collaborative initiatives in 2012.

5. “Findability” of information, one of the toughest challenges today for intranets and digital workplaces, is far from solved. Forty percent of the leadership class and 50 percent of  the other organizations are dissatisfied with their search configuration and results

6. An increasing number of organizations are using the intranet or digital workplace to support customer-facing staff. Examples include  access to real-time information and experts in order to make customer service faster and more efficient.

7. Mobile services for the workforce were not a high priority in 2011. However, indications from leadership class organizations suggest mobile may become more important in 2012 as 14 percent have already made “significant investment” and another 36 percent have made “some investment”.

8. Business has not yet taken the lead on defining mobile strategies, which are primarily defined by IT departments.

9. Governance is not yet embedded in the way people work. Defining decision-making procedures, roles and responsibilities, policies and guidelines for managed and user-generated content are all high priorities for the majority of organizations, including the leadership class.

10. The major evolution in governance is the emergence of the “digital board“, a body responsible for high-level, strategic decision-making for both internal and external channels. These bodies coordinate decision-making for the intranet, collaborative spaces, social tools, external web sites and external social networking platforms. Seventeen percent of the 456 organizations have a fully functioning digital board and business functions play a large role as members of this board.

Four questions for digital leaders

I’m running a round table discussion Wednesday, November 16th 2011 at the 10th edition of the “Rencontre Internationale des Responsables Intranet” in Paris. This conference gathers from 150 to 180 people every year and is a top event for the French-speaking intranet world (which extends beyond France).

Pure intranet  stories from the trenches

I’ve chaired this conference for the last 5 years, and never cease to enjoy the reality of the case studies presented. Unlike every other intranet conference I know, this one has ONLY intranet practitioners as speakers. It’s pure intranet stories from the trenches!

4 key questions for all organizations

The conference closes with a round table with participants from Alcatel-Lucent, IBM and Renault – all leaders in intranet practices today. I will be asking them 4 key questions and will report back to you on their responses. > Continue reading ‘Four questions for digital leaders’

“Digital Workplace Trends 2012″, published on December 12th 2011

This year’s report – a milestone in the evolution towards the digital workplace

Our surveys and reports, started in 2006 and entitled “Global Intranet Trends”,  have been leaning in this direction since 2009. We have investigated  themes beyond the scope of the “traditional intranet”, whatever that means (:-), for 3 years and have formalized the change this year.

This year we defined the digital workplace as “the online environment made up of digital and web-based spaces and tools people use for their jobs.” The intranet may be the front door into the digital workplace. Or it may be one part of it. In some cases, it may represent all or most of it.

Four principles underlie this year’s report:

1. The digital workplace is a multidimensional framework: managed, social collaborative and mobile dimensions.

2. The external online world is a key part of the enterprise’s digital workplace.

3. The new leadership class organizations meet one of three criteria: Digital Boards, “way of working” and social collaborative maturity.

4. Goals and strategies differ depending on the predominant type of workforce: Floor-Field or Desk-Office. > Continue reading ‘“Digital Workplace Trends 2012″, published on December 12th 2011′