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.

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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!

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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

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

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

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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.

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First communication & intranet conference in Warsaw, Poland. Keynote: “Digital Workplace Trends.”

Go to video on YouTube.

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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.

1. Are we reaching the end of the intranet as we know it? How do you imagine intranets to be in the future?
2. Enterprise search seems to be essential in today’s world of masses of content in the managed intranet, in collaborative spaces and in enterprise social networks. Some people see “search’ as the logical point of convergence and the ideal user interface for the “digital workplace”. What is your vision of search and its role in the digital enterprise?
3. How do you see the evolution of “governance’ in a world where managed content and user-generated, spontaneous content are blended?
4. If you were to give one piece of advice to organizations just starting the social (or 2.0) journey, what would it be?

Please share your thoughts between now and Wednesday evening.

How would you answer these questions? Let’s get some input and see how it corresponds to the views of Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Renualt and the over one hundred organizations participating in the conference, all of whom will be, hopefully, actively involved in the discussion!

Voici les questions in VO:

1. “Allons-nous vers la fin de l’intranet ? Comment voyez vous la suite ? Quel modèle ?”
2. “Enterprise search” semble devenir essentiel aujourd’hui du fait que les contenus ne cessent d’augmenter dans l’intranet, les espaces collaboratifs et dans les RSE. Certains pensent que “Search” est le point de convergence logique et l’interface idéal pour le “digital workplace”. Quel est votre vision de Search et son rôle dans l’entreprise digitale ?
3. Comment voyez-vous l’évolution de la “gouvernance” dans un monde où les contenus “managés” côtoient les UGC (user generated content)?
4. Si vous aviez un conseil à donner à une entreprise qui s’embarque sur le chemin “social-collaboratif” ou “2.0″ que lui diriez-vous ?

Dites-nous ce que vous en pensez et partagez vos expériences avec nous, en français ou en anglais.

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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.

1. The digital workplace – a multidimensional framework

We have defined three dimensions:

• Managed: The “managed” dimension includes enterprise applications and official, approved content usually published via a content management system

• Social collaborative: The “social collaborative” dimension includes team places (for structured, goals with deliverables and deadlines), community places (for loosely structured, self-organizing groups) and “user-generated content” published by individuals such as in blogs.

• Mobile: The “mobile dimension” refers to services and information delivered to workers via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

The word “dimension” is used deliberately because definitions are not black and white. Some organizations consider the intranet to include both the managed dimension and the collaborative and social dimension, each making up part of the whole.In many cases, different platforms or solutions are used for these two dimensions, and this is one reason organizations may refer to them with different names. Today, most organizations are beginning to find ways to integrate or connect the managed and social collaborative dimensions.

2. The external online world – an influential part of the enterprise’s digital workplace

Leading organizations are incorporating an external dimension to their digital workplace. This may involve how workers collaborate with external partners, how online platforms deliver services for customers, how the enterprise communicates on external social platforms and how organization’s external web strategy in its totality reflects enterprise goals.
The emergence of Digital Boards, strategic decision-making bodies that encompass both internal and external digital platforms are a sign of this trend. They exist today in 17 percent of organization in our survey population.

3. The new leadership class organizations -  one of three criteria

Organizations had to respond positively to at least one of the following three criteria in order to be classified as leadership organizations: (self-assessed)

• The intranet or digital workplace is the “way of working” in the organization, that is to say “the essential place for accessing all or most of what people need to work”.
• Internal social collaboration has become well established enterprise-wide or well established within some parts of the organization based on a self-assessed scale.
• A fully functioning, high-level Digital Board makes strategic decisions for both internal and external digital channels ranging from the intranet to external web sites, and including collaboration and social networking.

The leadership class represents just over one third of the survey participants. Some of the organizations responded “yes” to two criteria out of three. Six organizations responded“yes” to all three criteria.

4. Two types of workforce with different needs and perspectives

Intranets and digital workplaces serve different purposes and have different goals and strategies depending on the needs of their workforce. For purposes of this survey, we have defined two different types:

• Desk-Office: An organization is considered to be “Desk-Office” if sixty percent or more of the workforce have individual computers or laptops and much of their work is supported by or conducted via these tools. This category includes people who travel frequently but who use their laptop as a primary work tool.
• Floor-Field: An organization is considered to be “Floor-Field” if sixty percent or more of the workforce carry out their jobs in a work environment where the computer is not a primary tool. They may have access to a shared computer or kiosk or be equipped with a smart phone, tablet or a mobile device designed for their specific job.

 The final chapter -  “Change and challenges”

We are still working on the final chapter, which as of today is entitled “Change and challenges”. It’s not an obvious chapter to write in spite of the numerous, generous contributions and firsthand experiences by participating organizations.

Stay tuned for the release of Digital Workplace Trends 2012 on December 12th!

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