TRENDS: Five observations on the annual Digital Workplace Trends report from NetJMC

Jane McConnell’s annual Digital Workplace Trends report has just been published.  Now in its sixth year, once again it provides one of the most comprehensive and best surveys of the state of enterprise intranets and Digital Workplaces.  This year it had over 450 respondents, and the large sample size, caliber of respondents and high quality of analysis makes it an invaluable data resource.

There is a very interesting executive summary which is well worth downloading, and is also free.  It is from this summary from which this blog post is derived from.

The Digital Workplace is spreading as a term

The first thing that strikes is the name change of the report.  The report was previously known as “Global Intranet Trends” and reflects an increasing use of the word Digital Workplace (DW).

Jane McConnell’s report defines the DW as a term which conveys the “sense of an eco-system of enterprise platforms and services that enable people to work, collaborate, communicate, develop services and products, and better serve customers.”    Furthermore she sets it into three overlapping dimensions – managed, social and mobile.

In 2012 it’s probable that Digital Workplace as a term will continue to grow.   Whilst NetJMc’s report itself is primarily focused on “the internal digital workplace as it is used by the workforce”, the name change of the report and the change in its emphasis reflect the growing recognition and interest in the potential of the wider Digital Workplace environment.  For example the report suggests that internal and external digital channels are converging, and it will be interesting to see if this scope is reflected in next year’s survey.

At the Digital Workplace Forum (DWF) we believe the wider Digital Workplace is transformational for organizations.  More and more work is being done in the DW and it has the potential to fundamentally change people’s relationship with work itself.  DWF investigates, connects and maps how technology is changing all aspects of the workplace – from the physical workplace to HR policy to how organizations are structured. We regard intranets as a distinct and integral channel within the wider DW.

Mobile access to the DW is still not a high priority for senior management

This year the report includes some interesting and substantial sections on the mobile DW. Unsurprisingly this shows enterprise mobility still has a long way to go.

Only 7 percent of organizations consider mobile a “high priority” making “significant investment”, with 30 percent considering it to be “important” and making “some investment”.

Meanwhile the “top two mobile services today are corporate news and access to the staff directory”, although there is more emphasis on access to social and collaboration tools for next steps. Meanwhile IT departments tend to be the ones “taking the lead” on mobile strategies.

These statistics appear to confirm that senior management has not yet grasped the opportunities presented by mobilising the Digital Workplace, and are being reactive when they could be leading.

DW design between office-based and non-office based organizations may start to diverge

Jane McConnell makes some interesting distinctions between those organizations which she defines as “Desk-Office” (60% or more have individual computers or laptops) and those as “Floor-Field” (60% or more carry out jobs where the computer is not a primary tool.)

For example she observes  “although levels are not yet high, Floor-Field organizations lead by double or triple the Desk Office levels for implementing process and business-related services on mobile devices” citing examples such as HR services, logistical services  and product information.

For me this indicates that extending the DW to non-office based staff will be a key driver for mobile strategies.  Designing for mobile is different to the desktop, and this may be an interesting dynamic in designing the DW going forward.  Will we see differences in the DW between organizations which are “desktop-centric” and those which are not?  Jane McConnell highlights other distinctions between these organizational types, and perhaps in next year’s survey we may see more divergence.

The concept of overall governance for the DW may be growing

An encouraging metric emerging from the report is that 17% of organisations have a “fully functioning digital board” which is defined as a “body responsible for high-level, strategic decision-making for both internal and external channels”.  This “facilitates coordinated decision-making for the intranet, collaborative spaces, social tools, external websites and external social networking platforms.”

The fact that a number of organizations are starting to undertake DW governance more holistically is certainly a step in the right direction. However I imagine there is a still some way to go before these board’s activities are fully linked or referenced to programs relating to new ways of working, reconfiguration of office space and core HR processes.

So there’s still a long way to go for the DW

Jane McConnell set out to define an “elite” of respondents who satisfied three criteria which are:

• “The intranet or digital workplace is the “way of working” in the organization,
• “Internal social collaboration has become well-established enterprise-wide or well-established within some parts of the organization”
• “A fully functioning, high-level digital board makes strategic decisions for both internal and external digital channels”.

Based on McConnell’s analysis, only 6 out of 456 organizations make the cut, which is staggeringly low.

Clearly there’s still a lot of work to do in the DW.  This is something we recognize at DWF and is one of the reasons we want to move forward in exploring best practice and investigating trends in this fascinating area.

About the author

This is a guest post by Steve Bynghall. Steve was the content producer for IBF 24 2011 and helped research Paul Miller’s forthcoming book on the “Digital Workplace.”  He has written two research reports for IBF, and regularly blogs for DWF and IBF. Steve is the founder of Two Hives Ltd, a consultancy specialising in KM, collaboration and web-based projects. Steve previously worked at accountancy firm BDO in a variety of knowledge roles, including managing their global extranet programme. He has just co-written a book on crowdsourcing with Ross Dawson titled “Getting Results from Crowds.”