#GartnerDW – How to Tell a Digital Workplace Value Story That Matters to Business Leadership

Session Description: A compelling story about the relevance and value of your digital workplace program is crucial for securing executive support, engaging business stakeholders, and prioritizing investment decisions. In this session, we will discuss various ways to present a digital workplace value story, including relevant metrics that matter to the business. [slides]

Notes:

• The business value of digital workplace must be articulate through its impact not just the effort.
• Impact is key – to maximize budget, technology spend and outcomes maximized.
• Value for “run” and “change” stories.
• Information needed and linked to business value include the: WHAT (facts) > SO WHAT (why care) > NOW WHAT (what do we do about it – freedom to experiment).

• Need to focus on what leaders MOST CARE ABOUT!
• Key areas to zero in on: 1) “Transform our ways of working, talent strategies, external partnerships.”, 2) digital dexterity, and 3) digital workplace.
• Primary value drivers: 1) cost savings, 2) risk reduction, 3) revenue growth, bonus) environmental social/corporate governance
• Don’t do just devices and help desks as an IT unit. There is much more to the value proposition.
• Technology initiatives (IT ops) > business outcomes (metrics) > primary value drivers (employee net promoter score)

• RUN stories include links to business outcomes that matter to business leaders:

• CHANGE value stories provide connection to drive business transformation:

• Move IT to a leader of employee digital enablement, not just technology support or the hardware/software “deliverer”.
• Good metrics to highlight (information > insight > action):
  • 1. Influences decision making.
  • 2. Is relevant to a specific stakeholder.
  • 3. Focuses on business outcomes.
  • 4. Provides a leading indicator. 5. Drives action.
• Key recommendations and next steps:
  • Create stakeholder value story narratives that link digital workplace initiatives to relevant business outcomes.
  • Pitch the value story narratives to your maturity level and ambition in order to make it believable.
  • Identify, analyze and validate business priorities from the perspective of key stakeholders.
  • Keep the conversation “evergreen” with a forum that engages stakeholders and identifies, priorities, business outcomes and metrics.

#GartnerDW – Powering Productivity With a Digital Employee Value Proposition

Session Description: Organizations continue to face a talent crisis and the promise of tech-enabled productivity is luring investments in emerging tech. But, what good is technology with a workforce that is digitally distracted, fatigued or disengaged? Digital workplace leaders who develop a digital foundation to the employee value proposition will retain and grow the workforce through value creation. [slides]

Notes:

• Context switching negative productivity because we:
  • struggle to find information,
  • irrelevant notifications,
  • missed important information,
  • made the wrong decision.
• We need a human centered focus.
• DEVP (digital employee value proposition) = Boost productivity, wellbeing and collaboration by giving employees more autonomy over their work and environment through technology.

• Digital SKILLS are more important than employee ROLES.

• 4 Pillars of the digital workplace and enablement = 1) workstream collaboration, 2) content creation and collaboration, 3) data and analytics, 4) process and automation

• What is your net promoter score for your IT modern technology experience around: automation ,collaboration, analytics, content.
• DIY – people feel better when they build their own aka IKEA.
• Meetings and Productivity
• Work Innovation Lab – The Work Innovation Lab is a think tank by Asana that develops human-centered, cutting-edge research to help businesses evolve today to meet the growing changes and challenges of the future of work.
• Location flexibility is worth between at 10 and 20% increase in pay.
• 130% more likely to stay and grow with modern technology in place.
• With digital dexterity, 74% of employees will stay and grow at their place of employment.
  

• DEVP Recommendations
  • Understand what rewards make workers feel more valued.
  • Deliver the “ultimate workplace” by building or buying workplace experience apps.
  • Ensure collaboration equity with a work hub that delivers inclusive experiences beyond meetings.
  • Unleash your builders for success with modern technology architecture and communities of practice.
  • Actively support the growth of digital dexterity among workers with an enablement continuum.

LEGO has 3 “anchor” days per week in office…

“STRIVE not to be a success, but rather to be of VALUE.” Albert Einstein

#GartnerDW – 7 Predictions to Shape Your Digital Workplace Strategy

Session Description: Digital workplace leaders deliver technologies and experiences daily to help employees drive the best outcomes. Gartner has seven predictions you need to know about how the work will evolve and what to do to prepare for what’s coming next. Join this session to take a moment out of the day-to-day tasks and hear about trends that will help you rethink a future forward strategy.

 

Notes:

• Future = Facts + Faith + Fear
• Prediction = WHERE, with WHOM and HOW we will work.
• #1 – By 2028, 25% of organizations with return-to-office mandates will shorten workdays.

• The goal is to rebalance work-life…
• #2 – By 2028, 40% of large enterprise warehouse operations will have deployed employee engagement tools to motivate their workforce.
• Engaging front line to keep pace and grow through workforce management, communications, flexible scheduling and gamification.
• #3 – By 2028, organizations with a DEX leader will have a 60% higher change of benefiting from emerging technologies.

• #4 – By 2027, 50% of people in advanced economies will have AI personal assistants working for them every day.
• Custobots, anthropomorophism, and you. Overlayed on applications, conversations with the application to give it the outcome you want. “AI joins the team.”
• #5 – By 2026, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini will have achieved less than 20% penetration in their user bases.
• Challenges for this technology exists… maturity, privacy, etc.
• Change takes time, saving time takes change. Will saving time be compelling enough for organizations to accelerate adoption?
• Determine the “Return on AI”…
• #6 – By 2028, over 50% of digital workers will offer their skills on an external talent marketplace.
• What you can do is who you are. It used to be about roles, now it is about skills.
• 40% of employees have a digital side hustle. 42% of companies mandating office returns have experienced higher employee attrition then expected. >75% of hybrid employees might leave their jobs in their company eliminates flexible work
• #7 – By 2027, 25% of CIOs will use augmented connected workforce initiatives to reduce time to competency by 50% for key roles.

• From predications, make plans.

#GartnerDW – Top 10 New Ways to Improve the Digital Employee Experience

Session Description: Improving the digital employee experience (DEX) has become paramount for organizations looking to reduce and eliminate productivity-zapping digital friction as well as trying to remain competitive in a hot talent market. In this session, we will provide the top 10 newest ways to improve DEX as aggregated from research and client interactions. [slides]

Notes:

Importance of DEX

• Benefits of DEX: 1) Performance Visibility, 2) Friction Remediation, 3) Employee Engagement, 4) Intelligent Automation, 5) Process Improvements

• It takes a village to drive institution culture change with a digital workplace team. This can include: HR, Communications, Facilities, IT Security, Business Leaders, Influencers, Enablement Agents, Learning and Development Leaders, Finance, Change Management, Employe Experience
• Balance the technology with the people, processes, and services.
• RYTHM not REVOLUTION = Prioritize DEX by focusing on minimizing change fatigue. This can be managed by regular incremental rhythms rather than huge revolutionary adhoc execution.

• Next steps down the DEX pathway:
  • Identify experienced influencers and IT staff that can become DEX engineers.
  • Inventory tools to see if you own a DEX or similar tool to get started.
  • Establish a baseline measure of DEX and commit to recurring measurement.
  • Build a roadmap for DEX improvement initiatives.
  • Invest in a DEX tool (if not already owned). • Automate as much as you can.

 

#GartnerDW – Gartner Keynote: The Blueprint to Unlocking Digital Employee Experience

Session Description: CIOs have the third-highest positive influence on overall employee experience (EX), behind the CEO and COO. Digital workplace leaders must help their CIO meet the EX challenge by advancing digital workplace maturity. Digital workplace leaders must also become digital employee experience leaders. Use Gartner’s DEX blueprint to guide a coordinated, holistic approach to maximize employee engagement and empowerment for transformation of work. [slides]

Notes:

• We need to mature to empower employees that are:
  • Better equipped to solve business problems.
  • More likely to be high performers.
  • More likely to stay with the company.

“The way employees internalize and interpret the interactions they have with their organization and the context that underlies those interactions.” – Employee Experience

• DEX is a strategy that focuses on how technology affects the EX.
• DEX is about enabling and empowering employees to ultimately transform their ways of working.

• TIPS:
  • Develop a common stratey or roadmap for the workhub
  • Make clear the use of tools and the use cases of focus (when to use Zoom, when to use Teams) and (when to use Google Workspace, when to use Microsoft 365) to reduce duplication and increase productivity. – Personas

• • Must actively collaborate with infrastructure and security teams – Infrastructure and Security
    • Total lockdown is NOT an option – because it is a barrier to collaboration, creates manual and time-consuming work, IT returns to a gatekeeper role, employees turn to shadow IT to get their work done.
    • Good governance should improve the employee experience, not undermine it.
  • Be mindful of making sweeping technology-focused decisions – Personas
  • Citizen developers and citizen data scientists are important for DEX – Fusion Teams
  • Employee journeys are the “jobs to be done” and every journey has measurable outcomes – Fusion Teams
  • Ability to easily work with business apps is critical to unlock DEX – Business Apps
• Failure is an option – academic research – failing is needed to succeed and be the highest performing team.
• Only 1 in 6 executives are willing to accept a high level risk.
• Fail Intelligently to Succeed
  • Analyze Projects “too big to fail”
  • Challenge Each other to be open about reprioritizing initiatives Instill
  • Psychological safety
• Innovation Enablers:
  • rapid reprioritization, understanding stakeholders priorities, continuous collaboration, value visualization
• DEX mindset by embracing and manage complexity!
• Out of chaos comes cooperation through keeping employees safe while empowering them, giving more responsibility to self-organize and work together, provide guardrails to enforce proportionate controls.

Typical Mindset

Growth Mindset

• We need to focus on creating enablement, user experience, capabilities, and value to drive DEX governance in concert with security for risk management and guardrails.
• DEX strategy includes: cooperation (with other IT functions), adoption (balanced governance), providing (visiblity via metrics), and seeking (continuous feedback)

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” — John F. Kennedy, 1962

#GartnerDW – Guest Keynote: Leading with Influence: Using Data, Emotion, and Narrative

Session Description: Part of our daily job is to affect others; we advise our clients, guide our patients, teach our children and inform our online followers. Yet, science shows we systematically fall on to suboptimal habits when trying to change others – from insisting the other is wrong to exerting control. Based on her award-winning book, “The Influential Mind“, internationally acclaimed behavioral neuroscientist, Tali Sharot, explains how an attempt to influence will be successful only if it is well-matched with the core elements that govern how we think and feel. Sharot explains why providing data and numbers alone can be a weak approach to influence and why emotions and narrative often have strong impact. By understanding the minds and brains of those around us, we become better at advising and communicating information. Tali’s newest book is “Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There”

Session Presenter:

Tali Sharot

Author and Professor, Cognitive Neuroscience

University College London and MIT

Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and MIT. She is the founder and director of the Affective Brain Lab. She has written for outlets including The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, has been a repeated guest on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, a presenter on the BBC, and served as an advisor for global companies and government projects.

Notes:

• Confirmation Bias – Skeptical that go against our beliefs. Opinions can interfere with data. People tend to find fault with data they don’t agree with.
• #1 Establish Common Ground – Don’t start with the “I disagree”. Brains shut down in conflict, so it’s best to start with common ground. Focusing on common ground provides hope for future.
• We tend to learn more from good news than bad. We take in positive more often and often seek it out. “We want the sniff of the good news…”
• Optimism Bias – We overestimate positive events (job promotions) and minimize negative events (accidents).
• Public despair happens because we don’t have control over global issues.
• #2 Consider Competence not Confidence – don’t take confidence at face value. We need to reframe to highlight for progress rather than decline. Don’t say: “If we don’t use we will” rather use the positive: “If we do use the new tool we will”.
• #3 Highlight Opportunity for Progress not Decline 
• Positive reinforcement places a huge increase in compliance.
• Focus attention on progress with immediate reward – rather than the negative or disciplinary perpective.
• #4 Identify Immediate Rewards – we care about other people and we want to do better (a smily face, “Good”, “Excellent”)
• #5 Highlight Social Proof – show what others are doing, response to the majority that leads to behavior change “9 out of 10 people complete their taxes on time” (here is use compared to others)
• Give sense of control – it’s up to you to get better through your actions.
• #6 Expand Sense of Control (especially during time of change) – that we have agency that is positive, anxiety and fear comes when we have lack of control.
• If we have choice or when people make the choice themselves they then are more committed to the decision and they also elevate the rationale for why they chose that option.
• #7 Consider Emotional State – When in stress there is a focus on the negative.
• Happiness is what they believe they will be doing later on… lowest happiness is 40-50.
• 3 days of expectation is the optimal amount – things we can imagine. The imagination is the immediate reward.
• We are most happy day before the vacation and in the 2nd day of the vacation.
• Favorite day of the week. People prefer Friday over Sunday. Reason Friday is anticipation… Sunday bring anxiety for the upcoming work week.
• Bonus – Create Anticipatory Events – activities for the week, an event for teams to look forward to.
• Awareness – We are good at anticipating things we see all the time. We have bias. Knowing about them means we can be more effective in making decisions and delivering information.

TEDx Clip of Tali Sharot

#GartnerDW – 4 Use Cases for Generative AI and ChatGPT in the Digital Workplace

Session Description: ChatGPT and GenAI are transforming the digital workplace and digital leaders are struggling to know where to start and how to minimize disruption. This session presents four essential use cases for GenAI in the digital workplace and guidance on implementing them: copilots, content creation, knowledge capture and knowledge access. These lay the foundation for an AI-centric, future-proof DW. [slides]

Notes:

What New Capabilities Will GenAI Bring to My Digital Workplace and What Will It Enable My Staff to Accomplish?

• The impact of AI stands to be greater than COVID.
• 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by GenAI.
• 19% of workers may see at least 50% of their tasks impacted.
• Staff working with GenAI experienced a 37% productivity improvement based on an MIT study.
• GenAI augments and enables staff.
• You still need a human in the loop!
  • It does not replace staff.
  • Reduces mundane and repetitive tasks.

“How much better can we be when we are augmented by AI?”

Workplace AI Use Cases

1. Instant Upskilling – co-pilots are coming (“create my pivot table”)
2. Content Creation – genAI content can be multimodal, always treat output as a first draft…
3. Knowledge Capture – turn tacit into explicit knowledge, remove PII, remove casual conversation, does not eliminate need for review and validation…
4. Knowledge Discovery – questions and answers rather than queries and links, permissions and access controls are paramount

Moving forward, recommended guidelines and guardrails:

“Banning is not a strategy – AI is here and will profoundly change the digital workplace.”

#GartnerDW – Workgrid: How to Revolutionize your Workplace with Conversational AI Assistants

Session Description: The conversation around the potential of AI is everywhere, but the question is – where to begin. In this session, we’ll showcase practical use cases and real-world case studies of how organizations have adopted AI Work Assistants. Learn how personalized and contextual actions, tasks, and information can be orchestrated across disparate systems by providing employees with an intelligent conversational assistant. This innovative mix of strategy and technology empowers employees to ask questions, automate tasks, and find information more efficiently, enabling them to accomplish more work faster. [slides]

Notes:

Today, we have so many distractions, disruptions, information overloads, more is to come with AI on the horizon.

Context switching can happen up to 3,000 times per employee. This can cause further problems.

See: “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress” (Interruptions (task switching), regardless of context, lead to faster task completion with no difference in quality, however, they result in higher stress, frustration, time pressure, and effort.)Not another place – always on with Workgrid:

Example use cases:

• Personas of a new employee and a sales manager
  • Workgrid features:
    • Daily Briefing – smart intelligence nudges, tasks, notifications, and good to knows
    • Onboarding – streamlining new employee hires, compliance requirements, policies, etc.
    • IT Assets – procurement requests are faster through requests, one-click approvals, real-time status
    • Tasks and Approvals – finance and HR to dos
    • Sales and Marketing – opportunities, updates, collateral discovery, product asset insights
    • Self-service and Knowledge – chat to policies, FAQ’s, people finder
    • IT Help and Support – tickets and status updates
    • Governed Gen AI – approved AI use cases at the enterprise

Learn more about Workgrid.

#GartnerDW – Delivering Your Best Next Employee Experience

Session Description: One of your challenges as a digital workplace leader is to give employees what they want; but not necessarily or merely what they say they want. This session will take a broad view of digital workplace architecture techniques and emerging technologies to delight your employees by better anticipating delivering to their needs. [slides]

Notes:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – Someone, but not evidence it was Henry Ford

• Vision: Everyone gets what they want.
• The “best next” experience. Putting the EMPLOYEE (actions, apps, information, design, journeys) at the center. SENSE (availability, context, identity, affinity, behavior) and RESPOND (conversational, temporal, visual, ambient, immersive).
• Key innovations – AI offers exponential opportunity, workstyle analytics (how employees work and correlate with business outcomes), everyday AI (automating routine tasks), guided attention (remedy for information overload – yet another thing to check “YATTC”, cut out the noise – unify alerts across systems and how AI can play a role in personalization including online presence, location, situation etc. – see workgrid vendor), superapps (Walmart’s Me@Walmart mobile app for employees that has miniapps and personalized app experiences for frontline workers)

The Roadmap – achieving the best next EX depends on deliberate, coordinated strategy

Your BEST NEXT STEPS – digital workplace leaders and their steering groups should:

• Use DEX journey maps to establish vision, draw out requirements and institutionalize an employee-centric mindset.
• Target a sense-and-respond, experience-driven architecture by synthesizing signal data and expanding modes of interaction.
• Visit, and regularly revisit, the technology innovations that could accelerate your progress or alter your course.
• Devise a roadmap targeting best next EX, focusing on purposes and factoring in capabilities, innovations and risks.

#GartnerDW – Gartner Opening Keynote: Ambition Impossible

This year’s conference is held at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas. Learn more about the Gartner Digital Workplace Summit.

Ambition Impossible Keynote

Session Description: As the where, when and how of work change, digital workplace leaders continue to be asked to support technology evolution with fewer resources. The Gartner digital workplace maturity assessment revealed that many are up against impossible odds to meet their organization’s ambitions for the future of work. We’ll explore three approaches to upend this crisis and use it as fuel to achieve their greatest ambitions for the digital workplace. [slides]

Notes:

• The heros journey is about telling the story of technology and architect enablers of employee engagement.

• Remote work, Gen AI, Gen Z, etc.
• Planning for a distributed future.
• Skills transition to solving PROBLEM with technology > to solving problems WITH technology.
• Predications > Stories > Evidence
• Digital Workplace Maturity Model

• Modernization the Infrastructure.  > New ways of Working > Business Transformation “We need to move beyond meeting expectations to enabling new models of productivity that lead to transformation.”
• AI is at the peak of inflated expectations.
• How do we best mitagate risks while determining the value of AI beyond the hype by focusing on use cases.
• Collaborate across the enterprise:

• Steps: 1) Asses current state, 2) Recognize dangers, 3) evnision and more empowering future, and 4) support the CIO and peers.
• TransUnion use case:

• Return on Employee – getting staff up to speed and more effective and efficient. Spending time on things that are more needed for the business. Ensuring tools work for the employee not the other way around – powered by AI.
• Change the way people do their work and it’s about the empowerment of people not the technology as a focus.
• Move from reaction to intentional.
• “CANDI” change and influencer network – get early access to emerging technology and help tell the story to influence the conversations across the enterprise
• Instead of telling workers about change > talking about transformation with workers
• Everyday AI (more productive) vs Game-changing AI (more creative)
• Learning > Adoption > Value Generation
• Failure as a success metric – imagine a new workplace.
• What mission makes you want to come to work everyday – focusing on game changing transformation.
• Embracing failure to catalyze creativity…

Summary:

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3