Keeping Employees Happy and Productive in a Mobile-First, Cloud-First World of Remote Working
The modern workplace is well on its way to a total digital transformation, especially as the need to effectively manage the growing number of remote employees becomes a priority. A Harvard Business Review study found that employees in the modern workplace now spend around 80 percent of their time on activities that require collaboration with other workers. This has created a new emphasis and stable and efficient digital communication and collaboration. These have become essential to business success.
Today, many organizations find the desired level of communication stability through digital communication platforms. These platforms offer a range of vital functions such as voice and video calls, instant messaging, document sharing, conference calling, collaboration, and more. They are replacing legacy solutions and modernizing “intranets” into more exciting and “human” employee experiences delivered on the go with mobile-first applications driving not just productivity but true collaboration and intuitive communication.
There is an abundance of digital platforms available for businesses to leverage, with one of the most notable today being Microsoft SharePoint. The platform integrates with Microsoft Office, and cloud-based SharePoint has jumped up 19 percent in just three years, going from 67 percent in 2018 to 86 percent in 2021.
At the same time, for decades, Sharepoint has been the intranet back-end many “loved to hate.”
Microsoft has become much more open to alternative solutions for their vast global network of “Gold Partners” who resell to businesses and large enterprises. They embrace creative developers who are building more modern, mobile-first, and cloud-first collaboration apps that are easy to integrate with Office 365, Outlook, Teams, Azure cloud services, and more.
They know that just because Microsoft SharePoint is a digital platform from a well-known large company like Microsoft, that doesn’t mean it is perfect – far from it.
“Microsoft SharePoint has enough drawbacks that more and more companies are replacing it with different platforms and services,” said Ritwik Bose, VP Presales, Eleviant, developer of a fast-growing HR and corporate communications offering called PeopleOne.
Eleviant Tech, formerly Impiger Technologies before a recent rebranding, has been a top Microsoft Gold partner for nearly two decades. After hundreds of implementations of various Microsoft products, including Sharepoint, the company assembled its knowledge of specific gaps, supported by wish lists from customers, and with the latest mobile application and networking technologies. The result is an intelligent, intuitive, and inspiring experience for end-users, while also making life easier for HR, IT and corporate communications cross-functional teams to manage and optimize.
“The SharePoint platform wasn’t built for end-users, which is crucial given today’s user experience,” Bose said. “They built more of an operational platform, with complex and expensive technology, rather than starting with an employee-centric design, so naturally, the user experience has suffered. One key example is its lack of a mobile app to enable desktop-to-remote work, which their Teams voice and video offerings addressed. There are so many powerful technologies and applications Microsoft brings to the world. Still, as generations of workers who grew up with mobile devices enter the workforce, their expectations are different. They want to work faster, thrive in a friendly environment, and use their mobile devices rather than being chained to a desk. Given the imperative to attract and retain great employees, our customers invest in digital tools everybody loves, including end-users, while also streamlining and reducing the cost of operations.”
Overall, SharePoint is “good enough” for employees and organizations. Still, where it succeeds as an enterprise-friendly file repository, it fails at driving social collaboration and user engagement which are essential factors in today’s digital workplace environment.
“Businesses are now increasingly looking for digital platforms that are more modern, friendly, mobile-first, cloud-first, with unified apps,” Bose explained. “These platforms built for the new digital age have much to offer in terms of benefits. These platforms can allow businesses to manage and disseminate information through secured channels to the right people and stay on top of their communications. Enabling fast and easy access and retrieval of all documents in one place for employees anywhere, anytime can significantly cut down on search times and raise productivity and efficiency and overall satisfaction.”
New digital platforms hold an advantage over SharePoint regarding mobile capabilities, allowing employees to access all the company’s intranet services on their Android or iOS devices. Whether it’s a critical news feed, a crucial document that needs your attention, or the notification of a meeting you can’t miss, using a phone to get work done enhances an employee’s abilities when on the go.
“On our PeopleOne digital interactive and collaborative platform, you can be as creative as possible,” Ritwik Bose said. “There are modules for more social and secure ways to work together, such as discussion forums, groups, opportunities to network, and more. This helps the HR team, the Corporate Communications team, the administrative and operations teams, and the C-Suite understand what works and what doesn’t work better. It also collects critical behavioral data so the HR team, the Corporate Communications team, the administrative and operations teams, and the C-Suite can understand what works and what doesn’t work better. Because the platform is open, it is easy to add new features, programs, and campaigns. The longer our customers use the PeopleOne platform, the more they learn about what else they can do to improve.
The workplace has evolved today with the arrival of new technologies due to employees’ changing work habits and expectations. Workplaces and workforces are being revolutionized digitally, and it’s never too late for a business to keep agile and competitive amidst the evolving landscape.
“A fully integrated digital interactive platform that brings all the employee communications, business applications, and human resource initiatives together into one place can help employees communicate clearly, collaborate better, and create unique employee experiences like never before,” Ritwik Bose concluded. “We’re inspired every day to see how our customers are improving everything from collaboration to culture, even as this next generation of workers brings their ideas and experiences into the workplace – whether that place is a centralized office or decentralized home offices. The desire to feel connected and appreciated at work is fundamental, and new digital tools and approaches have the proven potential to make work-life more fulfilling.”
Workforces and workplaces have changed. Digital innovation is driving a new era of work that is the center of attention at Future of Work Expo 2022, taking place June 21-24, 2022 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The conference focuses on key elements of today's re-imagined workplace, not just for improving productivity, but also providing better employee and customer experiences, through the intersection of technology and the human element. Future of Work Expo is part of the #TECHSUPERSHOW experience
Arti Loftus is an experienced Information Technology specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the research, writing, and editing industry with many published articles under her belt.
Edited by
Erik Linask
