Digital employee experience
5 min read
22 August 2023

How the digital workspace affects employee engagement (and why it’s essential)

Kelly van der Horst
employee engagement

Employee engagement is essential to all businesses. It improves employee satisfaction, which then boosts productivity and increases employee retention. Below, we’ll explore how a digital workspace can affect employee engagement and why it’s important.

Why is employee engagement important?

Employee engagement is essential for companies of all shapes and sizes. It ensures that employees are productive and committed to the organisation. Not only this, but engaged employees also produce better quality work.

Employee engagement also benefits your business by increasing employee satisfaction. More and more employees are looking for better job satisfaction. Some even consider it more important than having a higher salary.

People want to work for companies where they feel valued and enjoy the work they do. Thus, focusing on improving employee engagement is crucial!

However, with the rise in remote working, it can be difficult to ensure a good employee experience. So, it is critical for companies to make an extra effort to improve remote employee engagement with a digital workspace.

The role of a digital workspace in employee engagement

Let’s look at the different ways that a digital workspace can affect employee engagement.

Communication is easier and more efficient

A digital workspace, like Workspace 365, facilitates seamless, efficient communication with easy-to-use tools. Not only can employees message each other, but you can create a social intranet within your digital workspace.

Through this, your employees can interact with each other and communicate across departments. This helps to improve engagement as they can see what their colleagues post, learn new things, and share knowledge amongst one another.

Within large organisations, and especially with remote workers, it’s very easy to feel disconnected from others. This can make it difficult for your employees to reach out and engage with their colleagues.

A digital workspace helps to solve this problem. It can help your employees feel more connected by making communication across departments easier and allowing everyone to comment on messages and posts. Having this type of channel enables employees to get to know one another and engage better within the workspace.

Flexibility

For many employees, flexibility is important. People have busy lives and schedules so having a digital workspace that you can access at any time from anywhere is very helpful. This takes some pressure off your employees, which can improve engagement. They will feel less distracted and therefore be more productive.

Good digital employee experience

Old, clunky systems can be slow and incredibly frustrating to use. If your employees feel frustrated when working due to subpar software or digital tools, they will start to dread their work. In turn, this bad experience with work processes can result in negative feelings toward your company. This leads to unmotivated and unproductive employees.

By putting a highly functional digital workspace in place, you can ensure that you provide a positive digital employee experience. Your employees will be able to find everything they need in one place and perform their tasks more efficiently. Thus, it will help boost employees’ engagement in their work and, in turn, their productivity.

All these features are important to consider because they contribute to a holistic digital employee experience. Further, it makes normal work more efficient and so leaves more time open for employee engagement activities. Incorporating some activities for your employees to take part in is a great way to make them feel involved and valued.

How a digital workspace affects engagement in remote vs. office employees

Looking at the effects and benefits more broadly, you might think that the digital workspace is most helpful for those workers who are no longer in the office. But, it can be just as useful for those still going (or who will be going) into work.

Let’s take a look at how a digital workspace affects employee engagement in both instances.

Remote employee engagement

The benefits of a digital workspace for the remote employee are perhaps a bit more obvious. It’s a workspace that you can access on virtually any device, from anywhere, without compromising on functionality.

Without a centralised workspace, it can be difficult to get work done in the same way you would in a typical office space. Not to mention, it can be incredibly difficult for employees to receive support if not all the same tools are available in the remote setting.

So, a digital workspace ensures that remote employees can still do their work efficiently. This is because they’ll always have access to the tools they need right at their fingertips!

As mentioned earlier, it also keeps them connected to their colleagues. They can easily communicate, share documents, ask questions, and more from one central workspace. This helps to keep them engaged in their work as it ensures that they are constantly in the loop instead of being completely disconnected from their peers and the company.

In the office

The benefits of a digital workspace cannot be denied even in a traditional office space. You still have the benefits of a centralised platform:

  • Fewer distractions for employees from the task at hand
  • It allows for easy communication across large companies with many departments
  • Company news is instantly available in the starting point of their day

A digital workspace simplifies work operations. All your apps and tools can be found within one space, which makes workflows much more efficient across the board.

This central workspace helps office employees, especially in large organisations, to keep up to speed with everything going on. This keeps them connected and more engaged overall.

Closing thoughts

Employee engagement is critical for all organisations. With the increase in remote work, it can be more difficult to maintain and improve this aspect of the business. However, a digital workspace can completely change the game! It can ensure that your employees (remote and in-office) feel engaged and involved with their work.

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