Digital Workplace Tech Trends for 2023

The future of work centers around creating a human-centric digital workplace to accommodate the evolving employee experience requirements. As we discussed in one of our previous blogs, in an effort to foster an employee-centric culture, organizations globally are investing in technologies to enable a productive and secure digital employee experience.

In this turbulent business environment made so by recessions, talent shortage, and the dynamic work models, tech leaders need guidance to make strategic IT decisions. To help them strategize and execute cost-effective digital workplace transformation, Forrester highlights five major digital workplace trends that will become popular in 2023.

Digital Employee Experience (DEX)

According to Forrester, 60% of technology and business leaders indicate that improving employee experience is a top priority for this year. Even with the threat of an upcoming recession, enterprises are determined to focus on DEX, preferably in a cost-effective fashion.

Forrester advises that the recession should not influence organizations to put their DEX investments on the backburner. In fact, tactical DEX improvement with tangible ROI should be the key focus areas.

In a VMware survey, 88% agreed that the ease with which they can find and install the right apps needed for work is a most critical factor in ensuring a great digital experience. 83% voted for flexibility in anywhere working as another important factor. Digital workplace technologies like Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) can help organizations implement a human-centric and employee-focused culture.

Proactive Experience Management

Since DEX is the driving force behind digital workplace transformation, proactive IT support will receive a lot of attention in the coming years. There is a need to proactively detect and solve IT-related issues to improve employee experience. This not only improves DEX but also has the capacity to reduce cost.

Since the right data is the key component in getting the right insights, data from end user touch points will be a valuable asset. System-driven analytics such as incident correlation can save massive amount of time and energy for workers while also improving their end user experience.

Digital Workplace Vendor Consolidation

When the world got serious about hybrid and remote working, vendors came together to simplify digital workplace portfolios with app integration in platforms that made end user experience easier. This trend will see more acceleration in 2023 and beyond.

Forrester predicts greater integration between EUEM (end user experience management) platforms and AIOps tools. Since DEX can improve drastically with simplified apps availability and accessibility, there will be investments made in digital workplace vendor consolidation.

Personalized Digital Workplace

A huge part of enhancing employee experience is personalizing their digital workplace environment. According to Gartner, audience segmentation capabilities will enable the delivery of targeted and personalized data and apps into employee interfaces. This will equip each employee with their own highly individualized digital workplaces, which not only enhances their experience but skyrockets their productivity too.

With digital workplaces personalized for each employee persona, the time and effort spent will inevitably reduce and this user customization will drastically bring down IT issues.

Transition from SLA to XLA

The traditional metrics of success like open rates, content views, and client-specific SLAs on up-time are set to change, says Forrester. As the focus shifts to DEX, these metrics will be centered more on employees and their experiences – SLAs transitioning to XLAs. These XLAs can range from device performance to app accessibility to lesser downtime to something as broad as digital onboarding processes.

While CSAT is one of the most trusted DEX metrics, organizations will need to go deeper on to a micro-level and measure the experience of each end user, instead of the client average. While SLA measures the output of IT, XLAs will measure the outcome of IT. While SLAs focus primarily on measuring the processes, XLAs will focus on the value added and the productivity of the services delivered.

Measuring DEX must be a regular and ongoing task that encompasses device and app performance. Quantifying DEX through set XLAs will go a long way in creating an employee-centric digital workplace.

To Sum Up

Implementing anywhere working has evolved in just a matter of two years, with the focus shifting from utilitarian to experiential. Focusing on DEX while strategizing your digital workplace transformation is a smart way of ensuring both employee productivity as well as achieving business goals.
The trends we discussed work well as a roadmap to setting up a highly effective digital workplace and successfully managing DEX.

AUTHOR

Girish Srinivas
Girish Srinivas

Girish Srinivas is Sr. Vice President - Technical Design & Service Delivery Head at Anunta. He has over two decades of experience in the IT Design & Operations. His expertise lies in Cloud Computing, Application Delivery Specialization, Server Virtualization, Data Center and Network Landscape.