Over the past two years, the way we work has rapidly evolved. Poorly planned work-from-home strategies have now given way to a thriving, employee-centric hybrid work model.
Initially, after the pandemic, businesses focused on digitizing the workplace to ensure secure and collaborative working. From 2020 to late 2022, the constant tug-of-war between remote work, hybrid work, and returning to the office dominated discussions. Throughout this period, companies prioritized employee productivity.
Now, in 2023, this focus has shifted. For the first time since the five-day workweek began, employee needs are driving the future of work, much like labor unrest did almost a century ago.
Enhancing employee experience through a human-centric digital workplace has gained significant attention since the start of the new year.
The Future of Work 2023 Report by Infosys highlights that from 2022 to 2024, businesses are increasingly focusing on automation and digital tools to promote a human-centric culture.
The report shows that an overwhelming 73% of senior executives and managers believe flexible and remote workplaces will expand, while 41% of companies plan to enhance remote hiring over the next two years.
In the past two years, remote working has improved talent onboarding, as blurred geographical boundaries allow for greater employee flexibility.
And the hybrid model does wonders with employee retention. This is one of the main reasons why Forrester Predictions 2023 warns leaders that forcing employees back to the office will meet with “disastrous results”. It says that undoing hybrid and remote working will result in a loss of productivity.
Set against this context, organizations are faced with the most obvious choice – adopt digital workplace technologies with the goal to improve employee experience.
The Gartner 2023-2024 Tech Adoption Roadmap for Infrastructure & Operations says that there will be a 14% increase in the adoption of digital workplace technologies from the period 2021-2023 to 2022-2024. This increase will be driven primarily by the need to ensure a great digital employee experience.
The Gartner report validates this rise in percentage with some employee experience statistics.
Employees who express satisfaction are 60% more likely to remain and 69% more likely to be top performers. This data is critical, especially given today’s talent scarcity, a challenge we covered in detail in one of our recent whitepapers.
According to Gartner, 60% of digital workplace technologies improve speed and agility, while 40% enhance employee experience. Additionally, Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) has become a favored choice among CIOs and IT decision-makers due to its high value and low risk.
With employee experience being a critical factor for business success, it is a priority for organizations to invest in digital workplace technologies like DaaS, which invariably provides a high return on investments.
DaaS addresses employee experience challenges in many ways, from providing remote access to business applications to ensuring minimum downtime. With DaaS, employees get the support to remain productive without loss in effort or time, without the risk of data breach or loss.
A few ways that DaaS empowers employees:
(Learn more from our COO, Maneesh Raina, as he explores in detail how DaaS ensures great end user experience.)
The future of work is employee centric. As we shift to a human-centric digital workplace driven by employee expectations, organizations must realign IT strategies with fresh perspectives. The future workplace focuses on experiences, not numbers. With technologies like DaaS, providing the ideal infrastructure for seamless operations, organizations can ensure these experiences are meaningful and repeatable.