This article was written with Matthew Lewsadder of Communardo Products.
Digital transformation is advancing at an unprecedented pace. From marketing and sales to product development and beyond, businesses are integrating digital technologies across their organization to increase automation, improve collaboration and achieve new competitive advantages. By the end of 2017, two-thirds of Global 2000 companies will have digital transformation at the very center of their company strategy.
Yet, change is rarely easy. Many companies are surprised to discover that in spite of their investments in automation, AI, and cloud technologies, business productivity growth remains at a near-historic low (1.3 percent).
What’s the problem? Experts are finding that employees haven’t kept up with the pace of digital transformation. Deloitte reports that employees are overwhelmed by information overload and the demands of the always-connected 24/7 digital workforce. Indeed, a 2016 Gallup study warned that we’re in the midst of an employee engagement crisis, with just 13% of employees worldwide reporting that they feel connected to their organization and its goals.
One simple solution is smarter enterprise collaboration using a platform like Confluence. This tool brings a range of benefits to help:
- Enable agile and collaborative workflows
- Unite remote employees
- Build transparency and trust
- Unleash the power of knowledge sharing
These are powerful benefits. Below are several strategies that can help your business get the most out Confluence by improving employee engagement and productivity.
Start a Team
You can’t build an engaged digital workforce on your own. You’ll need a strong team to help get buy-in from both management and employees to ensure a successful deployment.
The first step is to find champions across the organization. These should be forward-thinking, tech-savvy individuals who believe in the advantages provided by new digital technologies. The team should consist of employees from different departments and positions since it will need to win buy-in from all levels of the organization.
The task force should be prepared to encounter questions and resistance. The most successful deployments have a clear communications plan, complete with pre-launch communications, department guides, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and tutorials. To increase user adoption across the business, look for opportunities to involve the rest of the organization in naming exercises, content migration, and other key initiatives.
Make It Personal
Digital disconnection is a real problem for organizations with a digital workforce.
At some point on the road to digital transformation, your employees will find that their primary form of workplace interaction is through software. While this is a powerful benefit for today’s globally distributed workforces, it can be a difficult adjustment for employees to make.
The reality is that in a digital workplace, user profiles are where most employees “meet” each other for the first time. However, many companies struggle to keep their user profiles up to date. Pictures are missing. Titles and positions are out of date. Even reporting structures are obsolete. This can make it difficult for employees to connect and collaborate with each other. It’s also one reason 72 percent of employees say they can’t find the information they need to do their jobs.
Fortunately, there’s a simple solution. Integrate your user profiles with your active directory. Now, profile pictures and data are always up to date. Plus, apps can help you tailor profiles with custom fields for languages, interests, skills, hobbies or whatever your organization cares about. This makes it easier for employees to connect with each other and find the answers they need.
Apps like User Profiles for Confluence enable you to create custom profiles and synchronize them with your Active Directory to ensure that they’re always up-to-date.
Make It Fun
Digital collaboration doesn’t need to be tedious work. You’ve probably heard about gamification and how it’s been used by a wide variety of businesses to better engage internal and external customers. Well, why not use the same approach to motivate employee participation, engagement, and collaboration?
Gamification makes collaboration more fun and rewarding. It also makes administration a lot easier, since users are now incentivized to contribute to your wiki.
With a gamification app like Karma for Confluence, you can award points and badges to employees for everything from creating and editing content to completing HR training and onboarding processes. You’ll enjoy watching employees compete with each other to climb leaderboards and earn awards for their contributions to your wiki. And you’ll find wiki management is a lot easier with an engaged and motivated workforce.
Example of how gamification can be used to award employees with points, badges, and medals for common Confluence activities.
Build an Engagement Strategy
In the digital transformation age, the single most important thing you can do is ensure that your employees are keeping up with you. The first step is putting digital collaboration at the heart of your workforce engagement strategy with a platform like Confluence. Next, build a team and a great communications plan. Then, invest in the tools your employees need to stay engaged, motivated, and productive. Even in a digital workplace, employees remain your company’s greatest asset and the foundation for its competitive advantage.
At Communardo Software GmbH, we love bringing people, systems, and data together in powerful new ways. Communardo offers User Profiles for Confluence, Karma for Confluence, and a variety of other apps in the Atlassian Marketplace that make Confluence more personal, fun and productive.