Flexible or hybrid work patterns have become the norm. While that has been mostly positive, in some cases, its has burdened employees with “digital debt.”
Workers are spending more time navigating the digital workplace. They wrestle with congested email inboxes, instant messages, endless application notifications, online meetings, and more. The lack of energy or time to address all this information results in digital debt.
Dealing with Digital Debt
Excessive, sprawling digital ecosystems are costly to set up and can myriad issues if not managed correctly. Plus, they can affect productivity and well-being overall. In fact, 68% of employees reported not having enough uninterrupted focus time, leading to feelings of burnout and a lack of creativity, according to Microsoft.
What’s more, the Digital Wellness Institute highlights the critical link between digital health and employee engagement. Micro changes in smart device use — for example, simply being more aware of our usage — can reduce screen time by up to 16%, its research showed. This can improve productivity and well-being.
Efforts to tackle workers’ increasing digital debt can give them more time for business-critical tasks or innovative thinking. This can lead to better performance, welfare and, ultimately, revenue. The channel has an opportunity to educate businesses on the importance of simplifying existing IT infrastructure in pursuit of more refined systems that merge countless applications into a single, manageable platform.
The aim is to create more user-friendly digital workplaces by offering intuitive and effective single interfaces. If employees feel like they are constantly repaying a digital debt, a simplified online workplace can make tasks easier and enhance their focus. With fewer digital distractions and less time switching between apps, people can spend more time on high-value work.
Simplification Is Key
Eric Nicolai
It’s a myth that businesses are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure; companies are now able to access and invest in powerful, innovative IT systems that foster collaboration and improve performance. The simple truth is that most firms want simplicity: efficient ways for their staff to perform their jobs and for teams to be more engaged and productive.
Digital debt arises from the conflict between these two ideas, so the channel has an opportunity to better educate its customers on walking this thin line. Some employees unavoidably receive hundreds of texts, emails, and notifications per day. But how can simplified IT systems help determine what’s critical, and what can be deferred or streamlined?
Seek solutions and vendors focused on optimizing customers’ existing tech stacks and technological investments. A proactive approach to IT simplification has the potential to reduce IT complexity, improve security, and maximize existing investments, especially where there is tech fatigue or wasted employee time.
Companies should also go further than merely consolidating their invaluable apps into one platform. It’s important to think about the digital workplace as an extension of the office; it can host everything from an intranet to important documents on an HR hub or even create a social space for home workers. The more you can do to transform the digital employee experience into one that supports people, the better. This will help them repay their digital debt without adding to their workload.
It’s a thought-provoking time for the channel. Solutions to these uniquely 21st-century problems are seemingly endless. The key is to collaborate on IT transformation; get to the heart of an organization’s existing digital processes; and add real value, where it really matters.
Case Study: IT Simplification and Improving Patient Care in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands, Workspace 365 proved first-hand how these challenges can be overcome.
Dutch healthcare workers spend an estimated 40% of their time on administrative tasks. This valuable time should be spent on patient care.
By using APIs to integrate existing IT systems into one platform, cloud services provider TCC overhauled a healthcare client’s digital employee experience, reduced administrative time, and repaid some of the digital debt its health workers had accrued. As a result, the healthcare client managed to save each worker between five to 15 minutes per day.
With a workforce of more than 4,000 employees, this amounts to roughly 333 to 1,000 hours per day. This is extra time that can now be spent on patient care or other crucial tasks, rather than searches through various apps, documents, and programs.
Erik Nicolai is CEO and founder of Workspace 365, an adaptive digital workplace provider that aims to simplify the digital environment to help employees achieve their ultimate work focus.
Image: iStock
