A key trend emerged at WORKTECH’s Financial Workplace 23 forum: companies are focusing more than ever on the workplace experience and utilizing workplace apps to make office life more worthwhile and appealing to employees.
Gabrielle Fink, Workplace Strategist, digital transformation expert, and former project lead for a global bank’s workplace app, participated in a workplace app panel discussion during the forum. We spoke with Gabrielle about the workplace experience trend and how global organizations should approach a workplace app development project.
Q. Everyone is talking about workplace experience. What is your definition, and how can a workplace app play a role in improving it?
A. To truly improve your workplace experience, you must realize it encompasses all employee interactions inside and outside the office. It includes people, experiences, and physical spaces enriched by technologies that help them excel no matter where they do their job.
people + experiences + physical spaces = workplace experience
A workplace app can address all these areas if you choose the right one. The key is not to focus on just one need.
Many large organizations have significant real estate portfolios and a global infrastructure – a workplace app helps them manage their building technology.
When COVID hit, companies began using corporate workplace apps to empower the “Future of Work.” That wasn’t well defined, nor did it last. Some companies started using their app as a way for employees to present vaccination credentials or access buildings touch-free. Unfortunately, the focus was still on the buildings.
Now companies are prioritizing Return to the Office and adding more building-focused functionality to their apps, such as desk reservations, food ordering, and indoor wayfinding. These modules are very helpful, but they’re not enticing people back to the office.
Remember, the workplace experience concerns people, experiences, and physical spaces enriched by technology. It’s about making office life attractive and frictionless and making days in the office more productive and worthwhile. For those working remotely, it’s about making them feel part of a community. It’s about how you engage with your employees.
Employees are letting companies know what they want to get them into the office: 1) connection to other employees, 2) career advancement needs, such as meetings with leadership, a mentor, or boss, 3) training and learning, and 4) culture/community, such as an office event or to take advantage of an amenity like the gym.
A workplace app can address all these needs.
Q. In your experience, why do companies decide to launch a workplace app?
A. Many companies often adopt a workplace app to combine their front-end building services and enable new building technologies such as smart lockers, space booking, and digital building access. The Corporate Real Estate or Corporate Services team is usually the project lead and they aren’t thinking about how other departments might leverage this technology or its broader potential for the business.
Fortunately, I’ve worked with some forward-thinking leaders who understood the need for a broader approach and fully supported a vision for a workplace app that was much more than digital lockers, room booking, and cafeteria menus.
Q. What would you recommend as a first step for companies considering using a corporate workplace app?
A. Like the iPhone when it came out 20 years ago, no one knew everything it would solve for them. The same applies to workplace apps. You don’t want to evaluate vendors and develop an app without envisioning how it can and should meet many organizational goals.
If you’re starting, you must understand the different platforms and what they can do because the workplace app landscape is still fairly broad. Some apps have a singular focus, such as communication, HR, procurement, or building systems. Others, like Modo Workplace, provide a platform that brings everything together and enables companies to solve broader workplace experience initiatives with a workplace app.
Some ways to learn what is possible:
- Do your research. Read articles on workplace apps, workplace experience, and employee engagement platforms. Once you have a list of vendors, review their websites, download their solutions briefs, and create your vendor shortlist.
- Hire someone to do the research for you. Big research firms like Gartner and Forrester and technology consulting firms like Accenture have conducted vendor and technology reviews. They are eager to share their thoughts on technologies shaping the workplace and employee experience.
- Let vendors educate you. If you have a list of potential vendors, invite them to demo their products and share their thoughts on what’s possible with their technology. Of course, this only brings value if you’ve selected vendors with breadth. If you only bring in vendors with smart building apps, you won’t hear anything about how an app can support recruiting or employee engagement.
Once your research is complete, you must start working on your internal picture.
“The workplace experience concerns people, experiences, and physical spaces enriched by technology. It’s about making office life attractive and frictionless and making days in the office more productive and worthwhile. For those working remotely, it’s about making them feel part of a community.” – Gabrielle Fink, Workplace Strategist
Q. What should that internal picture include, and why is it important?
A. Once you have your vendor list, a logical next step is to send out an RFP and evaluate vendors. But if you don’t understand the needs across the organization and have a clear vision for what you want to use your workplace app for, your RFP will not ask vendors the right questions. Here are some areas to include in that big picture:
- Current technology landscape: What existing technologies do you have (HR, desk booking, etc.)? What features could you utilize in your app? What data from your current architecture could be surfaced through a workplace app? Are there legacy systems the app will need to integrate?
- Internal requirements: What are the privacy, legal, branding, security, etc. requirements for this type of technology?
- Logistical requirements: Does the app need to offer space booking, car reservations, food ordering, etc.?
- Segmentation needs: Will certain features only be available to certain groups/offices/regions? Will you need an app that supports multiple languages?
- Initiative stakeholders: Who needs to be involved in this project? Legal, procurement, real estate, HR, cyber security, and protective security are a few to consider.
- Roadblocks: What hoops will you need to jump through to execute your vision? For example, my team wanted to use Modo’s communication feature, but the internal approval hurdles were enormous, and we had to scrap the idea. We also discovered that external browser links in the app, such as travel providers, sometimes didn’t work due to the bank’s security wrapper requirements.
- Vision stakeholders: Who should be involved in shaping and supporting the app’s vision? Leaders from corporate services, real estate, communications, HR, and talent are key.
- Funding: Who will fund the implementation and life of the app? The app will support multiple teams and needs across the organization, but these groups may not want to “chip in.”
- Support Model: Who operationally will support and maintain your app? Identify the skills you’ll need, e.g., content development and technical support.
This can be a lengthy process, but a necessary one.
Q. Why is it essential to have a vision for your workplace app, and how do you develop one?
A. Having led many large technology transformation projects, I’ve seen first-hand the positive impact a well-defined vision has on stakeholder buy-in, design planning, and the implementation journey.
The project vision is the overall grand idea of where the workplace app is going and what you’re trying to achieve at a high level. It gives direction, sets goals, and helps you determine what functionality to include in your app now and over time. You want your vision to be cool, but it needs to be achievable.
To develop your vision, you must involve the key groups interacting with employees: corporate comms, HR, and corporate services. They should align on how the app will be used and what it will include. This “vision gang” will also champion and promote the vision within the company.
Once you have your vision, you MUST write it down. The vision statement is the tool to communicate the idea for the workplace app clearly and concisely. That vision will get muddled over time if it isn’t captured on paper.
Q. Are there some workplace app capabilities you feel are especially helpful to companies and employees?
A. The Modo platform provided a lot of integration and customization capabilities that helped us think “outside the box” about how we could solve some of my client’s workplace experience issues. That level of flexibility and customization is hugely beneficial to complex organizations. Three valuable capabilities were:
- Geo-targeted push notifications. Sending messages like “brown bag lunch happening on level 25” and “free yoga in the fitness room” were excellent ways to inform and excite people about office happenings. Rather than strong-arming employees to come into the office, we focused on making them feel like they were missing out.
- Custom app modules. Frictionless access to information is critical. With the Modo platform, we built custom modules to make company resources and information more easily accessible to employees versus getting buried on the intranet or lost in their email boxes.
- Digital accessibility. The platform allowed us to take legacy technologies that had suboptimal UIs and poor accessibility and bring them into a container that was branded, beautifully designed, and supports assistive technologies such as screen readers, magnifiers, and voice recognition software. It was a far less expensive approach than upgrading individual legacy system UIs to ensure standards compliance.
Modo thanks Gabrielle for sharing her expert insights. It is incredibly rewarding to hear clients’ stories and the value our platform has brought them. As Gabrielle points out, the unmatched customization and flexibility of the Modo Workplace Engagement Platform empower complex organizations to create a workplace app that supports a broader set of workplace experience initiatives.