HR, the Digital Workplace needs you!
HR often approach Jalios as part of the implementation of a Digital Learning platform or when it comes to encouraging knowledge sharing, continuous training and generally "socializing" training.
It is true that JPlatform offers with JLearn an innovative and effective approach to this use of knowledge capitalization and dissemination. However, when it comes to setting up a Digital Workplace, it is always a good sign to see HR people involved in the project. Together with their colleagues from comm and ISD, they often form a winning trio. The comm is present, because as we mentioned in a previous post, Intranet or Digital Workplace, a matter of communication ! The ISD is present because the project includes a technical and technological component. As for HR, why is it essential to the success of the Digital Workplace?
Reason #1 - Sweater vs. Push
A successful Digital Workplace is a workplace where people go not because they have to, but because they find it in their interest. No need to impose it on the browser's home page on workstations, the Digital Workplace is doomed to failure if it does not meet real needs. In this user-centred approach to the Digital Workplace, it is not a question of pushing information to users (push), but of making it available and that they themselves come to collect it (pull).
However, if there is one area where we can be sure that employees will always come looking for information on their own, that is all that links them directly to the organization. Topics that deal with practical business life such as access to buildings, available resources, the canteen menu, more personal information, such as pay slips, holidays, positions open for internal mobility, etc. All this information is often in the hands of HR.
Thus, involving HR means ensuring that you understand this need and provide this information to users (integration into the HR IS for example). It also means ensuring that the Digital Workplace is used properly to meet this need: maintaining another information channel would limit the scope and impact of the Digital Workplace.
Reason #2 - People First
A Digital Workplace is not just technology. While technology is certainly used to enable new work practices, particularly collaborative ones, and new uses, they have an impact on human behaviour, which often requires support for change. And even beyond this support, an enhancement of these new practices. Indeed, if employees directly benefit from these new practices in terms of collaboration, capitalization and efficiency gains both individually and collectively, it is important to recognize that these are new skills acquired by people and contribute to their development in the company culture.
Thus, involving HR in the Digital Workplace project means recognizing the human dimension of such a project and ensuring that it is not lost sight of. HR can legitimize the transformations observed and value them in terms of work and therefore career development, particularly in terms of annual interviews and the recognition of new roles and responsibilities as "ambassador" or "community leader". This makes it possible to promote the uses of the Digital Workplace, and to encourage its adoption, which is essential to its success.
Reason #3 - The Employer Brand
Finally, the Digital Workplace is the employee's digital working environment and is valued at the level of the employer brand as much as the physical working environment: the working environment, the location of offices, access to a canteen, the comfort of workstations, etc. With digital transformation, the digital environment sometimes even takes precedence over the physical environment: it is the rise of teleworking.
In the face of recruitment challenges, a successful Digital Workplace is an important factor in attracting talent: the Digital Workplace offers them a digital well-being and flexibility that seems natural to them and acquired in view of the digital practices they enjoy in their private lives, outside of work. A successful Digital Workplace is the guarantee of a company that has successfully transformed itself digitally and put it at the service of quality of life at work. HR has a strong interest in getting involved in the Digital Workplace project to make it a success and not to miss this essential issue.
The Digital Workplace does not solve all the problems in the company, but it is an important lever and a great opportunity to bring together the various players, whether it is the comm, HR, IT or business units, around a common project that will serve both the interests of the organization and employees.
