The Digital Workplace: an operational asset for organisations

Far from being limited to internal communication issues, as is often the case with the intranet, the Digital Workplace (DW) is a genuine collaborative tool that allows skills and energies to be pooled within teams. Katia Murawsky, Knowledge Management Manager at MGEN, and Mickaël Poiroux, Collaborative Uses Project Manager at Nantes Métropole, detail how the DW is proving to be an operational asset for their organisations.

DW does not go "on the platforms of internal communication".

As Katia Murawsky explains, the MGEN does not use its DW tool, Genius (see box), for the company's global intranet, but rather for everything that is business and operationally oriented.
"It is a point of vigilance for us to keep our initial objective, not to disperse and not to go to the internal communication platforms. I think it's important for everyone to adhere to this platform," she says.
A point of view shared by Mickaël Poiroux, whose organisation, Nantes Métropole, has developed a collaborative tool for DW, Naonantes (see box), which aims to go further than the traditional intranet functionalities.
"There is a desire to transform its professional practice on the occasion of this new intranet with a communication that is less centralised and also to make management more responsible so that they can be more contributors and actors in their own communications," he says.

Do you want to understand how to make a Digital Workplace a success?

Discover the Digital Workplace guide

Digital Workplace: benefits at the individual and collective levels

But how does the Digital Workplace (DW) concretely contribute to collective and individual efficiency? "Naonantes allows to fluidify the dialogue with the agents (...), to share, mutualize and collaborate in a transversal way, whether you are elected, a territorialized agent or in a central direction (...) Naonantes thus participates in the democratic life of the community", answers Mickaël Poiroux. In terms of working from home, the metropolis has thus generalised the platform as of January, after the launch of a campaign in September (2020).
"In the context of teleworking, Naonantes makes it possible to integrate a colleague who is never present in the field. It therefore makes it possible to maintain collaboration", emphasises the project manager for Usages Collaboratifs in Nantes Métropole. In addition, Naonantes gives the opportunity to animate communities of managers so that they can find resources more quickly than before.
Katia Murawsky points out that the effectiveness of Genius lies in the ease of daily routine, such as the centralisation of information that users need. As far as teleworking is concerned, she mentions the possibility of working and collaborating at a distance.
But beyond that, "Genius brings a certain security to employees in terms of fresh or updated information (in the case of Covid-19 in particular)".
For his part, Gildas Guillet, who is responsible for the Jalios offer to ASI, confirms that there is a real facility on both sides, which brings efficiency: that which is linked to the use of the application launcher.
"With the different tools, we'll be able to go and consume flows that will announce me that on such and such an application I'm going to have an action to carry out, as in the case of the manager who needs to validate holidays. These little things bring comfort on a daily basis," says the person who sees the Digital Workplace as a sort of cockpit and service aggregator.

What are the real benefits of the Digital Workplace for companies and organisations?

According to Katia Murawsky, the real gains made by DW can really be measured by satisfaction surveys within companies and organisations. For Genius, it is the employees who report the gains in performance, individual efficiency and collective intelligence. And all the feedback so far has been positive.

Less of a "field survey", Mickaël Poiroux believes that it is always difficult to measure the gains generated by DW, but that they are perceived in the emergence of new uses, the evolution of commitments in collaborative spaces, and in the ability to clean up these spaces and develop historical uses."Indeed, measuring this quantitatively is tricky, but measuring it qualitatively on a regular basis every year through an employee satisfaction survey is one of the areas that needs to be explored," summarises Gildas Guillet.

Would you like to discover the Digital Workplace that will meet the needs of your employees?

Ask for a personalised demonstration