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Business Solutions

GETTING TO THE TOP OF THE STACK:

HOW EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE [EX] IS BECOMING

THE PRIORITY FOR C-SUITE LEADERS

ELIZABETH DUKES the digital workplace was to eliminate the distraction to
Co-Founder & CMO the employee and free them up to do their best work.
iOffice
And it worked, for a while. Companies created employee
tasks forces, chose an urgent catalyst—like a move
WHETHER YOU’RE A CRE EXEC or workplace leader, or expansion—to assess the issues. Next, armed with
2019 is going to be the year where the Employee Experience employee sentiment, they set off to knock down the silos
[EX] trumps all office tech. Why? It’s economics. For the between HR, IT, and FM by getting both their teams and
first time in more than a decade, unemployment has hit technologies talking to each other. Not an easy task when
3.7%—an all-time low. For many internal HR teams, this is so many on-premises solutions were not cloud-based. Not
the first time that the competition for talent has reached only would the systems fight each other, but they struggled
its apex. Every competitive advantage is critical in order to share data. Getting the SaaS solutions to the enterprise
to attract, recruit, and retain top talent. And the office is with open REST APIs was the game changer in unleashing
no exception. As leaders look to keep great team mem- the data and getting systems speaking to each other. In
bers, it’s not enough to have a beautiful office, or a pro- addition, employees could now schedule their own service
ductive one. The office has to learn from and respond to requests, book conference rooms and check in visitors.
the employee. It actually has to get smarter. The DIY office, it seems, was finally here.

Gartner coined the term Digital Workplace nearly five For the first time, the office tech stack was a comprehen-
years ago. “A digital workplace is a business strategy to sive collection of flexible, new and old technologies that
boost employee agility and engagement through a more sought to serve both the employee and the business. Or
consumerized work environment. While each one is differ- did it? Once these division leaders found out that both
ent, successful digital workplaces share characteristics tech and data were plentiful and accessible, many com-
that maximize the creative potential of the workforce and panies experienced an app explosion. Employees, FM, HR,
allow new ways of working that deliver better business CRE, and IT teams were all adding to the stack. Data was
outcomes.” piling up, but who was using it or gaining insights from
it? Employees were adding their own app preferences to
Typically, these achievements came about by creating Outlook, Slack, and Salesforce without even notifying IT.
a smart workplace—one that deployed technology that One of our Fortune 500 clients actually counted 56 apps
would be as easy to use as a smart phone—and one that on their corporate tech stack! Some of which were of
could provide data back to the employer to track space unknown origin or value.
utilization, create better systems for orchestrating moves,
mail delivery, service requests, and room reservations. It was time to come clean, get real, and reflect on whether
These systems would hypothetically integrate with HR this approach was serving the greatest good and the
and IT functions to make the employee’s life easier, so original ideal: to create the most satisfying and productive
she could concentrate on the bigger tasks at hand. Ide- workplaces. The answer? Not yet.
ally, these IWMS solutions, the underpinning of so much
of the digital workplace, would also provide data back to Beyond the Digital Workplace
the employer and CRE exec to better plan for the future Without a doubt, the SaaS-based IWMS remains the foun-
and provide a baseline for future decisions. The goal of dation for smart, digital enterprises everywhere. Let’s call

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