First off, what is a digital workspace? A digital workspace is a technological framework that centralizes an organization’s applications, data, and desktop delivery. It allows employees to access their apps and data on any device and from any location.
What are the benefits of a digital workspace? The intelligent and unified experience that digital workspace provides can be a huge benefit for your team. During these times, when most people work from home because of the coronavirus pandemic, a digital workspace is exactly what you need. Digital workspace can provide you with better team experience, enhanced security, and the centralized technology that your organization needs.
In one study, 70% of workers expressed that they toggle between apps up to 10 times per hour. Consequently, 38% of these workers admitted that this causes them to lose their train of thought. If these workers were to implement a digital workspace this would eliminate the need to switch between platforms, in turn, improving productivity and organization.
Whether working from home is imposed on you or you simply want to improve your employees’ productivity, the digital workspace can be the solution.
Seven Ways A Digital Workspace Improves Remote Team’s Productivity:
- Improved Communication
- Saves Time
- Flexible Access To Data
- Centralized Data
- Increased Engagement
- Information Security
- Fulfills The Needs Of Your Remote Team
1. Improve Communication
Without a consistent and efficient communication channel, team members won’t be able to collaborate effectively. Communication is the foundation of any project. Digital workspace will ensure seamless communication which is one of the reasons why its use is so relevant. 
Multiple communication tools incorporated into digital workspace allow the information to be disseminated to team members more rapidly. The better and quicker communication, the higher productivity you can achieve. A study by McKinsey Global Institute showed that employees who have connected to one another show an increase in productivity by 20-25%.
Connectivity between team members will give them the opportunity to get to know each other better, to collaborate with people outside of their team, to share their ideas easily, and to foster great teamwork. An added tool to help teams connect and foster teamwork while remote is trying out a virtual team building event.
2. Saves Time Notably
The ability to access data from different devices will make a huge difference when it comes to task duration and data processing.
Wasting time on tasks that can be automated or repeating the same task several times to save data on multiple channels will decrease team productivity. Instead of using their energy and talent on something more important, team members will lose it on repetition. That is why a digital workspace is your best bet.
Fondasol recognized that digital workspace can help them with saving time and improve their productivity. They are geotechnical engineering consulting with 30 agencies in France and abroad and 520 employees. Fondasol got a custom-made application and one hundred twenty tablets for field teams. Hocine Akir, the Head of Human Resources at Fondasol shared how this impacted their work:
“The introduction of tablets eliminated the task of continually re-entering data. As a result, we estimate a savings of four to five hours a week for a technician and four to five days per month for a secretary. We’ve reallocated that time to higher value-added activities, like sales.”
3. Enable Flexible Access to Data
With a digital workspace, teams can access the information at any time and from any location. How does this influence productivity? The flexibility will allow them to get work done when their productivity reaches its peak. Whenever they come up with a great idea, they can head to the digital workspace and make changes to a project or communicate their idea with other team members.
Most employees (89%) shared that flexible working was a key motivation for their productivity. Besides productivity, the flexibility of working is also linked to employee retention and employee happiness.
No matter what type of organization you run, providing your team to have access to the workspace whenever they need it will lead to significant changes. In some aspects, this provides employees with a personalized work environment.
Remember, working from home is a whole new ball game, employees and managers are learning what works and what does not. Learning your remote working/managing style can be easier as well by incorporating professional training and development, which can be offered virtually.
4. Centralize Data
Imagine this scenario: your new project demands that you use data from previous projects, so the employees are scattered trying to resurface all the information. Not only will you lose a ton of time, but the frustration and desperation can rise if you can’t find or access all the information. Digital workspace doesn’t carry such problems.
Cofense, a global leader in security shared how digital workspace helped them share the information with their employees fast and easily. “With Workspace ONE, we can have a laptop ready with all security policies in less than
half a day. It can be shipped off to an employee, who can start using it as early as the next day,” said Mark Zigadlo, the vice president of IT Cofense.
As all the data is stored in one place, you can access and use whatever you need. Team members can go back and remind themselves of previous projects or revise some relevant instructions.
You can even create guides for new projects and add them to the digital workspace for employees to have them at all times. Use a writing service such as TopEssayWriting to create a comprehensible guide. Read the review of TopEssayWriting to see testimonials from other clients on the high-quality service they provide. The team will have the guide on their disposal so there will be no confusion about the necessary processes.
All employees will be able to stay up to date with ongoing projects. The centralization of data will help team members to do their work much faster and improve their productivity.
5. Increase Engagement
It is proved that higher engagement is directly connected to higher productivity levels. Research has shown that highly engaged employees have a 21% increased level of productivity.
Digital workspace brings interaction to a whole new level. Team members can actively answer the manager’s inquiries or tasks. The communication between managers and employees will no longer be a one-way street.
With polls, surveys, and forums that digital workspace can provide, the team’s involvement will be more notable. They will feel that their opinions matter. When team members notice that they are valued, they will invest more effort into projects. 
The high level of engagement will also be reflected on the employee’s possibility to work more. The lack of pressure and increased interactivity will make the job interesting rather than exhausting. Not to mention that engagement boosts creativity.
The interaction and involvement also lead to job satisfaction and retention of employees. Retaining talented employees affects overall productivity which can be crucial for the company’s success.
6. Provide Security of Information
If they worked for hours, days, or maybe weeks and all of that work get erased because of some computer error, the team members will be devastated. Let’s say that they are collaborating with online writing websites on a project, they use all of the budget dedicated for that part and invest all the energy in this, and then it all disappears. Just imagine how such a situation would affect their productivity. The initial drive to finish the project will be gone for sure.
The knowledge that their work is safely stored in a digital workspace will take the pressure off employees. Ensure that your team members have a safe environment. The security that digital workspace provides is one of the most common ways in which team members recognize its importance.
Cerner, a leading provider of healthcare technology uses the digital workspace to build a highly secure digital foundation for its workers. With VMware NSX Data Center they protect individual workloads no matter where they are in the network. This was their solution to potential security gaps that evoke concerns among their managers and employees.
7. Fulfill the Needs of Team Members
The triggers for productivity depend on the individual. Not everyone responds to the same methods of motivation. Some are most productive when you enable them flexible work time, others are best when they can communicate with others whenever they need, and there are also those who find engagement to be the main trigger for productivity. You want to remember to keep the workplace culture even while virtual, scheduling team building will help keep the motivation in your team, from virtual happy hours to virtual scavenger hunts. 
You can’t exactly know what increases productivity for each of your employees, but you can provide them with solutions. The digital workspace gives you every aspect that can affect the team member’s productivity. In that way, you will be certain that you did your best to meet their needs.
When you do your best to personalize the work environment for employees, the effort will pay off. Take Microsoft for example, they put the human needs of the organization in the first place and raised individual productivity from 37% to 81%. Digital workspace is your path to enabling all team members to work in an environment that complies with everyone’s needs.
The high level of flexibility and interaction that digital workspaces offer makes them increasingly popular among organizations. Challenge the team’s mindset of supporting traditional methods and allow them to see how technology can improve their productivity. Digital workspace will bring changes to your team that will unify you and improve your work habits. Once the team members grasp how impactful digital workspace is on their productivity, they won’t be able to imagine their workdays without it.
About the author: Jessica Fender is a professional writer, independent blogger, and chief content officer at AllTopReviews, a website for academic essay writers reviews. She is passionate about wise team management and self-development as a leader. Featured on Freelancer and Addicted2Success.
We at TeamBonding are here to help your remote team increase engagement and productivity and feel more connected while at home. Contact us today!
