By: Kristel Lee-Hon-Siong
The Modern Workspace: Putting Employees at the Centre of Company Culture
In an ecosystem where competition is relentless, how do you attract and retain talent? Companies need to enable, empower, and engage their greatest assets in order to remain competitive. How do modern workspaces help in achieving this? By creating a modern workspace, you create an environment where people want to work. The new configuration is centered around fostering commitment and passion in the corporate culture.
A shift towards a modern workspace requires an alignment with technology. Chief Information Officers need to be at the table championing the change. Technology is the tool that allows us to perform our work to meet the key priorities of the organization. Providing the right technology to leverage a modern workspace is crucial to staying competitive in today’s world.
Compugen recently reimagined the modern workspace by reconfiguring over 2,000 offices in Canada, focusing on data centre transformation networks. Jeremy Erlick, vice president sales at Compugen, presented the three key things companies need to consider when planning to redesign a workspace.
- Work styles
Everyone has a unique work style; therefore, we need to create individual profiles that will determine how they will use different services in order to provide a productive environment. This needs to be done holistically by considering the impact of information technology, human resources, real estate, and facilities has on the employee. In addition, we need to account for the evolving preference and fundamental shifts of their perceptions. You can do this by giving your employees a consumer-like experience.
- Workplaces
Only 11 per cent of workers are satisfied with their workplace, a poignant statistic that highlights how workplaces can hinder engagement, collaboration, and creativity. Workplaces need to be designed for what tasks are required to be completed, and how it ought to be done, and this different for everyone. We need to empower employees by giving them control over their environment by providing the best place, a great set-up, and the proper technology. By delivering the best to our employees, and in turn our customers, we will be establishing a culture that cares about experiences that increase loyalty and efficiency.
- Tools and Technologies
Tools and technologies should be all about having choices, thus giving employees the freedom to do their job more efficiently. Statistically 72 percent of employees are more efficient at work when given choices. With these kinds of numbers, it is time to consider the popular trend of bring your own device and choose your own device to enable that flexibility. We need to ensure that technology is able to meet what they want and need. This can be done through good strategies for various devices, remote work, policies, and flexible collaboration. It’s the responsibility of the technology team to enable convenience, provide personal support, and align demands with company needs.
IT executives need to step outside their traditional scope and determine how their company will be managing the primacy of the individual contributor. They need to leverage their position to impact the people and culture alignment within the business’s brand and values.
About the writer:
Kristel Lee-Hon-Siong is a certified associate in project management (CAPM®) and a scrum master (CSM®) with experience in the agile environment and lean six sigma improvement processes. She has worked in diverse industries, such as information technology, manufacturing, event management, and the educational sector. She is a graduate of University of Waterloo with a Bachelor’s of Art in Psychology and Human Resources Management, and will soon be graduating from York University with a Bachelor’s of Commerce.