Digital Workplace - Providing a New Impetus for Working With IT?
Jinfo Blog

By Steve Bynghall

Abstract

Co-producer Steve Bynghall considers how the digital workplace can lead to increased importance of a better working relationship with the IT department and flags up recently-published and upcoming resources from expert contributors to Jinfo's current Research Focus, "Strategic Alignment of Information Services and IT".

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One of the concepts we've been exploring in our Research Focus on the "Strategic Alignment of Information Services and IT" is the "digital workplace".

Use of the term has grown more prevalent in the past couple of years. It first emerged among intranet consultants who needed a term to describe the strategic importance of the employee's experience of the ecosystem of digital tools, of which the intranet was often a central component. It stressed the need for a more holistic approach and integrated experience.

Since then the term has increasingly been used by some vendors, particularly pushing more integrated digital environments such as Office 365. It's also under the scrutiny of the larger consultancies, and IT research houses like Gartner - see our Market Landscape - IT Industry Analysts for information on the "big four".

A Healthy Partnership

While the digital workplace means different things to different people, it does provide the potential for a new focus, impetus and rationale for working with IT, particularly for other support functions such as information services or knowledge management.

With a common goal of a better experience of all things digital for employees, and regarded as being of greater strategic importance, it means a healthy partnership with IT is more important than ever.

The concept of partnership with colleagues in the IT department is a theme that runs throughout the Focus and we've been exploring areas such as:

• What can lead to misunderstandings with IT
• How to decide when information services projects should sit within IT
• How to realign your relationship with IT. There's also a useful model which helps you to identify positive actions for a more productive work environment.  

Our January webinar "IS and IT Make Sense of the 'Digital Workplace'" took a deep dive into exactly what the digital workplace is, some of the latest thinking and what this means for both IS and IT. There's also a great summary which is a good quick read for those who don't have time to view the hour's recording.

If you haven't yet booked your seat for the 8th March webinar, do so now: "Shifting the Worldview around IS/IT Relationships: A First Step to Alignment".

Still to Come

• We'll be publishing an article about the digital workplace and how this potentially changes working patterns with IT. It includes input from four thought leaders who are very active in this space

• An article on the impact of mobile working on the digital workplace will look at aspects such as security, staff training and changing expectations of the workplace

• I'll be exploring how we can move towards a more structured way of working with IT, drawing on my own experiences of working with IT on a variety of projects. 

While not all the ideas around the digital workplace are new, the current rise in interest has the potential to give a new strategic context of many of our activities. It will be fascinating to see how this develops as the Research Focus continues to provide interesting food for thought. 

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