Industry Voice: The Secret to Setting Up a Successful Digital Workspace

When distributed working became part of our everyday lives, many business leaders feared the worst: morale will suffer, productivity will fall, employees will become isolated and lose touch with their teams…and the list went on.

We now know that the general fears surrounding the transition to remote or hybrid working were largely unfounded and that in fact, the opposite turned out to be true.

We all adapted, as we always do, and now we've had a taste of what modern working life can look like if we have more flexibility and choice in how and where we work, many of us are loathe to give up our newfound freedom and are in no rush to get back to the daily commute.

Planning a digital workspace

The secret to a successful and sustainable "anywhere working" strategy is through a secure, scalable, and unified digital infrastructure. One of the best ways to achieve this is by following a set of requirements that will help your business plan and implement a digital or virtual workspace.

So what is a digital workspace? A digital workspace is a technology framework that acts as a central hub and provides the worker with anytime, anywhere access to the tools, apps, and data they need to do their job on a daily basis.

Common features include unified device management, application and desktop virtualisation, additional security, single sign-on (SSO), and automated workflows.

Hitting the requirements

Digital workspaces are more successful if these five requirements are put into practice:

• Put employee experience first
• Secure delivery of applications anytime, anywhere
• Device management
• Use of data insights to manage security and UX
• Scalability through automation

Benefits of a digital workspace

Once these key components are in place, both employees and the business can start to enjoy the many benefits of having a well-thought-out digital workspace like increased productivity, lower staff turnover, better customer service, reduced infrastructure cost, more robust security, and simple, secure access for contractors and other third-party workers.

You can also factor in all the extra benefits of having a distributed working model for your business like flexible hours, savings on office rental, time saved on commuting, and the ability to recruit staff from a much wider geographic area.

Employee experience

At the core of the digital workspace is the employee. According to VMware research, 61% of employees expect employers to allow them to work remotely, while 90% of employees say that having workplace flexibility boosts their morale.

In light of the popularity of distributed working, the phenomenon that is "The Great Resignation" and the ongoing problem of skills shortages; keeping your employees engaged, happy, and productive has never been more important.

Providing employees with a seamless and secure, remote-access experience with consistent performance across locations and devices is something that today's workers no longer see as a perk, but rather as an essential requirement.

Remember, a digital workspace doesn't mean having to choose between working from home or the office - rather, think of it as empowering your employees to do both.

This post is funded by VMware