Enterprise Digital SUMMIT Paris / Recap Part 3: Digital Workplace as Platform for Change at Scale (3/3)

In my third recap post on the Enterprise Digital SUMMIT / Paris I would like to outline a second stream of discussions at the conference that addressed the question of how companies can achieve a scaling approach to change and transformation as well as how the role of the digital workplace has changed in this game over time.

Digital Workplace as the Connecting Piece for a Distributed Change at Scale

As heard from the expert talk by Christine Overby as well as from the contributions by Céline Schillinger, Isabelle Daviaud & Anne Landréat sustainable and transformational change needs a distributed approach with many small and self-managed initiatives in the field, a feedback loop of the change results to the organization to better allocate further ressources and efforts of change. The connecting piece for these reciprocal interactions is seen in the digital workplace – as shown in the case study of Vinci.

Fadwa A. Moudnib (Change Management Officer @ Vinci) & Patrick Plein (Director Digital Working @ Vinci) presented some outstanding figures and achievements from their journey of change the way of working at Vinci. With a high engagement rate of more than 15K regular users in over 1060 community (of a total of 183487 employees) the Yammer-based social network at Vinci provides a crucial information sharing and collaboration platform for the company that enhances the performance of the existing business model as well as supports the innovation process for the determination of the digital future for the company. It has been clearly accounted for being an enabler for the digital transformation.

Furthermore Adam Cutforth (Air Liquide) paraphrased the role of the Digital Workplace – besides being a suite of tools that supports the getting things done in the daily work routine – as the piece that supports the individual behavior changes along the four states of competences.

But – the Digital Workplace Is Just An Enabler – And Still Needs Enabling Efforts Itself!

There was an overall consensus at Enterprise Digital SUMMIT / Paris that even if the sense-making and purpose of the Digital Workplace is in line with the overall purpose of work in the company – the Digital Workplace provides though a crucial, but still mere a technological toolset that supports the enablement of the digital transformation at large, but still needs an enablement a change towards collaborative behaviors.

For this the team of Vinci provided us with another great outline of lessons learned:

Team Vinci’s Lessons Learn: Door-to-door (go out and get feedback), Share Experiences, Watch & learn, Grow Kindness, Keep It simple

Summarizing all discussions at Enterprise Digital SUMMIT / Paris leads towards a clear view of the Digital Workplace as pivotal piece in the digital transformation efforts of the companies that is certainly put in place in many companies only for supporting the collaboration and information sharing in the first place, but has a long term effect for supporting the change and transformation efforts at scale. Additionally we also have to mark down that certainly the Digital Workplace is just the technological toolset that has fairly poor effects if it is not combined with behavior change efforts and organizational changes.

Last but not least we have to take into account – that the establishment of the Digital Workplace itself needs change efforts – in regards to digital competencies, corporate behavior as well as organizational changes towards the scope of the individual corporate behavior. In this regard we certainly need to think about the “re-framing of the organisation” on two levels that we certainly need to discuss further – and therefore is also the theme of the upcoming Enterprise Digital SUMMIT in London in November!

 

Stay tuned for the next publications in this series – read in the other parts of this post the following:

Get your Special Summer Ticket for the Enterprise Digital SUMMIT / London on November 16!

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