Digital Workplace Strategy & Design

The other books I've been meaning to review here is Oscar Berg and Henrik Gustafsson's Digital Workplace Strategy & Design.

This is clearly an important topic, and I agree with the authors that "the digital work environment and the employee experience are the blind spots of the ongoing digitalisation process" - something that I've been talking about myself, eg at Digital Workplace Experience in Chicago back in the Summer. I don't agree that experience is just about the organisational, physical and digital environments - the nature of the work and job are hugely important too, but increasingly these are being performed in a digital way.

This means that the needs of employees is key, and in fact the book defines the digital workplace as "a digital work environment designed purposefullly and holistically with the user front and centre."

I agree, I just wish we could talk about people rather than users - user is an organisational view of a person. I see my experience, my journey, as being about me, not the system that I'm using.

It may well be for this reason that I'd use personas throughout the strategy and design process, rather than switching between users and personas. I think personas give me a better and broader handle on the holistic nature of the employees who will be working via the digital workplace.

Other than these points, the book is full of useful tools and frameworks, supporting an effective design process and is definitely recommended.

You may also be interested in my course on digital transformation delivered with Symposium in the UK (or available to run in-house). 

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