People-Centric Digital Workplace

By Neil Chong-Kit
June 8, 2018
3 min read
Blog
Engagement
Digital Workplace

Summary:  An intranet is one piece of the digital workplace puzzle, and this blog post focuses on the role Intranet Connections can play in delivering a people-centric digital workplace.

Because it’s currently in vogue, the phrase “digital workplace” is everywhere. If I was selling a screen saver, I would market it as a “digital workplace privacy solution”. Even though digital workplace is a nebulous term, it is often used as the topic when discussing the intersection between work, technology, and people. An intranet is one piece of the digital workplace puzzle, and this blog post focuses on the role Intranet Connections can play in delivering a people-centric digital workplace.

In a physical workplace, your desk is an area that is personal to you. Here at Intranet Connections, we have some people who prefer using standing desks, laptops versus desktops, or a balance ball versus a chair. Customizing the workplace to work best for both individuals or teams is a core benefit of a digital workplace. Here’s how Intranet Connections allows teams to customize their digital workplace.

Choose What’s Private, and What is Shared

Not quite ready to share a work in progress? You decide what needs to be shared.

Intranet Connections let you decide what information should remain within your department, versus shared with the rest of the organization. To be safe, you can make your entire department site private, or just particular applications, or even just particular folders. Intranet Connections makes it possible for someone in your department to change what is public or private, through site owner, app owner, or folder owner role.

Custom Document Fields and Layouts

Need to add a custom field, such as Document ID? Add it, make it required, and re-arrange the layout so the most important fields are at the top.

Intranet Connections gives each department the right to manage documents in the way that is most effective for them. While all documents are stored in a single point of truth, and global search makes it easy for users to find documents across the organization, you can tailor how documents are managed within each department. Add custom fields such as Document ID, status, or alternate name, and choose where to place them within the layout.

Company Wide and Department Forms

Tired of copy and pasting individual responses from an email into a spreadsheet? Create your own forms.

Typically, online forms are used for companywide approvals (e.g. time-off requests, system access, expense claims). However, your department can create their own forms to manage a variety of processes, both large and small. Here at Intranet Connections, we use forms for everything, from managing quarterly employee reviews down to taking a lunch order for an event. Every team can create their own forms, and tailor the workflow process to their needs.

Department Site Theming

Why not extend the warm, welcoming workspace you’ve created for your team into the digital workspace?

While it can be restricted, departments can choose to theme their own sites differently than the home site. Departments can choose their own colors, banner, navigation, and homepage content. More than just aesthetics, when a department makes a site their own, it creates the right atmosphere for sharing.

Safely Decentralize Administration

Are you striking the right balance between security and freedom?

Intranet Connections administration model is built around empowering staff in a safe and secure manner. Instead of one administrator being responsible for everything, Intranet Connections lets you grant ownership to staff across departments as their confidence grows. Overall security is still managed by the administrators, but end users can be granted elevated rights to managing individual applications or content. This removes a single person or department as a bottleneck for changes, ensuring the intranet always has the freshest content.

By Neil Chong-Kit

Neil has been involved in the technology industry for 15 years, with experience in information security, e-commerce, and document workflow solutions. He has a Computer Science degree from UBC, and an MBA from SFU. Key achievements include growing CE-Infosys’ presence in Singapore, and helping build and launch Shopster.com. Neil has extensive experience as a software developer, business analyst, and manager in growing technology companies. As a creative thinker, Neil is focused on delivering on impactful, but simple to use solutions as product manager for Intranet Connections.