What The Digital Workplace Is Really Like For Employees

The digital workplace is often seen as the pinnacle of progress.

It’s a kind of utopia where employees feel connected to each other and their work, and nothing impedes productivity.

That’s the dream—and it is possible. But at many companies, the reality for employees feels very different. While this story is fictional, it’s based on real-life frustrations that happen every day. You’ve probably experienced some of them yourself.

A Day In The Life Of An Employee In A Digital Workplace

8:50 a.m. — Lydia, a marketing director for a large medical device company, is working away from her home office in Atlanta today. She arrives at the Denver office, feeling flustered. She just spent 20 minutes looking for a parking space, and now she only has a few minutes to get ready for her 9 a.m. conference call.

She rushes to the reception desk to check-in and find a quiet place to take the call.

Janice the receptionist wasn’t expecting her and makes several calls to find an open room. She tells Lydia to go up to the seventh floor and make two left turns, but the room is actually on the right.

8:59 a.m. — Lydia finds the conference room with one minute to spare and dials in. However, when she starts talking, the feedback is distracting and unbearable. She calls in on her cell phone.

10 a.m. — Lydia asks Janice if she can help her fix the speaker system before her next meeting. Janice gives her the help desk number, which leads to a recorded message.

10:30 a.m. — In the middle of Lydia’s next call, four people from the sales team barge in and tell her they actually had reserved the room. Lydia is forced to finish her call in the stairwell.

11:30 a.m. — Lydia tells Janice she’s expecting a prospect for a lunch meeting and asks her to call as soon as he arrives. Janice leaves early for lunch and asks her coworker to cover for her.

11:50 p.m. — The prospect arrives early, but Janice’s replacement has no record of Lydia working at this office and no way to reach her. After 15 frustrating minutes, he leaves.

12:10 p.m. — Lydia’s last meeting ran a few minutes over, and she’s furious when she discovers Tom has already left. She calls him and apologizes. Unfortunately, he can’t reschedule until next month.

12:30 p.m. — Lydia heads to the employee cafeteria to grab something to eat, only to discover they’re out of the main entree because the office is so crowded today. She settles for a bruised banana and some chips.

1:30 p.m. — Lydia walks to Building D to meet with the product development team, but she can’t seem to find them. She spends 15 minutes interrupting other colleagues before someone is able to reach Bryan, the VP of Product Development. He moved the meeting to a different location at the last minute, and they’ve already started without her.

1:50 p.m. — Lydia rushes into the meeting, apologizing to the team. They spend the next 20 minutes filling her in before Bryan interrupts to say he has a hard stop at 2:30.

2:30 p.m. — Lydia spends the next two hours doing her best to draft a marketing plan for the new product launch in the Innovation Station, where the product team works. But it’s hard to concentrate in this noisy open space. She’s constantly interrupted by people asking if she’s a new hire (despite having been with the company for three years.)

4:45 p.m. — After a frustrating day, Lydia finally gets some good news—a big sponsorship proposal she sent weeks ago has finally been accepted! She just needs to print, sign and scan it before the end of the day. But she can’t find a printer anywhere, and the majority of her colleagues have already left for a company happy hour no one told her about.

Lydia calls a ride and rushes to the nearest office supply store, 10 miles across town. By the time she gets there, the store is already closed.

With a busy week ahead of her as an exhibitor at the AAMI Conference, Lydia catches a late flight back home, wondering when she’s going to have time to catch up on all the work she didn’t finish today.

The Importance of Frictionless Technology in The Digital Workplace

In a digital workplace, there’s one thing that makes the difference between a productive, fulfilling day and a frustrating one: frictionless technology.

Frictionless technology allows employees to move around the office (or even away from it) without losing momentum. It keeps them connected to their colleagues and to their workplace so they always have what they need to be productive.

It’s mobile, cloud-based, intuitive and intelligent.

Above all, it solves problems for employees rather than creating new ones.

iOFFICE Hummingbird and the Hummingbird employee experience app were created specifically to solve the challenges of today’s digital workplace. The Hummingbird EX app allows employees to find people and places, reserve rooms or equipment, request service, receive mail or visitors and stay connected wherever they are.

Discover what frictionless technology can do for your workplace. Request a demo today.