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The modern workplace is vastly different to what it used to be, but that’s good news for Mark Cresswell, Executive Chairman of Scalable Software. For almost two decades, the company he co-founded has helped organisations use data-driven insights to optimise workplace efficiency.
Thanks to those many years in the industry, Mark has been on the front row to watch the IT industry transform into the hybrid workplaces we see today. While mentioning hybrid work can send employers into a state of what Mark calls “productivity paranoia”, his experience suggests that this fear may be misplaced.
“By providing deep levels of insight into digital friction and tech issues that slow employees down,” says Mark, “IT teams can also help the organisation to worry less about whether employees are working and focus more on helping them to be efficient and effective.”
The future Mark sees for the workplace looks quite different to the one we see today. He predicts a “removal of any architectural or network distinction between ‘in office’ or ‘remote’ workers.” This prediction, however, can only come about with sufficient oversights in place.
“IT has an opportunity to play a bigger role in ensuring wider organisational and industry compliance. IT teams can help to ensure important compliance procedures are followed to the letter, facilitating a proactive approach that enhances organisational resilience and regulatory adherence.”
With all of these long-term predictions still on the horizon, we wanted to begin our conversation in the here and now. That’s why we started this interview by asking Mark about the short term: what’s going to happen in the next decade.
In the next 5-10 years, organisations will fully realise the value of the data generated within their ‘digital exhausts’. This wealth of information will drive objective insights into employee work patterns, engagement and productivity.
As hybrid working continues to evolve, employees and management will need to collaborate closely to ensure that these tools are implemented transparently. Solutions like Digital Employee Experience (DEX) analytics will continue to play a critical role in this evolution, helping organisations to optimise workflows, improve employee satisfaction and enhance overall organisational performance.
Workstyle analytics will empower organisations to identify and resolve challenges before they escalate, such as addressing workflow inefficiencies or tackling early signs of employee disengagement. This analysis will further enable businesses to uncover productivity trends and skill gaps, allowing leaders to make more informed, data-driven decisions.
At the same time, Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) will become an increasingly vital tool for mapping informal networks, identifying key influencers and fostering greater collaboration and innovation. By shining a light on the real dynamics within an organisation, ONA will help leaders prevent burnout, address disengagement and ensure that workforce strategies support employee well-being. Together, these advances will create more agile, resilient and future-ready workplaces.
When it comes to the future of work and remote collaboration, one aspect IT can lead on is helping organisations to better understand how employees are working. This includes allaying organisations’ fears over productivity and employee engagement.
Major global businesses – including Goldman Sachs, Zoom, Amazon and KPMG – have recently begun instigating a return to the office (RTO) for staff, at least part-time. While working from home delivers some benefits to businesses and employees, some organisations clearly worry that even the best tech can’t replace all in-person interactions. Mentorship and collaboration opportunities and positive employee engagement, for example, are typically associated with face-to-face connection in traditional offices.
The main issue for many businesses that causes them to question where employees work is concern over productivity. And while research suggests that poor productivity is not the “fault” of hybrid work, that hasn’t stopped productivity from becoming the lightning rod in the battle between WFH vs RTO. In fact, our own research found that half of businesses are suffering from “productivity paranoia”.
IT leaders can leverage Digital Employee Experience (DEX) analytics to assess employee experiences and work styles to understand productivity. Importantly, DEX can contrast this information across WFH and RTO scenarios. This means IT gains visibility into the uptake of collaboration applications and software. By providing deep levels of insight into digital friction and tech issues that slow employees down, IT teams can also help the organisation to worry less about whether employees are working and focus more on helping them to be efficient and effective.
A technical item that will also emerge is the removal of any architectural or network distinction between ‘in office’ or ‘remote’ workers. There will be no special ‘trust’ relationship between the endpoint and the organisation simply because an employee is in an office. This will entail a different approach to the kind of tooling organisations need to manage the endpoint.
Gartner estimates that half of IT organisations will establish a Digital Employee Experience (DEX) team in 2025. This is undoubtedly a positive step forward, yet it will also require IT professionals to develop new skills. The key to driving DEX maturity is collating and accessing the right data and then sharing it across the wider organisation, including with HR and People teams, who can leverage this data to improve the well-being and satisfaction of employees. With this in mind, a key skill for IT will be the ability to communicate with colleagues.
Research that we conducted last year found that the majority (88%) of organisations recognise the need for better communication between IT and HR departments. Establishing a common language between IT and HR will be key for organisations looking to apply DEX data and provide insight on key issues like excessive out of hours working, or lack of engagement leading to “quiet quitting”.
To achieve this, IT teams will need to reassess how they represent data and share it across the business and also how they enable line-of-business teams to access this information. Purpose-built DEX analytics solutions help to bridge this gap by delivering that much needed common language to even the ‘non tech’ parts of the business.
One challenge faced by all organisations is remaining compliant with regulatory processes and company policy – particularly in heavily regulated industries like the finance and legal sectors. Often, this responsibility can fall to team and department heads, but IT has an opportunity to play a bigger role in ensuring wider organisational and industry compliance.
That’s because a robust oversight of workflows and document journeys is essential to mitigating the risk of non-compliance. IT teams can put in place systems that use employee journey mapping to provide full visibility into individual workflows. This allows decision makers to quickly identify any anomalous behavior in processes where important steps are executed in a specific sequence by particular individuals. This proactive approach allows organisations to be compliant with required regulations, reducing the likelihood of fines and improving overall operational security.
Employee journey mapping frames task analysis within the broader organisational and user experience context. This gives organisations deep insight into work patterns (when work is done), location (where tasks are performed – office or remote) and group (function, team, role, or individual). Using this data, IT teams can help to ensure important compliance procedures are followed to the letter, facilitating a proactive approach that enhances organisational resilience and regulatory adherence.
A policy that many organisations have in place is a fixed hardware refresh cycle. Yet, replacing hardware based on age rather than real-world performance or employee needs not only results in unnecessary upgrades and increased business costs but also has a negative environmental impact.
Our recent research, which surveyed 400 UK and US IT decision makers (ITDM), found that 77% of respondents said their organisation has a policy of replacing hardware within a set timeframe. Specifically, 14% upgrade every year, 30% every two years and 33% every three years.
Striking the right balance in tech refresh cycles is integral to an ITDM’s role. While timely upgrades ensure access to cutting-edge technology, IT must also minimise e-waste to safeguard the environment. The answer lies in leveraging digital employee experience (DEX) analytics. DEX analytics provide a detailed view of each employee’s technology usage and needs, enabling IT leaders to tailor refresh cycles based on empirical data rather than arbitrary timelines. By delivering granular data on device performance, application usage and digital experiences, organisations can make smarter decisions about how to upgrade technology.
For instance, DEX data can identify employees who need more powerful devices earlier, such as those transitioning to roles involving Business Intelligence or AI, while delaying upgrades for employees with less demanding digital workloads. Ensuring your business is at the forefront of sustainable innovation not only enhances your reputation but also reinforces your commitment to positive environmental impact.
We are currently focusing on workstyle analytics and helping organisations to better understand how work gets done. Workstyle analytics aims to identify at both an individual and group level the opportunities to improve workflow efficiency, collaboration and exploitation of digital tools while protecting employee wellbeing. As more work is done digitally, the signals in the noise of an organisation’s “digital exhaust” provide tremendous insights into how work styles can be enhanced for the benefit of all.
Central to applying these insights are IT teams, who can use this data to not only optimise how teams work but to remove digital friction and improve sharing data across departments. This means that IT teams won’t just be seen as the orchestrators and implementers of the digital technology that helps all employees to get work done but also as the key to unlocking better working environments and higher productivity.
Some IT teams might think that they can access the data to enable workstyle analytics by relying on traditional IT management tools and repurposing them to deliver “new” insights. But to fully leverage the benefits that workstyle analytics will deliver, IT needs to look at purpose-built tools that can provide tangible and actionable insights to reveal where changes can be made to support employees in getting work done effectively.
