Alyssa Teal: Good morning, thank you to all our webinar attendees who have joined, so far, we are going to give another two to three minutes for the rest of our attendees to roll in before we kick things off.
Alyssa Teal: hi Good morning, thank you to all of our attendees we are going to kick off our presentation and about one minute just waiting for a few more attendees thanks.
Alyssa Teal: Good morning, and thank you for joining our webinar thriving in 2022 the key trends driving the digital workplace.
Alyssa Teal: Today we're joined by Jim Lundy founder and CEO of Aragon, research and Sean Duffy VP of product strategy at IGLOO software now throw it over to Jim and john to kick things off.
Jim Lundy: Thank you alyssa Jim Lundy here sean's great to have you here i'm excited to share some of the trends and just have a fireside chat with you today about all the things going on in digital workplace in 2022.
Sean Duffy: yeah absolutely Jim it's always great for us to get a chance to talk so really looking forward to today's conversation, and thanks to everyone for taking some time out of their data to join us.
Jim Lundy: And look for many of you, you know we're recording this webinar it will be available post if you're listening live, we want to welcome you we're going to have Q amp a at the end.
Jim Lundy: And if you're listening to the recording, then you know thanks for joining as well.
Jim Lundy: So there's a lot going on the digital workplace and what we want to do today is time to kind of share some of the very key trends that we see that are impacting.
Jim Lundy: Some may be, you may be aware of some may surprise you, but Sean I going to do a I think a great job of hitting some of those key points and then giving you some ideas of what to do about it.
Jim Lundy: So one of the things that we want to put out as kind of like an Aha is that.
Jim Lundy: The workplace is changing and something called intelligence is gradually creeping into the workplace and work and the world is never going to be the same.
Jim Lundy: So we hope to expose a little bit of that to you today, sometimes people use the word Ai.
Jim Lundy: With sometimes we use the word intelligence, but it's actually here it's not going away so we're going to try to hit that with some examples of.
Jim Lundy: What that what that is and how it may come about as part of our trans discussion and China know you guys are doing a lot there as well, so what's great to have you know, a thought leader, like a glue that's helping to drive innovation and the digital workplace.
Sean Duffy: yeah absolutely and I think we're going to touch on this later on, but we're seeing this just from the the the the breadth of digital conversations and tools that people are using on a day to day basis, and this intelligence really helps people make sense of.
Sean Duffy: That large amount of content and information that's coming across their desk every.
Day.
Jim Lundy: So let's talk about the agenda again, the main thing we're going to cover is a couple of major key trends that are happy to talk with we're talking about the evolution of the digital workplace.
Jim Lundy: And how its evolving we've got a little video that will speed up the conversation to talk about some of the technologies that we see that are making an impact.
Jim Lundy: Through something called the technology Arc and then you know Sean i'm going to talk about you know best practices, how we're all coping.
Jim Lundy: You know what are some of the things you should think about doing, both from a technology and from just a workplace perspective, and then we saved the best for last for some of your questions, so action packed agenda a lot to do in 45 minutes so let's dive at them.
Sean Duffy: let's dive in.
Jim Lundy: So look, this is a it's actually listening to a CEO today on cnbc and they were talking a lot about what this slide is talking about which is going from a traditional business to a digital business.
Jim Lundy: and actually talking about going from people as assets to really something that we call employee engagement.
Jim Lundy: So it's a big deal, and you know every CEOs worrying about you know where their next product innovations coming from are they an analog business or their digital business but.
Jim Lundy: The idea is looking at the context and really looking at customers more from their perspective and their context versus.
Jim Lundy: You know, an inside perspective, which is the traditional business approach, which is everybody thinks about what they're doing their business unit, sometimes we forget about the customer.
Jim Lundy: Just as important and major major thing in the digital workplace is people and again we're going to hit that relative to this focus on.
Jim Lundy: You know how to you know how companies use both technology and process to keep their people engaged it's hard you know, in a room work environment and and look I know this is one of the things that you're, seeing as well Sean relative to some of the customers you're dealing with.
Sean Duffy: yeah I mean I think it's really interesting we saw that sort of initial move to companies getting into you know sort of the online realm and how do they sell their products to people through through websites and now we're starting to see.
Sean Duffy: More of the business move into that digital realm and you touched on intelligence earlier starting to understand how customers are interacting when they're interested in your product.
Sean Duffy: And also, you know you touched on it that shift of looking at employees as as just being resources.
Sean Duffy: I think the pandemic has really accelerated over the last year, a sensitivity to how people feel when they're at work and when they're at home and introduced a lot of challenges that I think organizations are starting to respond to.
Sean Duffy: Both in the tooling that they provide, and how they view their employees as as people, more so than resources.
Jim Lundy: For sure.
Jim Lundy: So this is kind of an intro to some of the technology trends we're going to be talking about there's definitely some migrations and some shifts that are happening.
Jim Lundy: You know we're seeing a shift where there's not only the regular text document we deal with, but a big increase of visual content we're seeing that on the consumer side we'll talk about that the tools obviously this is an area their egos making a big move.
Jim Lundy: going from disparate tools to more of an integrated work platform or work hub, and then you know the emerging trend is that.
Jim Lundy: keeping track of everything, and you know understanding patterns between people and information and documents you know, the rise of knowledge graph and we're not going to spend a lot of time and knowledge today but.
Jim Lundy: that's actually something that it's out there, and you know we've we've written about it, but that that's coming and again, you know Sean would some of the stuff you're doing relative to the digital workplace, you want to make a couple comments about some of these things that you see.
Sean Duffy: yeah and i've got a little question for you there as well, Jim but we're seeing a lot more of a shift in the way that people create content and consume content.
Sean Duffy: In the digital workplace and how they communicate messaging out we're doing that ourselves at a.
Sean Duffy: spending more of an emphasis on creating videos to communicate new features that we're creating rather than the traditional textual user guide type approaches.
Sean Duffy: we're also seeing a lot of demand for the ability to pull information in from multiple different repositories and bring that together in context, so that when you're working with a team of people or you're working on a project, you want to have the.
Sean Duffy: The pieces of information to the communication tools that your team is using.
Sean Duffy: At your fingertips in one location, instead of having to go out and you know hey I got a message gym in slack and i've got a message Bob in teams and.
Sean Duffy: i've got to go over to dropbox to get this other piece of information digital work hubs and specifically tools, like a glue do a great job of bringing that information together in one place, so you can have your files, you can have your your communication tools all located together.
Sean Duffy: we're seeing this shift Jim and and i'm curious just from from your perspective, do you see a lot of this is generational or is this just an evolution in the way people are working.
Jim Lundy: Well, you know I think you know if we look back over the last few years, first of all, there was more business people that are making purchases.
Jim Lundy: And a lot of them got excited you know the last six seven years with you know their corporate credit card i'm going to buy this product.
Jim Lundy: And then they wake up one day and all sudden they get all these products.
Jim Lundy: it's happening everywhere and so all of a sudden there's a realization like wait a minute, could we have if we have five products to get worked on cool we have three.
Jim Lundy: If we have three could we have to so it's barely been aware of wait a minute it's it's too hard, just like your message about like I gotta go message in slack and go over here to find my contents crazy.
Jim Lundy: So that's the idea behind you know integrated work approach, and again I you know salute English that's really one of the things you're helping your customers do and it's a definitely a trend.
Jim Lundy: we'll talk about we'll talk about a little bit more, I mean communities.
Jim Lundy: As part of work hubs all.
Sean Duffy: Right yeah and I think even just to bring your own APP environment where people are leveraging their own productivity tools is adding to that breadth of different solutions that people are interacting with on a day to day basis.
Jim Lundy: we're sure.
Jim Lundy: Well, again, here we are talking about work hubs and you know it's a concept that we came up with a few years ago.
Jim Lundy: This is where really we think the market is going where you know you're taking a number of disparate technologies and starting to bundle them together.
Jim Lundy: so that you can you don't have to go out and use, you know, a totally separate you know platform to manage and share content, just like you were saying shine.
Jim Lundy: or even to create content so it's an emerging concept, but really the here's the big thing is, I can sometimes get my work done, faster and more seamlessly I don't have all the interrupted, because when you every time you change from one APP to another that's an interrupt.
Jim Lundy: And sometimes that can take 10 to 15 minutes to say okay i'm settled down to this new APP away, am I gonna switch back to the other APP.
Jim Lundy: And then, from a customer perspective because sometimes you know you want to deal with customers through these platforms.
Jim Lundy: The customer can sometimes have a more seamless experience with your people.
Jim Lundy: And that's you know again an outside in perspective that we were talking about a little bit earlier, so there are some benefits is still an emerging area there's still a lot of best of breed but again shine I know this is an area where English is clearly focused.
Sean Duffy: yeah for sure and there's a you've made a couple of really good points on the wise there Jim I think one of the other reasons that we've really seen is people want to do work and be involved in work that they feel is satisfying and is leveraging their skills.
Sean Duffy: No one wants to spend the majority of their day searching for the right email or the right document across multiple repositories.
Sean Duffy: So what you want to do is provide an environment with digital tools for your employees, where they're able to focus on the tasks that utilize their skills and and their minds and not have them on.
Sean Duffy: These these these searches for you know, I know, Jim sent me something The other day I can't remember what channel he sent it on, let me go out and spend an hour trying to find that document, so I can move on to the work that I need to do so.
Sean Duffy: Again, I think, digital work hubs in general and tools, like a glue can really provide some some value to to organizations by just reducing the friction that employees feel on a day to day basis.
Jim Lundy: yeah for sure.
Jim Lundy: And that's bringing us to another area, the area of communities so.
Jim Lundy: we've kind of looked at me so you know again sometimes used to be called social networks and other area that English been leading in.
Jim Lundy: We kind of break it out where the mark has been where there's been a lot of either customer communities or employee communities or sometimes you know there's one that's integrated.
Jim Lundy: But it's you know, sometimes been called a digital water cooler but it's a faster way than email it's a faster way to collaborate and share get ideas.
Jim Lundy: All kinds of things and they've been around for a long time they're kind of making a comeback it's kind of like an upgrade from a classic static Intranet.
Jim Lundy: And again people use different names describing but you know Sean this is really one of the things that we see is kind of one of the best practices that a lot of companies, they say, oh yeah the power of our Community helps us to succeed and challenging times.
Sean Duffy: yeah and we've seen so much of this gym.
Sean Duffy: A lot of the the the the people in organizations in our customer base that that we interact with our Community managers their job is to manage and and promote and gain adoption of that employee community.
Sean Duffy: And so there's obviously a high emphasis and in our market on on creating these experiences that aren't just top down, communications, but also provide a a two way communication option for employees to feel that their voices heard.
Sean Duffy: products like the IGLOO, though, can also be used as as external.
Sean Duffy: What used to call them extra nets.
Sean Duffy: But the ability to create those customer communities and.
Sean Duffy: You know, if you look at our customer care site it's run off the platform and so we're able to leverage that to provide our customers with a venue to respond back to our support team or product team and interact with our customers in a very direct way.
Sean Duffy: So I just echo what you said it's it's really about providing that opportunity for people to to have a conversation and and feel that sort of personal connection that you don't always get through email or traditional channels.
Jim Lundy: For sure.
Jim Lundy: And then let's let's dive dive in peel the onion further as we talked about employees and all the challenges with the great resignation and.
Jim Lundy: You know, shifting from something we used to a lot of people know the term talent management or human capital management.
Jim Lundy: we've been used the term employee and give some people use employee experience but it's a different way of looking at how you interact with people.
Jim Lundy: And it really puts people more at the Center than the application at the Center.
Jim Lundy: One of the things you know Sean and I were talking a lot about is the value of things like communications and employee engagement and things like learning recognition and coaching.
Jim Lundy: So it's it's something that's being talked about you know there aren't that many people that are really.
Jim Lundy: Talking about it, yet, because you still have a lot of the quote talent management sweets, but we think this is a better way to look at it and, again, you know the China, we had a great discussion talk about that share some of your thoughts.
Sean Duffy: yeah I mean we've seen a much greater emphasis and breadth and the number of use cases that people are engaging in to foster this employee engagement.
Sean Duffy: What we're finding is employees are missing that connection that they get through being in the office from being face to face with someone from you mentioned the digital watercooler.
Sean Duffy: That ability to just have a have a chat with someone that's kind of ad hoc and impromptu and so organizations are struggling to find ways to connect their employees digitally so that.
Sean Duffy: Individuals are having that ability to have that social connection so again, our platform, we see a lot of use cases around things like wellness.
Sean Duffy: early on in the pandemic, we had people taking pictures of their Home Office and sharing that in the digital workplace so that everybody could could kind of see.
Sean Duffy: how people are coping and how people are you know working it's not a cube anymore in the office it's you know it's my kitchen table or it's my my office in the basement.
Sean Duffy: And we've seen that evolve over time, I think one of the other areas that has really kind of grown and employees are really focused on today is this idea of.
Sean Duffy: Where your where your employer stands on social issues and having that ability to have that conversation with employees.
Sean Duffy: Within the digital workplace allows employees to understand how their employer is participating in the Community.
Sean Duffy: What programs they're running to help with things like D and I.
Sean Duffy: And I think it's just a really good opportunity to expand the conversation beyond the standard here's the projects we're working on our here's our financial results for the quarter, I think, employees are really interested in getting more information from their employer around that.
Jim Lundy: i'll for sure for sure so again, this is definitely an area to watch if you're you know in this space, you should be thinking about how do we engage more with our employees.
Jim Lundy: Now we want to shift more a little bit more the technology conversations and we want to talk about the.
Jim Lundy: You know analytics and what we're kind of calling the shift to more predictive analytics, and so this graphic tries to talk about you know that shift in application technologies, where.
Jim Lundy: You know, in a lot of cases that you have a core application, you have analytics reports right, you know it might be a report, it might be a dashboard.
Jim Lundy: And it's presented to the human and the human has to make a business decision you know, again, no matter what kind of application, he rp CRM talent management, you name it.
Jim Lundy: The way we think it's evolving in fact we know it's evolving is you're going to have an API layer that runs side by side with the application.
Jim Lundy: So we can see some of the data and see some of the patterns and then go beyond maybe recommendations and make you know predictions, or you know predictive suggestions.
Jim Lundy: That hey you might want to think about doing this, so this idea of an Ai based predictive application architecture is is one of the trends.
Jim Lundy: And this is the thing that we're starting to see which is kind of the new race where cloud computing isn't just cloud computing anymore it's actually Ai based cloud computing.
Jim Lundy: So, in many cases, if you have a cloud provider and you want to turn on or Ai you can actually use an architecture, like you know spark clustering.
Jim Lundy: and actually not have to necessarily re compile your application so China, I know we talked about this before, but this is the simplest way I can kind of convey how this channel is so.
Jim Lundy: We use some applications here, and you know they are predictive and sometimes you say we think that's wrong prediction but it's least is speeding up some of the automation that decision making, you say hey it's an area need to look at.
Sean Duffy: yeah and I think in a former life I worked on some some analytics software years and years and years ago and the focus was really on giving.
Sean Duffy: Organizations a picture of what had happened, so it was reporting a point in time, and I think what we've seen is with with the the increased amount of data that's out there.
Sean Duffy: We have touch points on you know all kinds of information that we didn't have in the past and.
Sean Duffy: The idea here is really to help people make sense of that information, not every Organization has a you know train data scientist or Ai person on staff that that is able to.
Sean Duffy: make sense of the information we've we've seen this with you know analytics reports that we have in our application.
Sean Duffy: We provide capabilities to go deeper and what we hear from a lot of customers is we love the depth of the analytics solution we love the reports that you're providing but we don't always understand.
Sean Duffy: How to make use of those and i've said this for a long time, but I really think analytics is about the actions that occur not just reporting on on what has happened in the past and.
Sean Duffy: I see these technologies and this ability to understand or to make a prediction or to infer what's going to happen from what has happened, being a real game changer for organizations that maybe don't have that skill set internally.
Jim Lundy: For sure for sure so definitely an area to watch we're going to peel the onion further when we start talking about some of the content, but this is a great thing to start paying attention to relative to what, what are the possibilities.
Jim Lundy: So i've got a video now and it's a video that kind of overviews digital workplace technology Arc, which is a research methodology Aragon has.
Jim Lundy: We do a lot of visual research and so sometimes the video is much faster than China I trying to say here and explain it to you, but we have a recap slide after this so we're gonna play the video and then we'll talk about what we just watched.
Jim Lundy: The technology Arc for the digital workplace identifies important technologies indicates, which ones to monitor and highlights the potential benefits of each.
Jim Lundy: This 2021 edition covers 40 technologies and evaluates the maturity of existing market players, the themes for this year automation intelligent collaboration and the rise of the hybrid workplace.
Jim Lundy: let's dive into how the tech artworks the emerge Arc starts when the technology first appears outside of a pure research environment.
Jim Lundy: new and innovative product sectors are highlighted here technologies in this are present opportunities for early adopters to get a head start on potentially transformative new products.
Jim Lundy: In 2021 computer vision and intelligent video conferencing are two technologies to watch for the transformative potential.
Jim Lundy: In the adopt the technology starts to be accepted as a product category and included in a general marketplace of similar products.
Jim Lundy: The first 30 to 50% of this Arc is considered an early adoption phase, the mature archives technologies that have been deployed for some time.
Jim Lundy: They have a strong history of prior adoption and have been well integrated into the contemporary business ecosystem use this technology are to determine which transformative technologies are right, for your enterprise, please read the rest of the research note for the full analysis.
Jim Lundy: Okay, so that was a quick quick flyby and what I did is I highlighted a couple of things that we didn't touch on in the video.
Jim Lundy: Such as employee engagement it's still in late emerge stage digital workup content analytics but the work of still is, we look at it still not hitting full means to me i'll still early in adoption.
Jim Lundy: You know we're not going to really talk about video conference today but but team collaboration challenging email is a way for people to.
Jim Lundy: You know, really interact, you know, no matter where they are and to do it more of the business platform then consumer.
Jim Lundy: And these are some of the things Sean I just want to highlight and again, you see that to the things we talked about are you know major things that are part of this tech hard.
Sean Duffy: yeah I love the ones that you've highlighted here and as i'm kind of you know, reading through this list there's a number of other ones that stand out to me, and some of them.
Sean Duffy: You said this at the beginning, some of the things we say here might not be obvious to everybody, but things like computer vision.
Sean Duffy: Well, how does that apply in the digital workplace well think about the content that that you're using on a day to day basis and how graphical that content is whether it's images, whether it's videos etc having that ability to have.
Sean Duffy: An intelligence sit alongside your digital workplace and understand what those those pieces of content are.
Sean Duffy: makes them more discoverable makes more useful and more valuable to your employees and things like conversational Ai where.
Sean Duffy: You go from just you know explicit search typing words in a box to being able to chat back and forth, with a Bot or really technologies that I think can open up access to content and information beyond what we what we see today.
Jim Lundy: For sure there's a lot here that's why the video sometimes helps to unpack which sometimes is a 40 page report so.
Jim Lundy: Lots more where that came from, but again, this is a great way to kind of try to put things in perspective, like hey are we doing this.
Jim Lundy: it's listed as a technology thing, maybe we need to evaluate it.
Jim Lundy: last thing i'll say is when we get a lot of calls in this it's interesting all the business leaders call and talk about the.
Jim Lundy: left hand side of the are all the stuff that's emerging or an early adoption and sometimes it leaders call and they only want to talk about the technology they can save money on.
Jim Lundy: And then, sometimes they find out that the business leaders have a weight of it we heard the business team called you what did they talk to you about.
Jim Lundy: And we say well when they talk to us about you know all the emerging technologies that you didn't want to talk about so.
Jim Lundy: it's a good thing relative that people are not afraid of technology and that's why with cloud technology, you can try it, and if you don't like it, you can turn it off.
Sean Duffy: yeah and I think it's so important to have that that strategy around and we're going to talk about this a little bit later, but that strategy around how you're supporting your employees.
Sean Duffy: In the digital tools that they're using and then the communications that they're using and having the business and the it side aligned on on how to get there and there's so many great tools out there in the market.
Sean Duffy: it's really about finding the right fit for your organization that that aligns with with your overall strategy.
Jim Lundy: For sure or let's keep going because, again, has been a great great discussion here, we could go all day on this, but again, so another area that we had highlighted is intelligent content analytics but we just now, from a business perspective call it content Ai because it's easy to understand.
Jim Lundy: And really the idea here is that you know algorithms are going to actually be able to understand what's inside of a document or inside of a video with computer vision.
Jim Lundy: And then they can basically tell you things about it that so instead of having to say I gotta have you know all these you know contract architects basically lawyers that read through contracts.
Jim Lundy: I might be able to have a you know, an application that can summarize some of those documents for the business person.
Jim Lundy: And just speed that process up, so the idea of you know it used to be, where you could tag words and it could ocr but now you actually you're getting to the point where it can start to read.
Jim Lundy: Entire documents and summarize them, and you know computer vision which we talked about is actually.
Jim Lundy: You know, one of those areas where we can start to see what's going on inside a picture or inside a video and do seen detection, but it's an emerging area we just highlighted, because there will be different use cases.
Jim Lundy: Out there but it's something to be aware of and it's something you know to start you know paying attention to, because you know, there are areas, you know, like like tick tock where they are doing, basically content Ai on what you're watching and then serving up more stuff to you.
Sean Duffy: yeah and I think this is something we've been looking at gym in terms of how can we, and I said this a little bit on the previous slide, how can we make more content more readily available to users, if you think about something like a town hall meeting.
Sean Duffy: You know you you you record your town hall you post it in your digital workplace someone puts a title on it that says, you know q1 town hall.
Sean Duffy: But there's no insight today into what's actually being discussed within that within that meeting so leveraging some of these content API services to.
Sean Duffy: You know transcript, for example, the video and then index that, through your search capability means that when I go and search for financial results.
Sean Duffy: Not only am I going to get the spreadsheet for the budget from the finance team, but i'm also going to get that reference or that timestamp within the the town hall meeting where our CRM was talking about our financial results, and so I think these services.
Sean Duffy: And these capabilities are just really, really valuable, not just in these vertical specific ways, but in a very general sense to to provide more insight into what rich content contains and make it, you know available at people's fingertips, to access on a daily basis.
For sure.
Jim Lundy: That brings us to computer vision, so we want to share an example because we're actually getting calls from clients about this, and they want to talk about something they call it tick tock for the enterprise.
Jim Lundy: And this is kind of a recommendation engine on steroids, so how is it working out if you have kids or maybe you know you might go on instagram or tick tock yourself how is it really working, what does it do.
Jim Lundy: You use are watching the video and see on the screen here, you see a video and you got that cute little puppy that's a wildly famous video and it's calling around a little duckling on its back.
Jim Lundy: And people watch those millions of millions of times, so what the tick tock algorithm that says wow this person watch that video 20 times.
Jim Lundy: I guess they like puppies and it takes a guest, and it shows you more puppies maybe instead of clicks right sometimes if they're you know you can tell if you're doing both maybe it serves you both but, in my experience.
Jim Lundy: They you know literally.
Jim Lundy: we're showing more puppies.
Jim Lundy: So the enterprises have seen this and i'm talking about manufacturers i'm talking about you know.
Jim Lundy: You know, software companies and saying hey, how can we do this, so this is emerging thing.
Jim Lundy: it's basically a recommendation engine on steroids can be used for learning can be used for entertainment, you know netflix tries to do some of this obviously with you know.
Jim Lundy: Your recommended stuff, but this is, you know what instagram is actually copying, so you know it sometimes takes five to seven years for to kind of transfer over from consumer to business.
Jim Lundy: But, just like Facebook, the enterprise which really started the whole Community revolution, you know almost 11 years ago.
Jim Lundy: You were kind of seeing that relative to again a recommendation engine it uses Ai to see what you're looking at and to give you more.
Jim Lundy: john we had a lot of fun talking about this and we.
Sean Duffy: Did we did and there's no tick tock dance is coming up so hope no one's too disappointed, but.
Sean Duffy: You know, one of the things that we've seen kind of driving these types of requests is that ability to personalize the content that people are seeing.
Sean Duffy: and make sure that individuals in the organization are seeing content that they feel is valuable to them so taking a look at who you are who you're connected with and as Jim mentioned what content are you already consuming.
Sean Duffy: provides that capability that underlying feed of information that's relevant to an individual user and so when we're looking at driving engagement.
Sean Duffy: In IGLOO we're looking at ways that we can increase the value that every user has on a day to day basis when they're interacting with our platform and so looking at these types of recommendation engines and capabilities, I think, is key for us as we move forward.
Jim Lundy: For sure so again, an area to watch we're watching it closely because part of our computer vision coverage.
Jim Lundy: So let's shift back to again this whole digital work and started saying well, what do we do about it, this is a trend, what do we do about it well.
Jim Lundy: here's what we were kind of alluding to earlier you've got all these different tools.
Jim Lundy: And you know when you look at you know we're cubs are work platforms, whatever you call them an eagle is one of the providers.
Jim Lundy: What are the applications, you can say, maybe we don't need to use all those applications all at the same time, maybe we can start to retire one or two so.
Jim Lundy: This is one of the graphics that we've tried to share in our research to kind of convey it to people, people like this, but john what are you seeing out there because you're you're in this every day.
Sean Duffy: yeah I mean what we're seeing is and I mentioned this earlier this this idea of contextually providing information right, so what i'm working on, you know.
Sean Duffy: hey i'm going to spend my morning working on, you know this project that i'm doing it's a it's a revamp of our marketing materials.
Sean Duffy: Well, when i'm doing that that that that effort, I want to have access to the people that i'm working with I want to have access to the source content that i'm using to rework those materials.
Sean Duffy: I want to have access to the productivity tools that we're using to track progress and you mentioned it earlier Jim around things like context switching every time i'm shifting from one application to another.
Sean Duffy: my mind has that opportunity to wander and it can sometimes take a few minutes to get back into that.
Sean Duffy: You know nirvana that we're all looking for the the flow of you know, high performance getting real work done, really, really quickly and just being hyper focused on what we're doing.
Sean Duffy: And so I think for a solution like ours, what we're trying to do is provide collaboration spaces in our platform that allow you to bring together content and information from multiple different sources so that when you're working on that marketing revamp.
Sean Duffy: You know exactly where to go to access the content that you need to access the tools that you need an access to people that you need.
Jim Lundy: For sure.
Jim Lundy: So, and again this is starting to get where do you do about it, you know how do we keep this conversation going so there's some issues and some actions and so.
Jim Lundy: We were talking about this shy about you know what are some of the things you know things you should look at tools we just talked about tools.
Jim Lundy: You know, we know that evolution is a great platform for doing corporate team communications So how do you do more, that more consistently.
Jim Lundy: How do you make the content easier to share it's very clear and surveys after survey that users want more rich content I video, can you make it easier to do that.
Jim Lundy: And then, again, you know this this you know the actions we don't have to read them all, but you know there's you know, having a strategy understanding, who you're dealing with.
Jim Lundy: And again communication communication communication and then you know, like I said, this is it easy to share content in your enterprise, or do you make it hard, and you know we've heard over and over that sometimes you know I teachings make it really hard, particularly a video.
Jim Lundy: So Sean your thoughts on this.
Sean Duffy: Well we've seen this.
Sean Duffy: Again with with sometimes with customers that we work with when they initially come on the platform, they can have a very locked down perspective right where.
Sean Duffy: we're a little worried about what our users are our employees are going to say on the platform and what we found is having that capability to give people a voice, really, really accelerates engagement on the platform.
Sean Duffy: You want to have that that not just top down communication, but you want to have that bottom up feedback and I think the the the point here around easier ways to share content.
Sean Duffy: is key, you want everyone in your organization to feel like they can share their knowledge and information, a great example of this comes out of.
Sean Duffy: Situations like the great resignation, where you know there's a high rate of employee turnover and churn that's happening.
Sean Duffy: Well, one of your most important assets is the knowledge that your employees have So how do you encourage those employees to document that knowledge in a way that if they do decide to move on.
Sean Duffy: That next person that takes on their role has access to the decisions that were made in the past, understands how the platform works or how your organization works in terms of things like processes, so I think there's a real you know there's a real.
Sean Duffy: benefit in terms of you know, the the operational costs of doing business to make it as easy as possible for your employees to share their knowledge.
Jim Lundy: Absolutely.
Jim Lundy: And then you know this gets at the you know some of the big questions we've gotten is you know remote teams and what are you know what do you, what do you do about it, what are other people doing.
Jim Lundy: And you know, one of the things i'm just going to highlight, which is number four is having TEAM members have a work buddy.
Jim Lundy: I have managed global teams, for many years on a remote basis and we ended up doing that, and it was wildly successful.
Jim Lundy: But I think the other thing that's really coming out is the yearning for employee engagement to really have.
Jim Lundy: More learning and skill development, particularly people working from home and sometimes they get bored.
Jim Lundy: So, like I said and again we've already hit the tools and you know but, but again managers have to pay more attention to the team's definitely having checkpoints.
Jim Lundy: getting people engaged, but again, you know Sean you brought that up over and over is that communications really becomes you know, for both managers and executives to keep people engaged.
Sean Duffy: yeah I mean it's not just about it's not just about having the opportunity to chat with people when we look at the way people are working today.
Sean Duffy: they're working much more asynchronously than they did in the past right so you're not seeing everybody working straight nine to five.
Sean Duffy: you're seeing some people getting up early and doing six to nine and driving their kids to school or Lino taking a three to 430.
Sean Duffy: break so that they can pick their kids up or making dinner and coming back online at seven or eight o'clock.
Sean Duffy: And you know, obviously we run into those ideas around work life balance and how do we, you know have dividers between our work and our home life when we're doing all of that, in the same location.
Sean Duffy: And so I think it's really important one to enable employees to work, the way they want to, and having tools that provide access to information, whenever an employee needs it, are key to being able to to enable that.
Sean Duffy: On the flip side of that I think there's a lot that we've done internally just around our practices around remote teams.
Sean Duffy: we've launched things like team lunches that we do remotely and so having that opportunity for people to connect you, you mentioned the the work buddy.
Sean Duffy: But having opportunities for the team to get together and socialize that they you know they miss out on when they're not there in person.
Sean Duffy: And then even things like weekly show and tell, so we do this within within my team and it's a different meeting it's not something that we did previously but it's a great opportunity for the team to get together and.
Sean Duffy: So simulation of some of those conversations that would happen when you turn around at your desk and you ask someone what they're thinking about the thing that you're working on right now we've had to formalize that a little bit.
Sean Duffy: But I think it's really important for every team to take a look at how can you take some of the the rituals that you have the habits that you have as a team and digitize those and make them available to employees when they're working in a hybrid model.
Jim Lundy: Alright well look we got we got one summary slide and we're going to have some Q amp a.
Jim Lundy: So you know some of the things that we've talked about today that maybe we need to stress a little bit more is understanding needs.
Jim Lundy: A lot of times, sometimes people forget that was, but you know understand what's going on there understanding the work strategy, you know, and is it working do you need to adjust it we've certainly adjusted ours.
Jim Lundy: And like I said, do you have the right tech obviously IGLOO can help you with that and then, when you leave this you know and it's a.
Jim Lundy: it's a Thursday, when you come back Monday don't wait to start to develop an action plan, because you know your people want more they want to engage more and if you're a manager.
Jim Lundy: starting to get an action plan with your other managers is really a very important point now Sean you're also advising a lot of firms as well about the technology side, what do you, what do you wrap up with.
Sean Duffy: Well, I mean for us it really goes back to Point number one which is understanding employee needs.
Sean Duffy: There was no handbook for for this when when we all started out I don't know how many years ago it was now feels like forever, but I guess two years of this kind of pandemic.
Sean Duffy: environment there was no guide that and people have had to kind of you know stumble their way, in some cases, but we're starting to accumulate learnings now, and I think the the The keys for us.
Sean Duffy: is really around enabling people to work in a hybrid manner and that doesn't just mean they're not in the office, it means things like time shifting It means that you know someone's working from their cottage or you know from a.
Sean Duffy: lot guess can't go to starbucks right now, but if you can go to a restaurant or wherever.
Sean Duffy: and finding those other locations where people are doing work, but making sure they have access to the information and asynchronous communications that they need.
Sean Duffy: And then I think it's really about listening to your employees and understanding what they need do they feel that they're being heard when they don't have that opportunity to pop into their managers office on a day to day basis.
Sean Duffy: Are they able to stay connected to the way a project is moving forward when they're not getting together in the boardroom to meet about it every day.
Sean Duffy: So I think it's really you know it starts for me they're listening to your employees understanding what they need, and then finding the tools and processes that you can build to help satisfy those those gaps that they're identifying.
Jim Lundy: cool.
Jim Lundy: Well, I know you've got some stuff to talk about here.
Sean Duffy: yeah so I mean we've we've touched on a lot of these over the course of this this discussion communication, probably the most used word of today.
Sean Duffy: But it's so critically important and having a platform that allows, as I said before.
Sean Duffy: top down, communications and making sure that employees have a trusted location to go to to know what the corporate messaging is to hear from the CEO and the executive team.
Sean Duffy: is so important, but it doesn't end there it's not that old you know static.
Sean Duffy: Internet platform that you were looking at in the past with with tools like IGLOO you want to have that bottom up communication as well, and ensure that everybody in the organization has a voice and feels that they have access to.
Sean Duffy: To express their opinions and thoughts we've talked a lot about collaboration right connecting people with tools information and content, when they need it and making it as easy as possible for them to get to the right content and information.
Sean Duffy: For knowledge management again just reducing the friction.
Sean Duffy: IGLOO is a platform provides the ability to search across multiple different repositories.
Sean Duffy: to store information and native file system and really lowers the bar for for employees to share the tribal knowledge that they have in their minds and make that available to everybody in the organization.
Sean Duffy: And then, finally, culture and engagement we touched on this as well right it's it's really important to reinforce that corporate culture.
Sean Duffy: To make sure that employees feel that they're part of the whole and we've seen this over the years, you know English been doing this for 13 years.
Sean Duffy: we've seen this in the past for organizations that have grown through mergers and acquisitions, where some of those satellite acquired organizations don't feel that they're part of.
Sean Duffy: The the mothership they're not part of the corporate entity and so corporations have struggled with this for a long time, and I think we're feeling it on the micro level now where individual employees.
Sean Duffy: really need to feel that they've got that connection to their their their employers, culture and that they feel engaged, because that that is one of the key things that I think can really help in reducing that employee HR and that we've been seeing.
Jim Lundy: or sure I think right now we're gonna bring alyssa back.
Jim Lundy: For some q&a.
Alyssa Teal: hi thanks so much Jim and Sean this has been a great conversation, so we had a few questions rolling that will address now, the first question is what has changed relative to the hybrid work scenario our organizations changing their policies to allow for more onsite work in 2022.
Sean Duffy: Well, maybe i'll start Jim and then you can chime in yeah I think I think we have changed, I think every organization out there has had to find ways to adapt what they do.
Sean Duffy: To meet these these changing environments, we are seeing more places start to return to work and start to entertain that idea of we're going to be in this hybrid mode for a while, I know, one of the things that we did.
Sean Duffy: We emphasize as much as we leverage our digital tools and our own platform to run our business.
Sean Duffy: we've made some changes in our physical office to enable collaboration, so that when people do come into the office they have the right physical facilities.
Sean Duffy: to collaborate more efficiently and so we're as an organization emphasizing the fact that yeah the digital tools help keep people connected when they can't be together but let's also make sure that we're supporting people when they are together.
Alyssa Teal: I think that's a perfect transition to our next question actually Sean which was how do digital workplaces enable hybrid workers to be successful.
Sean Duffy: yeah I think we talked a lot about that, on the other, slide and Jim happy to hear your thoughts, here too, but.
Sean Duffy: For me it's really about access to content and information, providing a single location for for collaboration and and lowering the the the the threshold for people to share the knowledge and information that they have so that they can work together better.
Jim Lundy: yeah I mean, I do think that you know it's a mix of of you know people in technology and best practices and listening.
Jim Lundy: And I think listening, is one of the things that you know managers need to lean in a little bit more on because you might want something from your people that people have great ideas.
Jim Lundy: When they see their idea being captured are valued like hey man let's try this product, or maybe we get done with this way.
Jim Lundy: So I mean I haven't made a technology selection at Aragon, in six years, so when people say hey we have too many technologies it's like well who picked us.
Alyssa Teal: And today, one of our really hot topics and key trends for this year, continues to be employee engagement and creating employee engagement and culture, so a question that came in was how can digital workplaces help enable and communicate culture digitally.
Sean Duffy: yeah I got I think we touched on a couple of these points earlier, I know you know traditionally we've heard of things like the social club like hey here's the the running club or here's the photography club.
Sean Duffy: things that bring people together to to to communicate on a social level are important, but, as I mentioned before, I think this idea of.
Sean Duffy: Social advocacy and having employees understand the positions that their their employer takes on different issues it's a great opportunity to build a really strong corporate culture and have employees and organizations give back to the Community.
Jim Lundy: yeah I would echo that I think giving back is one of the things that people really, really like, and so you can get involved in your local communities or from your various offices people feel good about that and it builds loyalty.
Sean Duffy: yeah we've we've seen customers stand up.
Sean Duffy: Section spaces, the column employee resource groups often within their their digital workplace and one of the key things that they include there is, you know volunteering opportunities so if there's a particular issue that that you're really.
Sean Duffy: in tune with let's say it's environmental here's some opportunities to go help clean up the Community here's.
Sean Duffy: You know something else that that's happening or a mailing list that you may want to be a part of, and it just it gives people that sense of of being part of something more than just work something more than just fun and social and feel that they're really making a difference.
Alyssa Teal: Great we had another really fantastic question Roland do you think digital workplace tools can help frontline workers non displaced workers such as warehouse workers shop floor workers, etc.
Sean Duffy: Yes.
Sean Duffy: I can say more, but yes, yes I I think one of the things that we've seen come out of again come out of the the last couple of years is a renewed emphasis and a focus on.
Sean Duffy: it's important for all employees to have access to communications and information.
Sean Duffy: We can't forget about the frontline workers who are dealing with changing processes and health and safety regulations on a daily basis organizations have an interest in keeping their employees and their their customers safe, but we have to.
Sean Duffy: enable people to cut it and so having those communications channel better online training and access to time sensitive information, I think, is critical, Jim have you guys seen something well.
Jim Lundy: For sure yeah for sure and it's it's you know, like I said it's it's a great a great opportunity to you know, keep pushing the engagement story.
Sean Duffy: yeah and we look at this from a mobile perspective and providing that capability with our mobile application to make sure that employees have access to that information and definitely yeah exactly we've all got one nearby.
Jim Lundy: yeah, this is one of the most powerful computers, there is so you.
Jim Lundy: know in again.
Jim Lundy: frontline workers have them, and you know, using a little bit more notifications, you know, is one of the ways to do it.
Jim Lundy: And, but like I said now there's a recognition it's not just knowledge workers, I think that's the biggest takeaway is like we did we forget about part of our population.
Jim Lundy: And I say, the answer is yes, but I mean obviously you know you guys are doing it you're helping people so that also makes frontline workers more engaged, because they have different roles if.
Jim Lundy: They don't have an office.
Jim Lundy: Right their offices their truck or their car often already are there kiosks right so.
Sean Duffy: yeah, this is a key area focus for us over over 2022 so yeah we've definitely seen the value and we know hearing from our customers, how important it is to them so.
Alyssa Teal: And on that topic i'd encourage anybody who's interested in learning more about how it loose digital workplace can help not only knowledge workers but frontline workers.
Alyssa Teal: to visit our case studies page and we have examples of how we've helped customers who have a large base of knowledge, workers and frontline workers to be successful.
Alyssa Teal: All right, we have one last question here for Jim and shawn so digital transformation is something that we talked a lot about today and to enable digital transformation requires talent.
Alyssa Teal: And this ties into digital workplaces and one of the questions was how do digital workplaces help attract and retain top talent.
Jim Lundy: Well, look, I mean it's it's not just the the workplace but it's also what's in the workplace and it's also what people are saying and doing, and you know I just talked about.
Jim Lundy: You know, Community engagement people care about that stuff so yeah I mean it can be a way to attract and keep people if they think it's cool and they've got you know good technologies and it's engaging then they're probably going to hang around a little bit longer.
Sean Duffy: yeah I mean I think one thing that we've we've seen is that you know the the ping pong table in the break rooms, not always enough to keep people engaged right and so having that opportunity to hear.
Sean Duffy: From employees about you know the corporate culture and how engaged people are, I think, is really important.
Sean Duffy: But I think there's practical aspects to it as well when when employee comes on board those first few weeks that initial onboarding experience is absolutely critical to set them up for success and.
Sean Duffy: You know, you can see, you know you know, based on how well that goes and how equipped and employee feels.
Sean Duffy: that's going to directly influence how long they stay at an organization how happy, they are.
Sean Duffy: In the job that they're in, and I think digital workplaces provide a really great opportunity to provide that remote online training experience and one of the things that we've seen.
Sean Duffy: Is we have our employees go through a digital online training.
Sean Duffy: And one of the things that they always note about that is one how structured and organized and clear, it is because it branches out, depending on what role you're playing within the organization.
Sean Duffy: But we're also seeing a lot of benefit from employees three months or six months down the line, they know where to go to find the information that they learned during the training it's not in a binder in their desk that they forgot about it's not.
Sean Duffy: You know scribbled in a note in their notebook they know exactly where to go in the digital workplace to review that information again.
Sean Duffy: And we actually do that on an annual basis there's a number of policies that we have employees review every year.
Sean Duffy: And we have them acknowledge that they've read those policies, so it allows us to reinforce messaging it allows us to ensure that people are aware of, and following processes.
Sean Duffy: And we can track that information, over time, so it really gives our our employees and our customers that have done something similar a really great jumping off point to start their careers with with us, or with our customers.
Sean Duffy: And yeah we can reinforce it over time so.
Alyssa Teal: I absolutely agree Thank you so much again for your time today Sean and Jim.
Alyssa Teal: For all our attendees, thank you for joining us this presentation will be available as an on demand webinar at IGLOO software COM very shortly in case you'd like to refer back to it so again, thank you all for your time today and have a great day.
Sean Duffy: Thanks everyone.
Thank you.