Smartworking is about taking a comprehensive and strategic approach to modernising working practices.

A new approach to the way we work and how workplaces are designed is emerging. It did not came out of the blue; it’s the result of a number of variables, like a shift in the workforce (it is estimated that by 2020 digital savvy millennials will make up 50% of the global workforce), the availability of digital technologies, the arise of a number of successful giants, such as Google, promoting a more open culture of learning, trust and innovation, proving it directly affects business performance.

A recent IBM study on Smartworking, with nearly 300 executives participating, shows that outperforming organisations are implementing newer approaches to work. Moreover, the ones that perform better on the stock market are listed amongst the ‘Best places to work’. As Richard Branson puts it ‘Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients.

Whether you’re a startup, a growing SME or an established big corporation, there is no doubt smartworking can be a very valuable approach for: establishing processes, keeping control and growing/scaling efficiently and/or maintaining a competitive advantage in the market.

Digital and mobile technology can leverage concepts such as automation, agile, lean, no-fuss, delightful, time ‘valorisation’- saving time on low value tasks, which can be spent on high value activities that contribute to the growth of the company-, and above all else the concept of a truly integrated, connected workplace that is unshackled from manual, fragmented and disconnected work practices and apps. Smartworking frees you up from non productive work practices and optimising time spend (it ‘valorises’ your time at work).

Nonetheless, for an effective transition to this new paradigm in the workplace, adopting new technologies is in itself not enough. There is also a need (or better put, an opportunity) to rethink business processes to arrive at more efficient ones (this is what digitisation can open up to us), to transform the design of the working environments and for evolving the management culture.

Image source: http://www.totalsmartworking.com/

So while the effective use of new technologies is central to working smarter, it needs to go hand in hand with a shift in the business culture, the workplace design and the management within the organisation.

This transition is not easy. But once implemented and ROI is measured, it pays off. If it didn’t, would we even be talking about smartworking in the first place?

In a nutshell

In a nutshell: #smartworking is the holistic use of digital and mobile technologies for making businesses and teams more efficient, more productive, more profitable, and more engaged. And because the adoption of digital technologies does not happen automatically, #smartworking also involves company culture (change management).

To wrap it up, we’ll leave you with a TEDx talk by Yves Morieux on 6 rules to simplify as work gets more complex.

Source:  Our partner sapenta