Highlights from DWG’s 2024 best in show episodes

Digital Workplace Impact Episode 148: Highlights from DWG’s 2024 best in show

[00:00:01.130] – Nancy Goebel

To my mind, AI is busy on the project.

[00:00:06.450] – Laurel Dzneladze

So there’s no executive who’s in this group telling us what we should or shouldn’t be doing. And this was all donated

[00:00:12.360] – Ryan Anderson

..Is that you can tailor so much to your own workflow and you can control facets of the environment in many cases that you could…

[00:00:19.980] – Maureen Ennis

It’s a critical conversation for teams to be having at all different stages of their work.

[00:00:24.950] – Elizabeth Marsh

With all of the different projects and initiatives that they’re working on to really seed their thinking.

[00:00:35.840] – Nancy Goebel

In this episode of Digital Workplace Impact, we’ll distill five insights from our best in show, episodes of 2024, Determined by popular demand. The focus is five podcasts that offer cutting-edge insights on a mix of things like employee experience, workplace design, navigating uncertainty, and as always, the future of digital workplaces. In rank order, these episodes included ‘DWG’s 2024 predictions for the digital workplace’, ‘GEEKing out on employee experience at LinkedIn’, ‘MillerKnoll on empowering intentional inclusive workplaces’, ‘How digital workplace teams can thrive in a VUCA world’, and last but not least, ‘Unboxing DWG’s 2024 research program’.

[00:01:37.090] – Nancy Goebel

Join me now as I explore advice from these fascinating sessions. This is your host, Nancy Goebel, Chief Executive at DWG. And as always, Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. Happy listening.

[00:01:55.870] – Nancy Goebel

Welcome to a special episode of Digital Workplace Impact. Today’s focus is all about distilling insights from last year’s most popular episodes. But first, a little backstory. When I sat down to look at the stats, I was really surprised that last year’s highlights reel came up in the top six.

[00:02:20.310] – Nancy Goebel

Since it would be a little odd to highlight the highlights, as part of this episode, I opted to focus on what I’ve affectionately dubbed the fab 5 podcast this time around. The takeaway for me from the highlights reel episode last year was that our listeners are more time-challenged than other. And so that’s actually what prompted the idea to narrow my focus to what is now an episode about the top five best in show episodes by popular demand. You’ll come to see that the themes that bubbled up were cutting-edge insights around employee experience, workplace design, navigating uncertainty, and the future of digital workplaces. Let’s get started.

[00:03:22.530] – Nancy Goebel

To my mind, AI is just the latest to go through what we see as a tried and true digital workplace framework that actually takes us back to the future. Here’s the top advice from Episode 133, embrace AI-powered insights. From our predictions episode, it’s clear that AI is reshaping the digital workplace among many other arenas. Our first piece of advice centered around leveraging AI-powered analytics, in particular, to assess workplace impact impact and to drive decision-making. As the episode highlights, AI tools can provide unprecedented insights into productivity, into collaboration patterns, and even employee engagement.

[00:04:18.800] – Nancy Goebel

By embracing generative AI, you can make more informed strategic decisions and optimize your digital workplace.

[00:04:28.550] – Laurel Dzneladze

Where all the people who are working on projects. There’s no executive who’s in this group telling us what we should or shouldn’t be doing. This was all donated time. This was 10% of each of our time that we were all donating to pulling these parts and pizzas together, bringing data forward that they couldn’t do before, whether it was just, Hey, look at these eight change projects happening for every single person at the company at the same time. There just wasn’t that information available. And so I think from that perspective, people started seeing the value in just having this knowledge and having this expertise together.

[00:05:08.760] – Nancy Goebel

The next episode is advice from 137, Prioritizing knowledge management. And this ties back to our episode around LinkedIn’s GEEK initiative, which centered around making knowledge management a strategic priority. And that even bubbled up to my predictions for 2025, in fact. And so in this episode, Laurel Dzneladze from LinkedIn at the time showed us how breaking down silos and creating visibility into knowledge creation and knowledge storage can transform the employee experience. So the takeout here is to consider implementing cross-functional knowledge management teams to improve the information flow and collaboration across your organization?

[00:06:01.860] – Ryan Anderson

The nice thing about working from home is that you can tailor so much to your own workflow and you can control facets of the environment, in many cases, that you couldn’t in a corporate office. But when we start talking about relationships and what it means as a manager to foster really healthy relationships. Anybody who’s been in a long-distance romantic relationship can tell you that trust is usually established, or if it’s broken, restored through really meaningful times together. We need to ask the question, How are we equipping and empower people? But how do we foster really healthy trust-based relationships by being together in whatever duration is appropriate? Just as a manager, that’s different. Offices in their early origins were designed to supervise work and to express status, and that’s not the function anymore. You can’t operate under this model where I intend to observe everyone doing their work to ensure they’re productive. I don’t think any organization can remain relevant and competitive with that mindset. Instead, it’s all about using these various environments, whether that’s a corporate workspace or a home workspace or a flex space or others, to enable that range of experiences that foster really, really healthy working relationships.

[00:07:27.110] – Nancy Goebel

And the third piece of advice comes from Episode 135, design for inclusivity and wellbeing. Here we were in a conversation with Ryan Anderson from MillerKnoll, who emphasized the importance of intentional workplace design. Our third piece of advice is creating digital and physical workplaces that prioritize inclusivity and well-being, along with adaptability. Basically, this means considering the diverse needs of your workforce, supporting both in office and remote workers and designing spaces that foster creativity and connection.

[00:08:07.460] – Maureen Ennis

Whenever I think about risk, I think of a tool that is a Six Sigma tool. It’s called a FMEA, failure modes and effect analysis. Essentially, what it does is helps teams slow down and have a conversation about what could go wrong, what are the breakdowns? I think it’s a critical conversation for teams to be having at all different stages of their work. So what could go wrong? How would we even know in this crazy disruptive world that it was going wrong? And what will we do about it?

[00:08:39.920] – Nancy Goebel

And so our fourth piece of advice comes from Episode 136, and that’s build resilience in your teams. In our VUCA World episode with Maureen Ennis, we learned about the importance of adaptability. Our fourth piece of advice in particular is to focus on building resilient, adaptable teams, which involves things like developing an adaptive mindset, encouraging cross-functional collaboration, fostering a culture of continuous learning, among other things. And of course, in an uncertain business climate, these qualities will become even more crucial to your team’s success,

[00:09:24.050] – Elizabeth Marsh

This is about building the evidence base for everything else, for our members to have that foundation, that basis of knowledge, to help them with all of the different projects and initiatives that they’re working on, and to really seed their thinking.

[00:09:44.700] – Nancy Goebel

And so our final piece of advice comes from Episode 134, and that is stay ahead with continuous research. This final episode in our Fab 5 was centered around our research program last year. We understood and underscored the importance of staying informed. What sparked that thought was that 88% of DWG members at that time reported evaluating research insights as one of the highest value points for membership. What that told us was that they were underscoring the importance of staying ahead of emerging trends and challenges in the digital workplace as part of the day job of a leader and a practitioner.

[00:10:38.890] – Nancy Goebel

And that idea powers our fifth piece of advice around investing in ongoing research and learning about digital workplace trends. Fabulous episode with Elizabeth Marsh, DWG’s own Director of Research, who talked about the fact that whether it’s through internal activities or external resources like DWG’s research program, staying ahead of emerging trends and challenges is absolutely crucial for effective digital workplace leadership. Here’s where I’ve got a spoiler alert for you given the popularity of this episode, I’m delighted to share that I asked Elizabeth just yesterday to come back into the podcast studio in a couple of weeks to unveil our top six themes for DWG’s 2025 member research program. So you’ll be among the early practitioners in the know when that episode comes out live. So be on the look out for that in the coming weeks.

[00:11:46.770] – Nancy Goebel

So now that you have the five salient pieces of advice to kick off 2025, let’s tie this episode up with a little bow. It’s clear that that the digital workplace is evolving rapidly. It’s driven by a mix of technological advancements, changing work patterns, and of course, the need for more adaptive and inclusive environments. From LinkedIn’s innovative approaches to knowledge management to MillerKnoll’s vision for intentional workplace design and various strategies for thriving in uncertainty alongside taking into consideration trend-gazing and future-gazing.

[00:12:39.260] – Nancy Goebel

This collection of best in show episodes is designed to offer you a wealth of insights as digital workplace leaders and practitioners. And as we look to the future, it’s clear that success in the digital workplace will require a combination of tech savvy strategic thinking and a deep understanding of human needs and behaviors alongside your core strategic business agenda. I hope these insights will not only inspire you to expand your thinking about your digital workplace strategies and the future of work, but that it’ll also keep you innovating and stay connected with us via this podcast and other DWG channels. Thanks and Happy New Year.

[00:13:33.600] – Nancy Goebel

Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by the Digital Workplace Group. DWG is a strategic partner covering all aspects of the evolving digital workplace industry, not only through membership, but also benchmarking and boutique consulting services. For more information, visit digitalworkplacegroup.com.