The SWOOP effect: Data-driven digital workplaces

Episode 151: The Swoop Effect: Data-Driven Digital Workplaces  

[00:00:00.000] – Cai Kjaer 

Generative AI, there’s now an ability to help people interpret that data. And I think if we take that into the digital workplace, just imagine when generative AI says, ‘Hey, this is how your Intranet is performing, but this is what you could do better’. So I think the analytics have a place not just in the content creation side, but also in the analytics and helping us improve. 

[00:00:23.000] – Nancy Goebel 

I recently invited Cai Kjaer, the co-founder and CEO of SWOOP Analytics, on a recording session for Digital Workplace Impact. In the end, I decided to title the episode The SWOOP Effect: Data-driven Digital Workplaces. I think that’ll all come together for you as you dip into this episode and that conversation with Cai, where we delved into the fascinating world of data-driven digital workplace leadership. We talked about how organizations are leveraging data that can transform digital workplaces and drive organizational success. Cai also shared some insights and practical tips on using analytics to enhance communication, collaboration, and even overall performance in the digital age. We also reserve a little bit of time to do some future gazing. Join me now in conversation with Cai Kjaer. This is Nancy Goebel, DWG’s Chief Executive, and your host. As always, this is Digital Workplace Impact, which is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. Happy listening. 

[00:01:44.980] – Nancy Goebel 

Cai, I have to say I am just so delighted to have a chance to catch up with you. Of course, we’ve partnered on a number of things over the years, and this is our first time stepping into the Digital Workplace Impact podcast studio together. 

[00:02:03.740] – Nancy Goebel 

And so I have to start with a warm welcome. And I know that it’s early for you, and it’s trending towards the end of the day for me And so hopefully we’re coming together over what will feel like a coffee chat first thing in the morning for you and a great conversation for those who listen in at a future date. So again, thank you. And I want to extend a warm welcome. 

[00:02:35.700] – Cai Kjaer 

Thank you. It’s lovely being here. 

[00:02:37.350] – Nancy Goebel 

Sometimes I think it’s interesting to start with a little bit of a genesis story, why we asked you to come into the studio for the benefit of those listening in. And one of the things that we have been talking about within DWG’s circles is the fact that it becoming increasingly important to take a data-driven approach to digital workplace leadership. And I say that for a few reasons. One is, after the pandemic, we saw the return of the business case, and it was different from years previous to the pandemic for the simple reason that the digital headquarters was suddenly established as a strategic asset in the enterprise. And so the level of rigor that was expected for the business case suddenly shifted. It levelled up. The other thing is that, of course, we’re seeing changes in technology that allow for better information access to understand what our employees, our workforces thinking doing, feeling as they are connecting with different elements of the digital workplace. I think that combined with the age of AI and starting to see sharper focus around those data-driven decisions that are naturally coming into view with AI enablement and a drive towards more intelligent digital workplaces. 

[00:04:32.810] – Nancy Goebel 

And that’s not only for the experience that our users have, our employees have, but also the consoles, the capabilities behind the covers that are suddenly enabled. And I have to say that for years, I have observed that we have a lot of passionate digital workplace leaders and practitioners in and around our circles. But measurement, analytics, data-driven decision-making has not been part of the strength of that group. And for those in roles like ours, it that’s incumbent upon us to help build that muscle and help it mature over time, whether it’s through analytical capabilities, through feedback loops, and of course, even benchmarking. So that’s an important level set for us to kick off today. And with that, I know that SWOOP Analytics recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. 

[00:05:42.610] – Cai Kjaer 

I can’t believe it. 

[00:05:45.630] – Nancy Goebel 

Time passes very quickly. But I would have to hazard a guess that you have seen over that decade some major shifts in how organization are approaching workplace analytics. And we’d love to hear your thoughts about that just to get things warmed up. 

[00:06:08.410] – Cai Kjaer 

When we started 10 years ago, we were certainly the odd ones out. I think even getting the initial little bit of funding to get us started, I think people said, You do what? You want to measure? What do you want to measure again? It’s very different now to when we started. You got to think about 10 years ago, if you talked about analytics, it was all about email. It was email analytics that people were focusing on. And interestingly enough, I think that certainly evolved, has evolved tremendously. And we wanted to carve out our own area. And we saw that this whole thing about employee engagement, employee conversations, inter-bound source networks were really starting to get quite hot. So we decided on looking at the areas where people opt in to go to have conversations rather than where they were a few of, or more, we forced to have them because you had to be in email. So they think there was a big focus on email. That is shifting. The internal comms function, when I started 10 years ago, we’ve always been doing benchmarking reports, writing about what we’re doing, speaking at conferences and events. 

[00:07:17.760] – Cai Kjaer 

And I would always ask in the room, So how many of you are actually looking at analytics? And very few people put their hand up. And if I sat in a three or four day conference, I always look for the conversations and see the presentations and then find out who’s talking about analytics in their presentations, and very few. But when I think about what’s happened over just the last two or three years, every time you go to a presentation now, there will be at least one slide about analytics for most people. And I think that’s really a sign that it is certainly now well and truly on the radar for just about all the digital workplace teams and the internal communications team that we come across. There’s very different levels of sophistication, of course, that you expect, but people are talking about it now, Nancy, and they weren’t apart from us, there wasn’t that much talk about it 10 years ago. But so I’m certainly seeing this has been a big, big, big shift. And I think that’s interesting because As you were saying, without thinking about the data behind what we’re doing, it’s really hard to justify our actions. 

[00:08:24.800] – Nancy Goebel 

Well, I think it’s such a helpful framing point to have that 10-year retrospective so we can springboard into the here and now and even some future gazing. One of the things that I was struck by was the idea that you and your team have benchmarked digital interactions for, gosh, over 20 million employees. And that is a significant window of opportunity to draw out insights about how people are getting things done, what the friction points are, the list goes on. And so I’m curious to know over time what’s been most surprising in terms of insights that you have uncovered, whether it’s about communication or collaboration patterns within the digital workplace voice? 

[00:09:32.300] – Cai Kjaer 

Yeah, there’s probably a couple of things that really stand out that have surprised me, even when you say rocked me to the core, I guess maybe it’s not that bad, but It has been eye-openers. You got to think about everyone that we work with, Nancy, so all the members you have in the digital workplace, a room, they are quite sophisticated. They are specialists. They work in the digital workplaces all day. All the people I’m surrounded by are people like yourself, Nancy, people that have been in the industry for a long time. We know a lot of people, and everyone is, I would say, quite mature in their thinking and quite mature in the way that they’re using technologies as well. So it’s very easy for us to get what the rest of the world looked like. So when we did our first benchmarking study of M365, the collaboration communication patterns in there, we looked at data for nearly, in that particular We did a study for a quarter of a million people, and we were just trying to find out how much had been using the different tools within the 365 to communicate, collaborate. And they said it’s against that backdrop of, Oh, we are overloaded with meetings. 

[00:10:43.920] – Cai Kjaer 

And you know that everyone we talk to, I think we go like, I’m totally overloaded. There’s noise everywhere. It is hard, hard, hard to get that cut through. Now, then when we look at the data for everyone, suddenly a very different picture is emerging. And it turns out that actually not that many people have back-to-back meetings. And you’re trying to look at the data, you go, It can’t be right. It just this doesn’t gel with my reality. My reality is not that. Everyone I talk to, they say that they’re overloaded with meetings, that we get hundreds of emails every day, I can’t cope, and all that. But then we find out that it’s about, what we say, one % % of people that have what you would say meeting overload. Now, I have to draw here that we’re only looking at meetings that were in Microsoft Teams. So I do get that there are the meetings, but this was done at almost… We were two years into COVID, where a lot of the work had shifted into Microsoft to online meetings. So about one % of the meetings had overload, and that means by that, they had five or more meetings every day. 

[00:11:58.820] – Cai Kjaer 

We only found 17% of people that had more than two meetings a day. And so you go like, can that be right? Anyone I talk to look like that. But what we forget is that there’s an enormous amount of colleagues that we have that might be working in SAP or Oracle all day. They’re simply not sitting there having meetings all day. And maybe also what we forget, a lot of the people that we interact with are our managers and team leaders, and they all have a a one-on-one meeting where they have direct reports. And that certainly becomes five meetings if you have five direct reports. But that person sitting there only had one meeting with their boss a week, maybe. Maybe even one week meeting at fortnight. So I think what I’ve really learned is that, and it ties into something I know you’re passionate about, too, about digital literacy, is that most people are actually not nearly as familiar with the tools as we might think that they are. They’re not nearly so much on top of what is really the The difference between Microsoft Teams and Outlook and OneDrive and SharePoint and the things that maybe most of us take for given, that we even basing some of our assumptions on what people are doing and what they know are most likely not right. 

[00:13:15.860] – Cai Kjaer 

So that’s one of the things that when I say, rock my call. I thought we were way better at this. And then when I say we, I mean the whole company, not the 20, 30 % in head office that we know about, but everyone. So that has surprised me. That has surprised me quite a lot. And I think it means we need to be probably a little bit less ambitious if we want to get everyone with us. If we want to lift the digital capability of our organizations, we have to think about all the ones that suffer from meeting under load. Is there such a word? But the people that are actually not participating, basically, in the digital workplace because they’re just not there yet. 

[00:13:58.300] – Nancy Goebel 

I can’t help but wonder if this is a moment of realizing that perception is reality. And I say that because when I think about what people complain about vis a vis meeting overload, it is a reflection of friction and frustration. One is, sometimes they come to meetings because they were told to, they were expected to, but when they turn up, it’s not clear why they’re there, what they’re supposed to be thinking, feeling, or doing in the course of that conversation. And so those kinds of things occupy your headspace before, during, and after one meeting. And then when you start to put five of those into someone’s day, that’s actually occupied their headspace for the entire day. One of the things that we’ve been talking about with the rise of AI in everyday work and driving that from what has been experimental in the past year to change at scale this year and beyond, there is a need to really take a closer look at how we give people headspace so that they can plan and create and connect with colleagues. The list goes on. And so there’s an element of how do we help people level up so that meeting time is utilized more effectively, and then also look at wider ways of working to help drive more productivity and that head space so that people can start to tap some of their superpowers. 

[00:16:04.000] – Nancy Goebel 

And so what I would love to hear a little bit about is your thoughts vis-a-vis the rise of generative AI in particular, and how you see analytics playing a role in helping organizations harness that power of AI while maybe even mitigating some of the risks that goes along with the stories that we hear. And so I’ll pause there because I’m sure you’ve got some thoughts to share. 

[00:16:40.490] – Cai Kjaer 

Well, AI is interesting. It’s at a rate that it’s just phenomenal just to watch. I think it’s actually going so fast that us humans are probably struggling to follow along. And I think you’re seeing some slowdown of adoption. I think I’ve listened to a podcast with Microsoft CEO, where he said that they were probably going to maybe not build as many data centers just for AI as they thought they initially had to, because it’s like we just need to get the humans with us, and they’re the ones that are using the technology. But from my perspective, I think there’s a couple of opportunities that AI that I have around analytics. One is that I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of focus been on, so far has been on helping people to write prompts. I can see that we got… Remember when we I could start using ChatGPT a couple of years ago, you were sitting there, hammering away the keyboard, and optimizing prompts, and try different things, and getting different answers. I do think that I can’t see a future where we have to train millions of people in becoming writers of prompts. I’m just struggling to see how we’ve ever succeeded with doing that transformation of behaviors of people, teaching them how to use the technology. 

[00:17:53.650] – Cai Kjaer 

It’s not only all this technology that has to adjust to us humans, otherwise we won’t adopt it. So I don’t see I think it’s an interim step that we are using prompting to help to get these different GPTs or whatever they are to do what we want them to do. It cannot continue. So I think what will have to happen is that we need to be… And I’m sitting also on the technology vendor side. All the technology vendors have to become much smarter in taking that friction away and introducing buttons and things that people can press on that takes that load away. It can’t be right that as a human, I need to figure out exactly how I phrase the exact question that makes the GPT answer in the way that I want it to. It can’t be right. So we need to find a way where it makes easier for me as a human to go click, click, click, and then I get the outcome that I’m looking for. I think that’s something And you’re seeing that. I’m seeing that there are more buttons or pre-pops of prompt ideas you can put in. So that’s starting to happen. 

[00:18:52.820] – Cai Kjaer 

But I think we need to be even smarter than that where you just click something, a couple of clicks and you’re done. I think that’s what’s going to happen. Nancy. Otherwise, it’ll… I just want to take it quicker to train people, millions of people. They have, Oh, I’ve got this PowerPoint deck with 400 different prompts I can use. I don’t think people are going to… Anyway, maybe it’s me. I wouldn’t want to go back to look at that slide six months later after the course, and then figuring out what it’s like. To ’86, there was this thing about how I book a flight. 

[00:19:21.970] – Nancy Goebel 

Well, I certainly see when I look at the app space in the CX world, the customer experience world, starting a movement towards done for you capabilities. And so rather than waiting for you to ask the right question, formulate the right prompt, these done for you capabilities are understanding what people are trying to get done. And then with a minimum of information are starting to activate certain tasks or connected workflows and saying, Okay, this is now done for you, and here’s what you need to think about next. And so it is almost precursor to coaching by getting some of the basic things out of the way to then say, Okay, now that we have that taken care of, let’s have a chat about what you need to do next and how to accomplish that in a in a meaningful way, and then the coaching trajectory starts. 

[00:20:33.800] – Cai Kjaer 

Yeah, I think that you’re right. But again, that sits on the technology vendors to make it more useful, easier to use. When ChatGPT first came out, I think I heard someone say they also had writer’s block with that. What am I going to type into this thing? It’s hard. So having some of these buttons on the… Where some of the heavy lifting is done ahead and then you can fine tune or or move on from that. That helps a lot. So two things there. I think also, but can also just say on the analytics side, though, there’s also something in there where I think we can do more to help it become easier to interpret data. And I’m thinking a lot of the people back to the original question you asked, what has changed in the last 10 years? And I said, I think people are more interested in analytics now than they were. I think AI also has an ability to help us interpret data far better. One One of the things that, again, I take a part of the blame. We’ve been good at because we can produce numbers and charts. It’s like, oh, here’s another one, and here’s one. 

[00:21:38.150] – Cai Kjaer 

Generative AI, there’s now an ability to help people interpret that data far better than what we’ve been able to in the past. Nancy, you run a business, I run a business. You look at your profit and loss statement, and sometimes you go like, Oh, what does that really mean? Can you imagine the button that says, Just tell me whether my company is doing well. And it actually analyze the profit and lost statement, and they tell you, Nancy, this is what you’re doing well, but you need to save some money over here. And I think if we take that into the digital workplace, just imagine when generative AI says, Hey, this is how your Internet is performing, but this is what you could do better. So I think the analytics have a place not just in the content creation side, but also in the analytics and helping us improve. And I think that’s, of course, that’s one of the areas that we’re looking at because we are a data and analytics company, but I can see that’s making a big difference in finally cracking that knot of making data and insights actionable. 

[00:22:37.950] – Nancy Goebel 

And it draws on that ‘done for you’ element that we’re seeing in the CX world a bit as well. And it doesn’t mean that it takes away decision making or ideation. But if our head space is occupied with different things, then we can start to ask deeper questions or connect things that are seemingly independent of each other. And suddenly, from a digital workplace point of view, reduce the friction for employees and help support and enable telling the value story around what’s being achieved, because I know, especially in and around AI-related business cases and use cases, people have been struggling to demonstrate to their boards or their executive teams how the business has moved since the early introduction of AI. And so when tools like yours start to come into the picture, people put greater focus on telling the business impact story and using that to guide flywheel effect around future investments, but also areas that need further tuning or attention. I, as someone who, once upon a time, used to support workforce analytics for the head of HR at a major Wall Street firm. When I see capabilities that exist today, I get really excited because I know the value of helping leaders take data-driven decisions. 

[00:24:39.190] – Nancy Goebel 

And so I feel like the timing on this conversation is particularly useful because among my predictions for the digital workplace this year, I have said that it is not only important to take that data-driven approach to decision making from the day to day, continuous improvement loop up through and including the business case. But the wrapper that’s required around this is the ability to tell the story And so if there’s an element of the basics being done for you via SWOOP, then you can shift some of your energy to telling the story that bolsters your impact and sphere of influence, because it’s the stories that ultimately spark emotion, guide decisions, and so that’s the superpower that I think digital workplace leaders need next. 

[00:25:52.890] – Cai Kjaer 

Yeah. I actually sat in a meeting only just a couple of days ago, and it was with an organization where someone had said they have an intranet that’s very widely used, and it was used to serve organization where there were a lot of frontline people. And the story they were told, the internal comms team was, well, those people out there walking the streets, keeping us all safe. They don’t have time to use the intranet. There’s no point in putting… They will never read what we put out there. Well, it turned out that that was not right because as soon as they came back, then the first thing they did was they logged onto a computer when they got back in a room, and then they actually read the news. So you could easily make a decision, I guess, based on these assumptions about how we as individuals, how we experience the world, but without the data that tells us about how everyone else is experiencing the world, we can make very flawed decisions. It’s something that I think you just got to be really conscious about. This thing with meeting overload. It is true. Meeting overload is true for some people, actually quite a few people, and all the very important, expensive people it’s true for. 

[00:27:06.000] – Cai Kjaer 

But if we make decisions and say, because I see the world this way, it’s probably true for everyone. And we say that no one reads this article or everyone suffers from meeting overload or no one uses AI or whatever it is, we are really at risk of making very incorrect decisions. So when you have the data, you can come and say, Sorry, boss, that’s actually not entirely true. Did you know that actually 58 60% of these people actually do this and 62% of the people do that. And the last three months has been moved from here to here. Then you got evidence to back up your points. And then you just come across with more credibility. And next time, you don’t have to justify because your boss will know that what you are recommending is based on data and insights. 

[00:27:52.630] – Nancy Goebel 

Yeah. And when I think about this layering effect of informing data-driven decisions, but telling those compelling stories as the wrapper for driving the conversation forward in meaningful ways, it’s one of those things that we all have to crawl before we can walk and run. When I think about where we were years ago, it was all about hits and clicks. And now we’re starting to see meaningful measurement that gives us really important cues not only to help improve performance, but to take some of the friction out of the system. And I think that’s at the core of some of these overload conversations that we have, because it’s the information, first and foremost, that feels overwhelming sometimes. And one of the delivery mechanisms for that is meetings. It’s not the only delivery mechanism. 

[00:29:01.400] – Cai Kjaer 

No, we’ve actually… One of the things that a lot of the organizations we work with, they’re trying to balance this synchronous communication with asynchronous communication, because meetings Well, maybe I’m leading too much of my personal opinion, shine through, but I’d really like to be meetings where the things are being discussed that’s best discussed in a meeting. And the status updates just saying, Oh, Nancy, what have you done last week? What are your five dot points? And you go around the room. That can be done asynchronously. And I’m really excited about that. When we look at the data behind how tools like Viva Engage with Microsoft’s enterprise social platform, it is really strong, performing very strong on establishing two-way relationships. And I think it is merging now more clearly that most people go for those tools for having the two-way employee engagement, and then they put the news on the intranet. That’s more like the one-way pushing things out to people. But then we’re going to find in this, we talk a lot about collaboration habits in SWOOP. And this thing about balancing your synchronous and your asynchronous, I think it’s going to be really important. 

[00:30:16.130] – Cai Kjaer 

I had hoped that with the rapid adoption and rollout of tools like Microsoft Teams during the pandemic, that we would have learned that skill set. But there wasn’t time for that in conversation. So it was a mad rush to roll up technology with no real gutrails around it. And I think one of the sad things is that a lot of those behaviors we had from before, or let’s have a meeting to do this, were just established with an online meeting and not rethinking or redesigning work and creating good work practices. So we did a really big benchmarking study on this M365, and we can see that only 5% of departments, we looked at groupings of people and department teams and groups and so forth. And only 5% of these, the members were working, had similar collaboration habits. But 95% of these departments consist of people that have very different collaboration habits. And when I say collaboration habits, I mean the way that people are using these tools. So you might have someone in a department that loves email, and that’s their favorite tool, and they use it all the time. You have someone else that goes, No, I’m the convert of this new Microsoft Teams things. 

[00:31:34.140] – Cai Kjaer 

I’m going to be working in that. And someone else say, No, you got to come to my office. Well, not during COVID, of course, but maybe after the return to office, so start to come back. And if you have that scenario where there’s some people that are working asynchronously, some are working synchronously. It’s also we haven’t arrived at a very good setup. So I do think this whole thing about the friction, the much space, the The space is also relates to the fact that we are working together with people, and we haven’t actually agreed on how we’re going to work together. I’ve heard people say, Oh, this whole digital workplace, it can’t be that hard. We gave everyone an iPhone, and they figured out how to use it. The tech is intuitive and easy these days. And it is. If I could only work in isolation, just using the tools that I want to use then, then I can increase my personal productivity. But the problem is that once we get four or five people together and they have to agree on how we work together, and we’re going to send a file by email, and we’re going to put it in one drive and send a link. 

[00:32:40.140] – Cai Kjaer 

Do we put it in a channel? What do we do? And that’s where it gets really hard, where you It doesn’t really matter that we all know how to use the tools if we haven’t agreed on how we together are going to collaborate using them. And I don’t think we cracked that very well during the pandemic because it was a mad rush to roll out these technologies and not teaching us how to use them together. 

[00:33:02.490] – Nancy Goebel 

I’m going to add a layer to that because when I think about team dynamics and what you’ve just described in terms of almost rechartering, what is a team, what are our roles within that team, we have to add another member of the team, which is AI support. And how are we going to leverage AI the way we might leverage another colleague to help us synthesize information across a set of meetings and across decisions that were made and across actions that were agreed upon to help uncover the blind spots, the opportunities for synergy, among other things. And so the dynamics of teams small T, as opposed to Microsoft Teams, uppercase T, also needs to evolve with that in mind as well. And so figuring out how we utilize the strength of the team, individually and collectively, will change. And having access to these insights to support the transformation of team dynamics, again, small T, will be important so that we can leverage things like Microsoft Teams, uppercase T, better, differently. But then also, that’s one slice. That’s the collaboration slice. But to your point earlier, there are capabilities, whether in the land of Microsoft or otherwise, that speak to communication and conversation. 

[00:34:54.910] – Nancy Goebel 

And those also need to evolve, A, because the forces influencing how people connect are changing, whether it’s because we’re operating in a multiverse with some people at home, some people on the road, some people at the office, or because there are other external forces. It could be a weather event. We’ve had a pandemic, and suddenly, context has changed. The list goes on. But the constant in everything that you’ve described is using data and insights to help guide that transformation. 

[00:35:35.500] – Cai Kjaer 

Yeah. A lot of organizations, of course, working with AI, and a lot of building their own digital workplaces where you add a component of AI on top of that. It can be like an AI-enabled intranet, for instance, where you can go in and then ask for policies, procedures, and do things. So you’re building your own version of AI where it’s grounded in your own data. And one of the things that’s going to be, we have to, as another one of those problems we have to solve for AI to really work in our workplaces is the problem we’ve had for years. You recall this, Nancy, with out-of-date content links on it and search not working. Well, search did work. It was just that the content wasn’t very well organized. And we’ve had the same problem with… Remember when Delve, that was a Microsoft technology that you could search things, and somebody would find things that go, Oh, We were like, that wasn’t supposed to be able to be found. And we had those panic moments, both with search and with technologies like Delve. We got to be so careful we don’t repeat those exact same mistakes with AI, because if you look at both of those, it’s like, Oh, no, I didn’t know that was available. 

[00:36:48.970] – Cai Kjaer 

Well, that can happen very easily with AI if you take and then index all of your corporate information. Actually, it has happened for many people already. So grounding it in what you And he said, it’s only this it’s supposed to look at because that’s being better than approved. And then the search sucks analogy. What happens if the content is not correct, it’s out of date, it hasn’t got a known, it hasn’t been whatever… And then you look at it and you start to use AI, and then the response to that come back are simply not correct because the underlying information is bad. That thing will end up saying that AI sucks, where we’ve been saying search sucks for the same underlying reason is that we haven’t got good content governance. So I think it’s some of those things that we… There’s some new challenges in terms of not just analytics, but under the broader heading, I guess, of governance. That for AI to work in our workplaces, especially in support of our digital workplaces, we got to figure out the content governance thing. We got to figure out the usage about what people are actually asking the bots about. 

[00:37:59.140] – Cai Kjaer 

Because if I spend a lot of time investing in my digital workplace and understanding how people are using the various tools, techniques. People spend a lot of effort getting intranets rolled out, and they add a lot of value. And if now your AI assistant becomes a new channel, like a new place you can go, and that will serve up information from you. Suddenly, we need to figure out, well, so what are people asking it? Because I’m the owner of that bot, because it What is the data that is getting to my employees. What are people actually asking the bot? What answers does it give to people? Are they right? Are they wrong? Do they need to be tweaked? So I think there’s a part of this that is, and we are rushing up with technology at the moment, and it is exciting. I’m as excited as everyone else about it. But I’m also thinking about the governance and the usage challenges about finding out what people are using it for and what answers it’s generating. Are they biased? Do we got good content coverage of what the bots are being used for. So I think all of that is going to be terribly interesting, especially if you are a digital workplace owner and you own one of those bots. 

[00:39:11.580] – Cai Kjaer 

One thing is to be using something that your organization has provided you. It could be Copilot or something else that is given to you by someone else. But the moment you created one for yourself that your employees are going to be using, then you have to get a hit around how that AI how that bot works. And I think we all have to explore this together because the practices and what we’re going to measure and how we’re going to capture this is all emerging at the moment. 

[00:39:43.050] – Nancy Goebel 

And the content strategy, the content governance are all important. At the same time, thinking about employee privacy, ethical uses of workplace data, all of that needs to come together to inform the framework that organizations use going forward. And I have to believe that knowledge management will have a rebirth like the phoenix, because organizations need to think about how all of the insights and knowledge and data needs need to come together in a meaningful way with this governance in place so that organizations, as they shift and the workforce to go along with that, that knowledge base continues to emerge and evolve and become smarter and even better utilized going forward because the reality of change acceleration is very much upon us and change is coming with velocity, meaning speed and direction. And so protecting and nurturing that knowledge base when you layer AI and other technologies that are becoming smarter in time will be core to what not only digital workplace leaders and teams need to do, but also the wider workforce. And I think it would be interesting just to do a little bit of future-gazing with you to hear a bit about what you think might be coming later in 2025 and beyond. 

[00:41:51.590] – Nancy Goebel 

You may be seeing some patterns or signals or even thinking the big thoughts and would love to see what you’re thinking is coming next in and around the world of analytics to support the digital workplace. 

[00:42:07.420] – Cai Kjaer 

I should be asking you, Nancy, because you’re the one with the predictions. So I’m going to make a very I’m sweating over this answer because… But I’ll give it a crack anyway. So my name is Cai. It’s spelled C-A-I. So it’s got two-thirds AI in. And I think, yeah, that was a terrible job, wasn’t it? But I think AI is going to stay with us, and Cai, hopefully as well. It’s going to stay with us for a little while. Actually, I know that, as I mentioned, the technology is moving absolutely rapid. It’s not evolution, it’s revolution at the moment. I think it’s going to slow down a little bit because we got to get those, as you were saying, people saying, well, so what’s the ROI? We’ve had this thing in there for a while. Can we just make sure actually works. And I think the technology has moved much faster than the people. So I think 2025, ’26, ’27 is definitely going to be AI. It’s going to be because we got so far to go to actually read the value of this. And with major transformation, it doesn’t happen at the blink of an eye. 

[00:43:22.210] – Cai Kjaer 

So that could be there for a while. I do wonder. I don’t think so. But I do wonder after, let me look, past ’26, ’27, ’28, Whether that metaverse and the virtual reality thing that was really be high up and then suddenly AI hit and then that dropped off the face of the planet, almost. I do wonder whether that’s going to see not a research, it’s because it’s like it’s a much slower moving evolution. But I wonder if we’ve given another five years, whether there would be something that happened that has made that a little bit more mature. But I’m a little I’m not too sure about that. Actually, I’m not sure. Actually, in a way, we can almost see there’s almost a shift back in time. What I mean by that, we had the pandemic and everyone was working from home, and we thought that that’s amazing and huge transformation in practices. And now we’re seeing this like, Oh, well, why should we get people back to the office again? And for me, to some extent, it’s a bit like, let’s go back to the way that things were. And so I do wonder whether there’s this general, let’s just take it easy for a little bit. 

[00:44:36.470] – Cai Kjaer 

We’ve had this technology is raising away, but let’s not forget about the human connection. Let’s not forget about being together. So I’m wondering whether that is to slow things down a little It’s a bit different. To some extent, maybe that’s not a bad idea because I can see that we have technology investments. People have invested in technologies, and they’re actually not reaping the benefits that we haven’t taken the people with us. So we got to be very careful about not overinvesting in AI. What by that? I mean, without having the people with us that actually making use of the technology. Maybe in an ideal world, I don’t know, you’re the prediction. You’re the one with the prediction. But wouldn’t it be nice if we were actually really successful with AI and we had the humans with us, we got the ROI, we cracked some of those underlying problems, as I mentioned, things around content governance and usability. The vendors like ourselves are becoming even better at making similar to use, having bug rules. All those things are there that can be the benefit of these technologies. And then, taking the people with us, I think, is such an important part. 

[00:45:51.080] – Cai Kjaer 

Is that even a prediction, Nancy? I’m not sure. Maybe a little bit. 

[00:45:55.480] – Nancy Goebel 

Well, I feel like it’s establishing an intention, and very often with intention, the action follows. So we’ve had a powerful moment of manifesting together, and maybe that’s what we were meant to cap off with today. 

[00:46:15.770] – Cai Kjaer 

Yeah, maybe. 

[00:46:17.250] – Nancy Goebel 

So I want to pause here and say, what a delightful conversation. I have been just delighted dipping into your world for a little bit to understand how you and your colleagues are helping to inform decisions, actions, and what’s needed next inside of organizations, whether it’s in how they engage in conversation, how they collaborate together, how they get things done. And whenever I talk with you, Kai, it’s refreshing. And so I’m leaving this conversation energized and looking forward to the next. 

[00:47:00.080] – Cai Kjaer 

It’s lovely to be here. Many of the things we try to do as much as we can to contribute to, I guess, to the community at large by writing benchmarking reports and publishing those. So if anyone wants to have a look at that, then they’re more than welcome to check out swoopanalytics.com. I think one of our other missions in life is to help digital workplace presentation is just with data and insights. I think this thing about democratizing access to it is why we just push it out, and hopefully we’ll all learn together. 

[00:47:36.640] – 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 and boutique consulting services. For more information, visit digitalworkplacegroup.com.