WIIFM ‘What’s in it for me?’

Undoubtably all Digital Transformation strategies now include aspects of Workplace Transformation, with the objective to either change or improve the digital user experience. Business has evolved tremendously in the past decade and with a slew of emerging digital technologies, a massive shift in customer and employee expectations and, more importantly, the demand for a genuine focus on health and wellbeing. Today’s multigenerational workforce demands leaders to create a new context for change by differentiating how a new direction is different this time around compared to past change efforts. This brings an immediate question to everyone’s lips of, ‘What’s in it or me?’.

Today, most new technology deployments still sit solely within our IT departments and all too often any change or transformation is usually triggered by support issues, security breaches or a shift from on-premise hardware to leverage cloud services, rather than a drive to improve user experience. The opportunity to evaluate technology and business value by measuring the impact through change management is often either an oversight or insufficient to measure the full impact on an end user. These characteristics influence an employee’s decision to adopt or reject innovation through not been able to identify the benefits which ultimately dictate success.

Dr Everett Rogers spent nearly 50 years understanding how people adopt ideas into their lives and was able to identify key 5 factors that influence technology adoption. Most of us will be familiar with Apple embracing these with their technology.Relative Advantage – How improved is an innovation over the previous generation? For example, is the new iPad that much better than the previous model? Over a laptop? Over a Microsoft or Amazon product?

1. Relative Advantage – How improved is an innovation over the previous generation? For example, is the new iPad that much better than the previous model? Over a laptop? Over a Microsoft or Amazon product?
   
2. Compatibility – The level of compatibility that an innovation has to be assimilated into an individual’s life. In short, how hard it is to integrate this into my daily work and life?
   
3. Complexity – If the innovation is too difficult to use an individual will not likely adopt it.
   
4. Trialability – How easily an innovation may be experimented with as it is being adopted. If a user has a hard time using and trying an innovation this individual will be less likely to adopt it.
   
5. Observability – The extent that an innovation is visible to others. An innovation that is more visible will drive communication among that person’s peers and working networks and will in turn create more positive reactions.

End users need to be able to identify these advantages and embrace change, through applying the right change management techniques and adoption methodologies. At Adoptt our approach incorporates these factors and focuses on creating a deep understanding of the challenges of workplace transformation and guarantees a practical route to impactful change by:

• Using data, insights and expertise to inform our decisions
• Helping reimagine the future by exploring the art of the possible
• Using a human centred approach to focus on experience
• Creating practical steps to turn a strategic challenge into tangible actions and measurable change

Natalie Goodwin

Workplace Transformation Consultant brings a wealth of experience as a collaboration and communications specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry coming from an Architectural design and the built environment background. Has the right skills and experience to provide workplace consultancy in Collaboration, Workspace design, UCC Solutions, New ways of working and support Technology adoption services with a passion for supporting change, bringing value and ensuring customer success as part of digital transformation.

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