The pandemic forced many employees to work from home, but that hasn’t necessarily resulted in thriving digital workforces. In many cases, the ecosystem of digital tools has become more complex and time consuming. Statistics, in fact, show that many companies use seven different tools for messaging and file sharing and most workers toggle between apps ten times per hour, which translates to 32 days per year of lost workplace productivity.

“Our systems are not set up for remote work,” according to John Brownridge, Deloitte’s digital workplace leader. He joined Courtney Sherman, a workforce experience leader for Deloitte, at From Day One’s May conference in Brooklyn for a Thought Leadership Spotlight on how to build better, human-centered systems.

“The goal is to identify things that enable an enhanced employee experience while also delivering business outcomes and benefits,” Brownridge said. Deloitte, a global company where employees have long worked in a hybrid model, has its own example with DeloitteNet. “It’s our digital workplace and we’re always improving it,” he said. “But companies need something [else] that is going to fit their needs.”

So where should companies begin? “Human-centered design is the key,” Brownridge told the audience. Sherman went on to emphasize that human-centered design means that companies prioritize their workers and design for them as customers, and that they address the workforce experience holistically. One question she presented to the audience: “What are the shared values and aspirations of the people in my ecosystem?”

“Customers and workers–we should be thinking of them one and the same,” Sherman said. “Human-centered design starts with truly understanding the needs, desires, and behaviors and motivations of your talent. It’s not just annual surveys, or quarterly pulse surveys. It’s how we understand both passive and active data of how people are feeling about our organization, what’s working, what’s not working, and actively listening,” she said.

“From there,” Sherman continued, “it’s identifying the problems that matter most, co-creating with your workers to design solutions that they'll already buy into because they’re helping to design them and it solves their problems.” Testing, iterating, and trashing ideas that don’t pan out are also key.

Deloitte believes that eight factors inform an employee’s experience: the people I work with, the technology I use, the places I work, the sense of belonging I feel, the work I do, how work affects my life, the organization I work for, and how I grow as a human. “We’re looking at this holistically,” Sherman said. “Digital in the hybrid world impacts almost all eight of these simultaneously.”

Brownridge then outlined a digital workplace approach that begins with identifying business outcomes to achieve and the workforce experiences to enable. Understanding the workforce experience, defining capabilities and solutions, and building a roadmap to reach the intended goals are all next steps. “The biggest mistake clients and organizations make is that they ask what technology they should use to solve X problem,” he said. “What we believe is really what the companies are trying to achieve–the business outcomes, big ones and small ones.”

Returning to the employee experience, soliciting employee feedback, and being open to adaptation are key, both Brownridge and Sherman stressed. “It’s an ongoing process, it’s a forever thing that organizations need to do–be sure they’re delivering and always improving the experience for employees,” Brownridge said.

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Deloitte, the title sponsor of our Brooklyn conference and presenter of this Thought Leadership Spotlight.

Emily Nonko is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to writing for From Day One, her work has been published in Next City, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and other publications.