Digital workplaces let us be our best selves

I’ve enjoyed a 20-year career at Accenture but my current role—supporting our people in the workplace through a pandemic—is perhaps the most challenging. Keeping everyone safe and delivering for our clients has been one of our highest priorities in the last two years. But as some of us migrate back to the office or do “a bit of both” when it comes to remote working and workplace presence, it’s been important to take a long hard look at how our spaces support our people and our goals.

In fact, it’s given us a prime opportunity to innovate our digital workplaces to transform how our people work around the world. How? Well, collaboration across different teams has been a critical piece in the puzzle to establish the protocols, guidance, processes and governance we need to make our workplaces spaces that enable our people. As our future of work evolves, the omni-connected experience—where our people feel connected, included and have a sense of belonging no matter where they work—is critically important.

The Accenture global IT and workplace teams got together with Accenture Labs and Fjord (part of Accenture Interactive) to find new ways to apply our combined user experience and design thinking skills to create immersive environments using VR. Together, the teams are shaping a new workplace experience—spaces where our people can think creatively, connect with each other internally and co-create with clients making the best use of technology.

Workplace of the future

Of course, it’s not all about technology; reimagining the workplace of the future involves how we integrate and support changes that we make and how we can enhance the user experience. We want to be sure when someone comes into an office, either in London, Milan, or Singapore, they have a consistent user experience. Whether our people are traveling from one office to the next or working remotely some of the time, it shouldn’t matter where you are—even virtual environments should feel familiar.

Take, for example, our office known as The Dock in Dublin, Ireland. We’ve set it up as a living laboratory, so that it stays cutting edge. From the beginning, we wanted a connected building with portable, movable solutions. The building is smart and can feed in data points about where people are and what type of space they’re using.

We can also monitor light and temperature and create an environment that’s healthy and promotes well-being. The Dock is a great space to meet, hold design thinking workshops and create prototypes. And we’re using technology as an enabler to facilitate collaboration which helps us to make connections and share information that leads to even more improvements.

Sustainability is an important aspect that affects every aspect of our business. Since the beginning of our environmental journey in 2007, we have continually set bigger and bolder ambitions. We have committed to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2025, focusing first on actual reductions across our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. As part of efforts to do this, we plan to meet our office energy needs with 100% renewable electricity by 2023. Many of our recent building refurbishments are carrying high levels of recognized certifications for energy, efficiency and insulation.

We want to make sure we enrich the work-life balance of our talented people by providing desirable experiences in locations with a range of amenities that meet diverse needs. We’re continually evolving technologies that support both the front-end and back-end experiences as part of an ongoing journey to offer better overall support for the future of work.

I invite you to read more about our thoughts on digital workplaces as one of the best ways to make Accenture a truly human, digital-first enterprise. When our people can connect and innovate in new ways, they have a chance to be their best selves, serve our clients better and even bring solutions to the market faster.