IT typically carries the responsibility for digital workplace initiatives, but these projects often come with time pressures. We look at the interrelationship between clarity, collaborative involvement, speed of delivery and project success.
The Tortoise or The Hare?
Sir Alec Issigonis, designer of the iconic Mini, is credited with saying that “a camel is a horse designed by a committee”. It reflects his dislike of working in teams and belief that a solo approach was the only way to avoid an unwieldy and flawed result.
But that was the 1950’s.
A lot has changed since then and it’s doubtful he’d succeed given the complexities of today’s design projects.
However, when IT teams are under pressure to deliver a new digital workplace – and quickly – going it alone can be deceptively appealing. A more collaborative approach seems bound to slow progress, but in reality it rarely produces long term success.
An all-encompassing, business-owned approach produces close alignment with business needs, high rates of adoption and consequently more successful projects.
Digital Workplace Success Relies on Cross-Functional Input
Issigonis had a very clear, one-size for all, vision. But a successful digital workplace must cater for a wide variety of needs, and encompass people, process, and technology. This means involving business units and employees to define needs, as well as HR and internal comms to ensure cultural alignment and to drive engagement.
Not only does a partnership approach produce a better outcome, but it also avoids decision-making bottlenecks and ensures that it’s technically sound and user-friendly.
Your digital workplace should be business-owned because it meets the needs of the whole business. But business ownership shouldn’t mean that IT isn’t leading the initiative nor owning the strategy.
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Why Unclear Ownership and Strategy Are a Problem for IT
But Issigonis’ clarity of purpose is vital when it comes to ownership and strategy.
Unclear ownership and strategy are common and damaging issues in digital workplace projects. Without them projects tend to stall, drift, or deliver disappointing results.
When the strategy isn’t clear, people don’t understand why the project matters, what success looks like, or how it ties in with business goals. In its absence, reactive decisions, scope creep, duplicated effort, and inconsistent outcomes occur.
When overall project ownership is unclear other problems occur. When ownership is shared vaguely shared between IT, HR, Comms, and business units no one is fully accountable. Departments may launch overlapping or conflicting tools and critical needs like user experience, security, governance, and adoption are overlooked.
So, it’s important that IT leads your digital transformation, but collaborates closely with others to develop a clear strategy that is relevant to all.
Don’t Let Language and Labels Get in the Way
A shared, cohesive approach can often be derailed by a lack of a shared language – while one team talks about ‘intranets’, others talk of ‘digital workplaces’ or ‘employee portals’. But the goal is often the same: one connected place where employees can get everything done.
This is where working with an experienced partner can help bridge the gap, translating between teams and aligning needs into a single vision.
Build the Bigger Picture First — Then Work Backwards
Your digital workplace strategy doesn’t have to be complex, but it does need to set a clear direction and answer some fundamental questions. How will this support business strategy? Which problems do we need to solve? What does success look like? Who needs to be involved?
By setting out the big picture first, you can then map out what needs to happen — and in what order — to get there.
Nor does any of this need to be at the cost of speed of delivery – by identifying key interdependencies and relative priorities early on, some key outputs might be speeded to delivery. For example, we often find that Internal Comms want to roll out Viva Connections or Viva Engage — but this requires SharePoint to be in good shape first. Similarly, IT may be under pressure to ‘switch on Copilot’ — but that often requires data to be restructured, secured and accessible in order to provide worthwhile results.
With a clear roadmap in place, every team has visibility of what’s coming, when, and why. Even if a request isn’t actioned immediately, teams can see it’s part of a bigger plan — which helps to keep everyone aligned, informed, and engaged.
How Silicon Reef Helps
When we see all these things come together – cross-functional input, recognised IT ownership, and clarity of strategy – we invariably see highly successful digital workplace initiatives.
We’ve seen firsthand how cross-functional collaboration fuels progress. As an experienced Microsoft partner, we help unite IT, Internal Comms, HR and business stakeholders under a shared digital workplace strategy.
Our role is part strategist, part translator — making sure every department is heard, aligned and confident in the end result.
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Additional FAQs
Who should own a digital workplace strategy?
A successful digital workplace strategy needs both clear ownership and broad collaboration. Senior leadership should set the vision, define business outcomes, and ensure the workplace aligns with organisational goals. IT should lead on technical delivery, platform integration, security, and governance. HR and internal communications bring expertise in employee experience, change management, and engagement. Many organisations create a cross‑functional digital workplace steering group with clearly defined roles for approving new tools, managing content, and tracking performance. This structure prevents silos, ensures consistent governance, and keeps the strategy aligned with evolving business needs. Without explicit ownership, digital workplaces often become fragmented, underused, and hard to maintain.
At Silicon Reef, we’ve seen the best results when organisations combine executive sponsorship with a governance lead and a multi‑department council that regularly reviews adoption, usability, and business impact across Microsoft 365 and related tools.
How can we align our digital workplace with business goals?
Aligning a digital workplace with business goals starts with clarity on outcomes—whether that’s improved cross‑team collaboration, faster decision‑making, better hybrid working, or enhanced employee engagement. Map each goal to the digital tools and features that support it, then set measurable success criteria. Common KPIs include reduced time spent searching for documents, fewer emails sent, fewer siloed communications, and higher adoption rates for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or intranet hubs.
Review these metrics regularly and adjust the strategy when business priorities shift. Involving representatives from across departments ensures the workplace remains relevant, usable, and valuable—rather than becoming a collection of disconnected apps.
Silicon Reef uses audits, user research, and stakeholder workshops to directly connect Microsoft 365 solutions to tangible business priorities, ensuring changes deliver measurable value and not just technical upgrades.
What’s the best way to govern a digital workplace?
Strong digital workplace governance ensures platforms remain secure, consistent, and easy to navigate. An effective governance model includes:
- Decision‑making authority for approving new tools, integrations, and features
- Content governance to manage structure, tagging, metadata, and archiving
- Access controls to manage permissions and security
- Regular audits to remove outdated or duplicate content
Governance should balance control with flexibility—too much restriction can hurt adoption, while too little leads to clutter and inefficiency. Embedding governance into workflows (templates, permissions models, automated rules) reduces manual overhead and improves consistency.
At Silicon Reef, we often help clients create governance councils with IT, HR, comms, and operational leaders to ensure decisions are business‑aligned while maintaining a seamless Microsoft 365 user experience.
How do you measure the success of a digital workplace?
Measuring digital workplace success requires combining quantitative KPIs with qualitative insights. Quantitative data might include:
- Microsoft 365 usage analytics (active users, Teams call volume, SharePoint activity)
- Search success rates
- Task completion times
- Reduction in email reliance
Qualitative insights come from employee surveys, interviews, and focus groups—capturing how intuitive and valuable the tools feel in day‑to‑day work. Start with a baseline before rolling out changes, then track progress over time. Focus on adoption and impact—are people using the tools, and are they achieving business outcomes faster or more effectively?
Silicon Reef combines Microsoft 365 analytics with structured employee feedback to give organisations a full picture of workplace health, helping them pinpoint successes and address adoption barriers.
How can we drive digital workplace adoption and engagement?
Driving digital workplace adoption means making tools genuinely useful and easy to adopt. Engage employees early through design workshops, pilot programmes, and usability testing. Launch in phases, starting with targeted groups, then expand. Explain the “why” behind changes to secure buy‑in, and tailor training to specific roles and workflows. Peer‑to‑peer support, platform champions, and visible leadership endorsement help normalise new habits.
Sustain engagement with ongoing support, refresh training as tools evolve, and measure adoption against agreed KPIs. Keep refining the experience based on feedback so the digital workplace remains relevant and friction‑free.
Silicon Reef blends UX research with Microsoft 365 change support so tools are not only well‑designed but embedded into daily work, boosting adoption and long‑term engagement.
