The workplace maturity gap: Where do organizations stand, why does it matter and how to assess own maturity

A thorough assessment helps identify gaps, uncover opportunities for improvement, and moreover it also ensures that digital workplace initiatives align with key business goals—whether it’s ESG, employee experience, productivity, or sales. To make this alignment successful, IT must collaborate closely with business stakeholders. Read our blog article, How IT can involve business stakeholders in shaping the digital workplace, to learn more about fostering this collaboration.

 In this blog article we will explain what digital workplace maturity levels are, how to assess your own organization’s digital workplace maturity and therefore better prioritize investments and we explain where organizations stand with their maturity.

Digital Workplace Maturity Levels explained   

Several digital workplace maturity models (Microsoft, Gartner, Forrester, etc.) are available, each offering a framework to assess your organization's digital transformation journey and maturity. At Cegeka, we have developed our own ‘’Cegeka Microsoft 365 Maturity Model’’ (based on the Maturity Model for M365) to evaluate an organization's digital workplace capabilities so we will explain the Maturity levels based on our own model. 

The Cegeka Microsoft 365 Maturity Model can assess maturity across seven key areas: Equipment (e.g., devices and device life cycle management), Infrastructure (e.g application modernization), Security (e.g., endpoint security), Teamwork (e.g., collaboration), Support (e.g., Proactive Support and shift-left of support), Productivity (e.g., AI and Data Lifecycle Management), and Digital Wellbeing (e.g., experience monitoring & management). Assessing every area is not mandatory. Instead, you can focus on the areas most critical to achieving your business objectives. Organizations typically assess at least two or three key areas to identify necessary improvements and drive meaningful progress. Each area is assessed through workshops and a structured questionnaire, resulting in a maturity score between 100 and 500. This score determines the area's placement within one of five maturity levels (see Table 1 for details). Maturity levels can vary across different areas. For example, your organization may score high (e.g., 400) in Security but lower (e.g., 200) in Teamwork. In these cases, we recommend that organizations prioritize improvements aligned with their strategic goals. Targeted actions should be implemented to elevate the identified areas to the next maturity level.

Table 1: Cegeka’s M365 Maturity Model 

How to assess your own maturity & prioritize digital workplace investments 

To evaluate your digital workplace maturity, we recommend following these key steps. For a more in-depth guide on assessing maturity and prioritizing investments, download our e-book or explore our infographic for a visual overview.

Step 1 - Define business objectives 

Step 2 – Conduct a maturity assessment 

Step 3 - Identify weak areas and prioritize improvements 

Step 4 - Develop a roadmap 

Step 5 - Implement your modern workplace 

Step 6 - Measure success and adjust the strategy 

Where do organizations stand in digital workplace maturity? 

Digital workplace maturity varies significantly across organizations, regions and verticals. While we expect that the average maturity level in the market is around 200, we notice that organizations that prioritize employee experience and automation tend to reach level 300.  

Maturity levels often differ across digital workplace areas, with some areas scoring much higher than others. One common lagging area is Equipment maturity. Many organizations follow a fixed replacement cycle for their hardware instead of a data-driven approach. This leads to a lower productivity, higher (maintenance) costs, and increased environmental impact, as employees are forced to work with outdated and inefficient devices. Organizations with KPI's on productivity, sustainability, or cost reduction often seek to improve their equipment maturity to meet their objectives on these topics. Another frequently underperforming topic within the Infrastructure area is Application Modernization. If a core business application—one that handles the most valuable (personal) data—remains on-premises, it becomes difficult to implement modern cloud-based security measures, severely impacting data security and compliance maturity levels. Modernizing the application becomes a top priority to enhance both Infrastructure and Security maturity. This is especially crucial for organizations with KPI’s on improving GDPR compliance, as achieving higher Infrastructure maturity is essential for meeting regulatory requirements. 

High-maturity areas often include modern management practices, such as organizations leveraging cloud-based workplace management with a single solution for securing and managing all workplace types. Additionally, we see that organizations often have a high maturity in security, frequently adhering to Zero Trust principles to safeguard data and systems, ensuring continuous access verification and minimizing risks. 

At Cegeka, we believe that an average digital workplace maturity of at least 300 is essential for organizations to operate efficiently in today’s digital landscape. However, required maturity levels may vary depending on business objectives, meaning some areas may need a higher level than others. For Cegeka supporting organizations at or below level 100 with an outsourcing/managed services model may not be feasible due to the extensive resources required. However, we can still enhance their workplace maturity through on-site expertise, on-demand services, or targeted improvement projects to help them reach level 200 or higher, making them ready for managed services. We highly recommend that these organizations accelerate their maturity growth by developing and following a structured roadmap to achieve the required level. 

If you’re looking to assess or elevate your digital workplace maturity, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. 

* Gartner, 2023, Nationwide Thrives With a Data-Driven Level 4 Digital Workplace