Almere's modern workplace delivers employee satisfaction, projects savings of $73,000 with Microsoft Surface Pro

The Municipality of Almere is the Netherlands’s newest city, built on land recovered from the North Sea by Holland’s pioneering twentieth-century land reclamation project. True to its innovative origins, it sought to create a modern workplace for its employees who, driven by the poor usability of their aging work laptops, had expressed dissatisfaction about legacy workstation configurations in the workplace, and some dissatisfaction with their employer's IT department.

The city evaluated competitive hardware solutions but saw compelling value in the portable Microsoft Surface Pro device with Windows 11, high-resolution screens, and fluid usability, higher accessibility, and chip-to-cloud security. The organization now uses Microsoft Intune, along with Windows Autopilot, to update Surface devices configured to requirements of the municipality’s different production, acceptance, and test deployment environments. Office apps have an auto-update configuration and are updated every month through the Enterprise channel. The Municipality of Almere redesigned its concept of a modern workplace, using the zero-touch deployment capabilities of Windows Autopilot to deploy 1,500 Surface devices. With streamlined device onboarding and a take-home device policy, the municipality’s employees have the flexibility to pursue modern work—anytime, anywhere. The municipality’s internal surveys now reflect high workplace happiness and high satisfaction in Almere's IT department.

Outdated hardware’s challenge in the workplace

The city observed how poor usability and hardware performance, in addition to a dated workplace setup, was causing widespread employee dissatisfaction. Internal employee surveys expressed unhappiness in their workplace and disgruntlement with their employer. It struggled with how to address employees’ perception of lower quality of life in the workplace. As Oswin van Baar, Team Manager of IT Operations at Gemeente Almere, explains, “Our colleagues weren’t happy with the performance and the availability of new devices. We got comments that we were ‘behind the times.’ Our colleagues said that we weren’t progressive when it came to providing new technology.”

As employees struggled with old hardware across the municipality’s work environment, they communicated their dissatisfaction with their devices to leadership. Workstations across the organization had terminals with no ports for laptop connectivity, so employees were forced to sign in and couldn’t use their laptops. The laptops in use had degraded performance and poor usability. Aware that its technology needed to change, the municipality's IT department knew it had to improve the physical working environment—and restore employees’ faith in the municipality. It envisioned future-proof devices in use. For example, workers on construction sites doing routine maintenance checks required portable, more user-friendly devices than the laptops employees were using. The city also sought a higher-end device with more memory to prepare for technology shifts and use cases moving forward.

Moving to a modern workplace, in a city created by technology

The municipality reimagined its own vision of modern work. Already a heavy user of Microsoft technologies, and dissatisfied with competitive offerings, it chose to deploy a Surface Pro solution through an operationalized hybrid deployment plan. “From managers to front office employees, we’re heavy users of the Microsoft stack,” Van Baar says. “After introducing Surface Pro, we started to adopt more Microsoft products. Now, growing together with Microsoft, we’re transitioning to more Azure products and services.” The future the organization envisioned with its deployment plan was a shift in how it approached work after the pandemic, using high-quality, portable devices to work anywhere. With COVID-19, the municipality saw changes in how people performed their job functions: scenarios of working at home, on the road, on trains, and in cafés, including hybrid work.

The municipality’s goal was to create a modern workplace, with more usability and accessibility, powered by high-performing, portable Surface Pro devices with a unified, streamlined Windows 11 experience. Its planned deployment strategy was rolled out with a two-stage hybrid deployment plan, with three initial phased deployments in groups of 10, 50, then 100 devices. The second stage was a “big bang” deployment of 1,000 devices. The municipality's IT department made use of the zero-touch capabilities of Windows Autopilot to quickly configure devices to the specific requirements of the municipality’s production, acceptance, and test environments. Microsoft 365 apps regularly auto-update with refreshed configurations through monthly enterprise channel updates. The municipality then mobilized its workforce en masse to socialize the device replacement initiative. It encouraged employees to visit device replacement booths to exchange their laptops for new Surface Pro 8 and Surface Pro 9 devices. The municipality-wide Surface Pro replacement initiative was deployed and completed in four weeks.

Empowered with a more collaborative way of engaging at work, employees and city suppliers can also pursue hybrid work—at home, in cafés, or on trains. “We made a big change, not only with the Surface Pro devices, but also with our entire workplace,” Oswin says. “We changed our offices to facilitate the use of laptops—and the use of portable devices—not only for ourselves, but also for our suppliers. Suppliers can come to work in our building, and we have made it easier for them to bring their own devices. They just plug in at any work area in our offices.” The municipality had expectations of what would equip its modern workplace, with certain criteria in mind—usability, performance, screen resolution, portability, and low device weight. It had evaluated other platforms but pivoted to a Microsoft solution, choosing a portable two-in-one Surface Pro device with Windows 11. Employees can now collaborate wherever they gather, using the device’s detachable keyboard, touchscreen display, built-in kickstand, and high-resolution screen. They enjoy the fluid usability, higher accessibility, and chip-to-cloud security of Surface Pro.

Usability, accessibility of portable, durable Windows 11 devices

The overall impact of the deployment is transformative, as it reimagined the organization’s physical and cultural workplace as a focus of modern and collaborative work. Employees are thrilled with the portable Surface Pro form factor and its high usability and accessibility. The municipality-wide device replacement program has renewed the satisfaction and faith of employees in their organization. “The new workplace isn’t just about plugging in a Surface Pro at a new workstation, but about how you connect with people and work together. Collaboration among employees improved after the deployment of the Surface Pro fleet," van Baar explains. "Before COVID-19, as employees were socialized to Microsoft Teams, people worked in the same Word or PowerPoint document. When Surface Pro rolled out, it drove an effort towards collaborative workstreams—and the benefits of using SharePoint to work together in Office 365 applications,” he adds.

Another long-term benefit in terms of ROI is the repairability of Surface Pro components and the ability to easily upgrade them. The device’s durability adds up to calculable savings. Van Baar predicts: “We’ll use a substantial amount of Surface Pro devices longer than four years. At least 85 to 90 percent of our total fleet can last for an extra (fifth) year. This results in a projected savings of $73,000 with Surface Pro.” He adds "The projected savings of $73K is per year, for a total of five years, so the total amount of savings will be $365K during the life of the Surfaces." Beyond this substantial ROI projection, something else drew the attention of City leadership. During the early phases of the rollout, City leaders noticed that during initial deployment of the first 1,000 devices, they received enthusiastic feedback from employees, that Surface Pro ran faster, more smoothly, and was more resource efficient. Beyond the benefits of increased usability and accessibility, employees clearly expressed in survey comments that they were pleased with the use of their new devices, and that contributed to their positive state of mind. Employees seemed happier in general when using Surface Pro than they were with their old laptops. One employee is recorded to have said, “Surface Pro is a fantastic device. It was a good choice to switch to it. I can use it everywhere, with accessories that make even working from home comfortable.”

According to employee feedback in the municipality’s internal surveys, in addition to a bona fide increase in employees’ user experience, employees increased its quality rating as a municipal organization after deployment. “We saw overall ratings rise with early survey results,“ Van Baar recalls. “We received calls from people without Surface Pro devices, wishing to exchange their laptop for a Surface Pro. We discovered that, even in the digital age, word-of-mouth advertisements are the most powerful endorsement of good product quality.” Employees’ appreciation for Gemeente Almere’s IT organization increased dramatically. "A few years ago, employees had a mostly negative perception of the municipality’s IT department …. That kind of sentiment went away in the past one and a half years, and deploying Surface Pro turned it all around for us," Van Baar reflects. “Employees’ engaging user experience on a modern, cloud-optimized Windows 11 device drove a 180-degree turnaround to a very positive sentiment about the municipality’s IT department and a renewed faith in the city itself.

Gemeente Almere continues to look forward, looking at AI use cases to revolutionize municipal operations by enhancing workflow efficiencies, data-driven decision making, citizen engagement, and overall service quality.