Companies that have embraced the hybrid workplace are looking for less office space and more flexible facilities to accommodate the variable number of employees who come in. User support and front-office technologies will require a rethink as distributed digital work becomes the new reality. The pandemic accelerated workplace transformation efforts as overnight, people shifted from offices to kitchen table collaboration.
We’re entering the next phase of hybrid work as many organizations rapidly adjusted by putting measures in place to ensure business continuity and are starting to plan how to safely get people back into the office.
Now’s the time to ask: what’s our long-term strategy for hybrid work and how can we ensure it’s successful?
Hybrid work is more than extending flexibility to employees. It’s an opportunity to fundamentally improve how work gets done, teams collaborate and the experience of the entire workforce. But it is important to have a long-term strategy with the goal of delivering intelligent workplace experiences.
The workplace of the past was about being present in a physical location. The future is all about flexibility and blended in-person and remote collaboration. For the hybrid workplace to truly redefine your business, physical spaces must merge with virtual spaces, and technology is needed to assist people throughout their day. This takes intuitive software and intelligent devices that not only provide for great collaboration but also deliver insights to continuously improve experiences and enables you to easily deploy and manage your solution on a platform that is secure and reliable.
With intelligent workplace solutions designed for hybrid work, you can eliminate common meeting frustrations, optimize spaces with agility and create more productive environments where everyone on the team, in-person or remote, has a first-class experience.
The right strategy involves identifying the new purpose of the office and the technology to support it, evaluating and addressing remote work challenges, and investing in the right collaboration platform that provides the best solution for the new world of work.
The work from home strategy
In a hybrid workplace, it’s likely that your workforce will be spending half or more of their working days at home. Employees need access to high-quality collaboration tools that provides the capabilities you’d expect from an office. And with so many people connecting virtually, there interactions need to be as close to meeting in-person as it can be. That means high-fidelity video and face-to-face communication that foster relationships and collaboration.
While many organizations believe a laptop is good enough, it’s apparent that remote workers need better experiences. Dedicated collaboration devices for the home office promote fatigue-free, natural experiences with easy access to the same collaboration capabilities you’d expect to find in the office.
As part of your long-term work from home strategy, consider the following:
– Are employees happy with their collaboration experience when working from home?
– Do they have easy access to the collaboration tools that support the type of work they doing?
– Can they remove distractions like messy backgrounds, keyboard clicks and dogs barking?
– Can they co-create and work together as they would in an office setting?
– Can we easily monitor and manage their devices and experience?
The platform strategy
One of the decisions when designing a hybrid workplace is the collaboration platform. To ensure that everyone has a seat at the table, no matter where they are located, every employee must to be enabled with a full-featured, intuitive collaboration experience that allows them to message, meet, call, share content, and authentically connect. A platform that provides these key capabilities, provides a consistent experience whether at home or in the office and interoperates with the software people use every day will keep the workforce engaged and productive.
As part of your long-term hybrid work strategy, consider the following:
– Does the technology employees use provide a consistent experience at home and in the office?
– What capabilities will you need to enable hybrid work, and can your current toolset deliver those capabilities?
– Can we easily monitor and manage devices and features from anywhere?
– Is my vendor investing in AI capabilities that remove distractions, create frictionless collaboration experiences and help make the workforce more productive?
– Does the platform add value beyond video conferencing?
A successful strategy for hybrid work starts by evaluating the tools you’re using today. As your building your strategy, look at the friction points people have today when working from home and in the office and consider how hybrid work will evolve over time. Building a long-term strategy with a solid collaboration platform will ensure that your organization is well positioned to adjust and excel in the years to come.
*Source: https://tinyurl.com/48mftvxw
