Date Published: 07/20/2020
There’s enough evidence out there to suggest that work from home is here to stay. Collaboration tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams witnessed an explosion of downloads and several people are likely to remain hooked. A Gartner survey revealed that 74% of CFOs intend to shift at least 5% of their employees permanently to remote work. Even worker preferences appear to be changing. In a Gallup poll, 59% of US workers who moved to remote work on account of the pandemic indicated they would like to continue working from home even after the Covid-19 crisis ends.
In an increasingly no-touch world, it is very likely that this ‘genie’ is not going back into its bottle any time soon. Yet home workspaces also come with their own set of challenges.
Challenge: Collaboration
Humans are social animals not used to being isolated, even when working remotely. There’s empirical evidence to suggest that workers who collaborate are better at innovating and problem solving than those who operate in a silo. Technology and infrastructure plays a vital role in enabling remote workers to collaborate. While some companies scrambled to find solutions in times of the pandemic, others realized that the technology they set in place was somewhat bolted-on, not really designed to scale up to manage a larger pool of remote workers.
Challenge: Employee experience
When you’re juggling between home and work, you’re expected to multitask at a much greater level. Imagine logging into multiple applications for work – some which are designed for a mobile experience and others are not. Not to mention many of them don’t talk to each other, have poor sign-in experience and don’t deliver information that is relevant to you to get your job done quickly. All these can take a toll on your work experience. Personalization also has a vital role in the employee experience. Today’s workforce expects the ability to personalize their workspace. According to a research by KPMG, companies that invest in employee experience are four times more profitable than the ones that do not. The report stresses that organizations must deliver a new kind of employee experience, “one that feels personal, relevant and responsive to individual needs”.
Empowering an increasingly remote and mobile workforce
There are many challenges mobilizing a remote and mobile workforce. How do you maintain individual productivity? How do you maintain close communications between remote individuals and the office while keeping secure at the same time? How do you improve employee experience for workers who are missing their office spaces? New tools are on the horizon that aim to change just that.
Read the full Thought Leadership here.
