Future of Work Redesigned – Technology

In this week’s newsletter regarding the “Future of Work Redesigned” we are going to explore the TECHNOLOGY point on the compass.

There are six points on my Future of Work Redesigned compass. These are the six directions in which you must head if you are going to redesign the future of work in your organisation.

Culture – improve the culture in the organisation so the benefits of hybrid working can be realised

Strategy – co-create a hybrid working strategy

Leadership – leadership requires an uplift in skills and competencies to lead high performing hybrid teams

Technology – optimise hybrid working now and into the future by using the best technologies available to you

Empowerment – employees need empowerment and autonomy over where, when, and how they work and there must be trust

Wellbeing – provide every employee with a holistic and contextual platform for mental wellbeing and increased resilience

The future of work redesigned compass

Technology

When many workers had to work from home for the first time, there was a mad scramble to acquire and utilise technology that would allow everyone to continue to connect, communicate, and collaborate across various locations.

Zoom and Microsoft Teams adoption soared and while many organizations utilised online collaborative whiteboard platforms such as Mural and Miro to great effect, and collaboration platforms such as Slack, we are now realising the limitations of operating through such a variety of non-integrated platforms. The rush to deploy new communication and collaboration tools unintentionally created more complexity and digital overload for teams.

Organisations now need a secure, long-term solution, that can support any number of teams in any location, whilst providing a single source of truth from a unified platform. Leaders should be investing in technology that helps, not hinders. Leaders need to be technology-savvy and enable their hybrid team.

Hybrid teams will not work without the right resources, technology, and support.

Collaborative work management

The new acronym on the block is CWM – collaborative work management.

According to Gartner:

“Collaborative work management technology supports work that can be planned top-down, as far as it is possible to plan it, while at the same time supporting flexible, self-organizing, and open-ended collaboration and re-planning as needed.”

Kissflow Digital Workplace defines it as:

“Collaborative work management is a set of tools that provides employees a unified and central platform to easily share business data, documents, and discussions. It is the central hub for all conversations about work, and also a place where the work can exist. It allows team members to easily collaborate with each other, even if they are in different locations and using different devices.”

The key descriptors here are ‘unified’ and ‘central’.

Organisations must unify and centralize. Everyone in the organization needs to work as one. Decentralized collaboration, communication, and reporting, leads to miscommunication, loss of valuable data, and a decrease in productivity. This not only has an impact on the bottom line, but also impacts employee engagement, burnout, and performance. As employee efficiency decreases, so does organizational revenue and customer satisfaction.

The right technology

Organizations must deploy the right technology for their employees and their evolving expectations. It must be fit for purpose.

Streamlined solution

Employees do not want a multitude of devices and applications. They want a streamlined technology solution. They want a single device for both their personal and professional use.

According to the Deloitte 2021 Connectivity and Mobile Trends Survey, 31% of respondents admitted to feeling overwhelmed by the number of devices and subscriptions they needed to manage.

In June 2021, Walmart announced plans to give 740,000 store associates a dedicated company-issued smartphone to use for both personal and professional use. The smartphone also contains a single in-store app that provides an exclusive destination for associates. The Me@Walmart app saves time and increases productivity.

The considerations

It would take a book to cover in detail the hybrid workplace technologies that need to be considered. I have listed them here for your consideration and exploration. 

·       Recruiting

·       Onboarding

·       Collaboration

·       Communication

·       Document management

·       Human capital management

·       Office capacity management

·       Office cleaning automation

·       Learning applications

·       Space and desk reservation

·       Security

·       Videoconferencing

·       Network monitoring and visibility

·       Virtual water coolers

Don’t do it alone

Employees want flexibility, and seamless transition between locations. They want reliable, intuitive, and streamlined technology solutions.

The investment in technology to support the hybrid team, needs a people-first approach. Leaders need to consider every segment of the workforce and provide them with solutions that engage and support them.

Leaders must engage with employees and gather their ideas, expectations, and preferences, and truly listen. You cannot afford to have a workforce that does not feel invested, or even understood, because you have not shared what their future could look like and solicited their feedback.

The provisioning of technology for employees must be experience-led and focus on the outcome desired for the employee. This is paramount as the employee experiencer drives the customer experience which drives profitability. The employee experience is also a factor driving what has been coined The Great Resignation. If employees do not have a good experience, including the technology they utilise, they will go elsewhere. Organisations lose talent and cannot replace it.

Stay ahead of the curve

Organizations must invest heavily in technology and digital transformation to keep up with the demands of today. As a leader you should be looking not only at technology that supports how we work today, but how we will work tomorrow. New technology is emerging at such speed that organisations cannot afford to take their eye off the ball and miss a competitive advantage.

Zoom was in the perfect storm when COVID-19 raised its head. Not even Zoom could have been prepared for the demand. Whilst the Zoom platform continues to evolve and new features and capabilities are released, its workplace rivals are hot on its heels.

The likes of Microsoft, Facebook and Google have thrown down the gauntlet to the industry to cater for whatever comes next with the advent of Microsoft Mesh, Facebook Horizons Workrooms and Google Project Starline.

Forward-looking businesses are already creating spaces in the metaverse — virtual worlds where employees come together via avatars to interact with each other and their surroundings. Leaders should grasp the magnitude of what is coming and then look for opportunities to experiment. Those that don’t may find themselves left behind.

IT, support, and security

The move to a hybrid operating model has a major impact on IT whether that is an internal function to the organisation or external. Before the pandemic, people followed technology. Technology now must follow people, where and when they chose to work.

The hybrid workforce can work whenever it wants and therefore IT support may have to be provided for longer hours or be always-on. Support will need remote-support and remote-management tools. The demand on support will also increase as remote workers cannot get desk-side support from their colleagues.

Most work, if not already, will be transitioned to the cloud and processes will be digital. Decisions will have to made regarding how employees have the necessary bandwidth and work environments to be productive. Will these be provisioned or are employees who cannot work at home due to these inadequacies required to work in the office. 

IT may have to provision equipment to home-based employees and/or support employee acquired equipment. There will need to be policies regarding what technology is supported and what is not.

In many organisations where the real-estate is reduced due to the employees working remotely, IT will have to provision space and desk-booking systems.

Technology will be fundamental in keeping employees safe. Whilst the pandemic continues, high-touch shared items such as keyboards and headsets will have to be sanitised before each use. Door handles, light switches, and elevator controls will need to be replaced with non-touch sensors to avoid virus transmission. IT may be required to support this technology.

IT must engage with HR to determine working policies and procedures. IT must engage with the workforce and be experience-led to provide the best user experience it can. IT needs to listen to the needs of employees and work with them to support those needs.

Security must be paramount to protect employees and organisational data. There must be endpoint security for all the devices that could connect to the organisation’s networks including desktops, laptops, mobile devices, wearables, and smart devices. These devices may or may not be owned by the organisation. All employees must be educated to be security smart especially when working remotely.

Summary 

Leaders that keep an intentional eye on emerging technology, unify and centralise platforms, provide streamlined and easy to use solutions, involve employees in decisions and deployment, and ensure that security is up most of mind, will be the winners in whatever comes next.

Next week I will be exploring the WELLBEING point on the “Future of Work Redesigned” compass.