This great article from Gartner talks about how today’s best organisations view hybrid work as an opportunity rather than a disruption and are intent on uncovering new drivers to build cultural connectedness and develop human leaders.
While an insightful article, I believe that a truly thriving hybrid workplace needs a third pillar, that of technology, in addition to culture and leadership.
In our post-pandemic world, ways of working have changed; the hybrid genie is out of the bottle and needs to be embraced by organisations. We are seeing technology as the key enabler for staff to deliver value in this new world. Online meetings via the likes of Teams and Zoom have become the norm. With this change, it is critical that we provide the right facilities and infrastructure to optimise such online experiences.
As we evolve to a ‘post-pandemic’ work style, our Workplace Tech team is seeing unprecedented growth in the integration of technology solutions into property and workplace solutions. Technology solutions are key to enable organisations to realise the full benefits from this change in work style.
As a crucial third pillar of a thriving hybrid workplace, technology has a central role to play in supporting remote work – with employees often working from different locations, on different devices, accessing various systems and applications – to facilitate communication, community, connection and collaboration. A robust and secure technology infrastructure needs to be in place to support this high level of flexibility and complexity.
Investment in the right technology and tools is crucial for remote workers – for example, video conferencing and chat applications enable virtual face-to-face communication, while collaboration and project management tools can help to keep teams in touch, aligned and on track. The quality of the experience of users on these platforms is a key determinate to organisations optimising the value from their teams’ efforts.
Many organisations during the pandemic were forced to make fast decisions about which technology tools to implement – and are still grappling with the resulting technology that’s still in place today. Many are now reviewing what’s there and looking to tailor their technology to their new ways of working – from within or outside the workplace.
A great place to start is to understand how your team is currently utilising the workplace. Much of the ‘evidence’ tends to be merely anecdotal or by ‘feel’. Team members searching for small, private, one-person spaces to jump online and join a virtual meeting quickly and easily and improvising with what exists.
Our product, Utilisation22, removes the ‘feel’ factor by providing real-time information on the usage patterns of spaces across the workplace – allowing you to build your environment to fit and provide an ideal platform to support and enable your workforce.
By starting here, you will then have the knowledge you need to make the right technology decisions to suit your teams’ actual ways of working in the workplace. You’ll also have the usage figures you need to better understand the extent of the need.
A focus on these pillars – with the help of Utilisation22 – will put your organisation in the best possible place to build a supportive and connected workplace that enables your team to be productive, engaged and happy…wherever they are working.
Read more about Utilisation22 here and see the full Gartner report here.
