Redefining Work in a Fundamentally Changed World
Just as the pandemic impacted technology investment and brought to light the need to do some “spring cleaning on technology debt“, the corresponding quarantine has changed the way we view work, including how we resource, build, and organize teams for collaboration.
All organizations, including Presidio, were forced to quickly adopt and adapt to a remote workforce, with a greater emphasis on human-centric approaches to managing worker productivity quickly overshadowing the traditional office-centric design.
Remote work is now the mainstay for many. The non-routine workforce has grown exponentially, which has redefined the “work week” for the first time since the 1940’s, when the Monday to Friday, 40-hour week was initially established.
This rapid switch to remote workforces also accelerated the growth of cloud-based solutions to solve for collaboration needs, including the expansion of Unified Collaboration as-a-Service (UCaaS) solutions.
While this prioritization of remote work has had undeniable positive effects, like an increase in overall individual responsiveness, the ability to leverage resources from any geographic location, and more worker flexibility, new unintended challenges arose as well.
Employee fatigue has risen dramatically, impacting worker well-being. Remote workers are 2.5 times more likely to suffer productivity decline due to digital distractions, 1.2 times more likely to suffer virtual overload, and 1.3 times more likely to remain “always-on,” struggling to disconnect from work more than their onsite peers.
With the global competition to hire technical talent in full swing, remote work policies, or a lack thereof, can sometimes negatively impact employee retention. On the one hand, it’s difficult to establish a rewarding work culture when colleagues are physically separated, which can lead to a lack of job satisfaction. At the same time, three out of four candidates now mark remote work as the top requirement for job acceptance. This apparent contradiction leaves many hiring managers scratching their heads.
Yet, one thing is certain – remote is here to stay. Now, the focus must be on how to optimize work culture while shifting to human-centric design to prioritize the best use of the UCaaS applications that have become the digital office.
Powering the Remote Work Experience
As the leading digital solutions provider, we relish the opportunity to assist our clients in redefining work and solving the challenges that only technology can answer.
Some of the most common questions include:
- How do we improve worker collaboration when the new workforce is now hybrid – with members potentially coming from different states, countries and time zones, with no real option to ideate in-person?
- With remote work becoming normalized, does the work-from-home (WFH) network now become business-critical?
- What technology options are available to provide resiliency and quality of service (QoS)?
- Who is responsible for operational support?
- With employee fatigue continuing to rise, how can we utilize technology to improve worker well-being, while still maintaining individual productivity and task efficiency?
Through best-in-class technology and expertise, the mission is to provide solutions that empower people to choose when, where, and how they want to work through the secure delivery of application and data access, optimized for hybrid collaboration.
Redefining work begins with delivering global access to applications and data services for knowledge workers. Workers need digital workspaces that provide access to virtual desktops, streamed apps, SaaS, and flexible content delivery to any device, anywhere, at any time. This requires unified endpoint management integrated with secure and compliant contextual identity.
Ensuring continuity of end-user services will in some cases require updating and modernizing mobile and wireless platforms, establishing ISP and broadband resiliency, while maintaining performance by managing QoS. For workers in remote locations with limited options for connectivity, technologies like wireless backhaul, mesh solutions, and 5G can be customized to fit each client situation.
We can Increase user productivity using technology to address employee well-being, utilizing AI-driven personal assistants and micro-app integration to modernize mundane tasks like expenses. Deploying application-aware networking gateways improves the performance of workloads without the need to scale operations. Office suite productivity transforms traditional intranets and portals into interactive interfaces that also provide workflow automation and business process optimization through Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
Finally, empowering a hybrid workforce to collaborate more effectively through technology is the key to increasing productivity. Companies can enhance the employee experience via a more intuitive and personalized look and feel, combined with distributed content collaboration that optimizes data integrity across geography in real-time. Injecting AI techniques to modernize UC and Contact Center platforms in an integrated fashion improves hybrid collaboration.
Presidio Lifecycle Services consistently deploys these solutions in a flexible delivery model that gives clients the option to access skillsets across a continuum. These engagements include:
- Procured options like staff augmentation and residence or field services work
- Consultative projects based on deliverables, such as our Illuminate Incite offering for end-user computing assessments
- Operationalized models via managed services
- Consumptive options such as Desktop-as-a-Service and Device-as-a-Service options that include asset management, tagging and imaging supported globally
Visit our Workforce Transformation page to learn more about how we are redefining work for our clients.
