As businesses take the next step in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic (reopening offices), many are taking a hybrid approach, with some staff working remotely for at least part of the week.
But there is no single answer, which was evident at last week's Enterprise Connect industry conference, where a panel of IT managers discussed their priorities as they support multiple modes of work.
"We're going to be very flexible and adaptable," said Todd White, IT manager for collaborative services at Ford Motor Company, where workers will return to their offices on April 4. “For some roles, there are great benefits to being in the office with your teams, other roles, not so much. We have an approach where we think it will probably come back to 25-30%, but we're going to be flexible enough to adapt to what's going on and we're going to change tactics as we see what changes.
"What we're looking to do is set up the organization so that we can scale very quickly with the hybrid workforce, hiring talent wherever they are — they no longer need to move to Dearborn, Michigan," White said.
Biotech company Amicus Therapeutics, where lab staff must do their work on-site, is taking a slightly different approach: The company plans to support remote work wherever possible.
"We're going to be hybrids," said Gary LaSasso, senior director of global IT at Amicus Therapeutics. “Scientists cannot work from home; you have to do the research in a lab for the most part…. But for the rest of the workers, we want to provide the opportunity to be where they need to be that day. »
He pointed to the differing opinions among workers about returning to the office and sees a generational divide. "We have an executive who maybe wants to be in the office all the time, because that's what his career could have been like," LaSasso said. “There is the younger generation that just wants to get in and out and they have different needs. But we must welcome everyone, and all their experiences and all their needs.
At transportation and logistics company Ryder Systems, there is no formal policy that covers all of the company's office workers, although some employees will continue to work from home long-term. “The only real policy we have is 100% remote for all of our call centers,” said David Bartos, senior director of telecommunications at Ryder Systems. "We are confident that we can keep our call centers 100% remote and have the efficiency and availability that we are looking for."
Southern Glazer Wine and Spirits also favors a flexible approach to meet the demands of different positions, said Ann Dozier, senior vice president and chief information officer. This includes having service desk employees continue to work remotely, although this is optional.
"We think this will give us more flexibility so we can develop more talent in the United States," Dozier said. Customer service jobs are well suited to remote workers who can be supported and monitored more effectively, she said, and it's a role "where you can measure productivity very effectively."
While remote work makes sense in some cases, there is "tremendous value in having people come together to collaborate on certain activities," Dozier said.
New expectations in a hybrid environment
During the pandemic, IT administrators and their teams have been tasked with providing a good user experience for remote workers. While this puts pressure on IT, it has also served to underscore its importance in connecting workers and maintaining business operations.
The emerging hybrid workplace will create new challenges and opportunities, panelists say.
Dozier pointed to a change in employee communication habits as workers have begun returning to the office over the past month. "Some of the behaviors are very similar to 'working from home,'" she said. For example, when a meeting of 200 staff members was held in the office, staff connected from their desks via Zoom video conferencing software, he said, rather than meeting in conference rooms as was the norm before. of the pandemic. This placed unexpected demands on the network infrastructure.
"We don't plan on having our office networks have 200 people on Zoom at the same time, in addition to running all of our operations in the cloud, so it's going to be a bit of an adjustment," Dozier said. “We're making sure to fine-tune our infrastructure.
"The big opportunity will be how we create the right user experience when some people are in conference rooms together, some people are remote, and some people may still be in their office because they're trying to multitask."
Meanwhile, Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits has invested in improving the meeting room experience for office workers, Dozier said.
“Our conference rooms were pretty complicated — there were a lot of bells and whistles to do different things,” Dozier said. “Now it is very easy to have a device in the room that anyone can use; makes our service much easier. Having the ability to use virtual assistants in the room, rather than someone from my team coming to help, adds value. »
At Ford, the move to remote work early on, and more recently to a hybrid model, underscored the importance of IT in supporting the employee experience.
“The company understands the technology better…they realize they need to invest more to make this hybrid workforce work,” White said. "This includes cyber and analytics to diagnose challenges around home offices."
New tools on the horizon
For example, Ford is investing in machine learning-based analytics to address bandwidth constraints in home offices, he said. "If someone has an ISP problem or their kids are watching too much Netflix, the systems can alert the user to say, 'Hey, that's what's going on, try this or that to get a high-quality conference call." White said.
Ford is also considering the use of artificial intelligence capabilities that software providers have added to collaboration tools to improve the meeting experience for users. "We think the rise of AI will help before and after the meeting, it will help with meeting notes, real-time translations," White said.
“We have people. English is not their mother tongue; sometimes they have meetings after meetings just to find out what the meeting was about,” she said. “We organize 60.000 meetings a day, so we can't afford it. The digital world of the whiteboard and collaboration is important for 3D modelers to work remotely. »
Tools that support asynchronous work are another area of interest. "We're looking at using video, in a sense like TikTok or Instagram, where you can save updates and you don't have to go to the meeting anymore," White said.
Video expectations have changed significantly during the pandemic, LaSasso said. "'Anywhere, anytime, on any device' is what's at stake now," he said. “So how do you take these experiences to the next level, whether it's on the device side or the app side? This is subtitling and translation for meetings; When dealing with colleagues in other parts of the world, people with hearing loss can see words, that kind of thing.
Despite innovation in a variety of areas by communication and collaboration software vendors, there is still room for improvement, Dozier said. In particular, greater interoperability between competing tools on the market would be helpful.
"It's a big challenge because our users are different," he said. “What our salespeople need, what our delivery people need and what our office workers need is very different, and we use many brands that are part of this audience. Ultimately, we have to come together to be able to create this seamless experience for our users. »
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