Now that most businesses have settled into the “new normal” of virtual communication and remote work, leaders are asking the question: 'how can my team be productive remotely?' First, you need to ask yourself: 'do you have your strategy together to enable collaboration?' C3 Technology Advisors is predicting a massive shift where work from home (WFH) will become the new norm, and you’ll occasionally go into an office for a particular meeting or interaction because we are social creatures. Here are the top three reasons why WFH will be the new norm:
- Signature real estate is expensive and communications infrastructure is now more important than physical facilities. Think of all the beautiful offices all over world sitting empty during the stay at home orders, yet work still goes on! Executives are evaluating why they are still paying rent on a prime signature office space located downtown on 5th Ave, especially since no one is there. Executives are now focusing efforts on how their employees are going to talk to each other, what the platform is going to look like, and how to create a new culture that incorporates remote workers? WFH was once a luxury. Now, businesses need to ensure that at any time without warning, all over the world, that they are able to enable their remote workforce and ensure that their employees are productive, connected to their co-workers, connected to their customers, and are performing mission critical work.
"46% of C-suite members work remotely at least part-time." - Owl Labs
- What is your greatest asset? It’s your employees! What is your #1 obligation? To get the maximum value from your greatest asset to serve your greatest need, which is your customers! Employees themselves will start to make employment decisions based on what kinds of communications technologies the company offers, similar to work location and other “perks” the company provides. Additionally, study after study continues to reveal that productivity increases with WFM employees. Organizations that provided their employees secure video, voice, and chat have thrived during stay at home orders and did not miss a beat.
- People will make more decisions in companies based on people and talent instead of physical location. As long as they have broadband & the right talent, do you really care where they are? It is more important to ensure that they get connected using the right technologies. Is there a great engineer living 1,000 miles away from your engineering facility? Bring them aboard! Physical location is no longer going to be a problem when you have the communications infrastructure to support remote workers. Your talent within your organization is able to grow and you're able to hire your A-team!
During the COVID-19 crisis, we saw a lot of companies scrambling to continue operations remotely, yet companies that progressed to a comprehensive UC platform didn’t miss a beat. Their employees are seamlessly connected, collaborating, and communicating without losing any productivity or losing the “social” aspect. Today you can easily start a video meeting in your office, click a single button to move the meeting to any mobile device as you run into the kitchen, and then transfer the meeting back to your PC without skipping a beat. Speaking of video, I personally find it very dissatisfying to be on calls without video and have had instances where participants apologized for not being on video. People want to be connected and they want to engage!
If you are wondering how to get started on your UC journey, as Ringo Star would say, "you get by with a little help from your friends". This is where Trusted Advisors come in to help. I am talking about a vital transformation exercise that will define your company and your culture. In the end you need to look at use cases and think of how you operate as a company, what is the company that I am today, and what is the company that I want to be? Solve for the long term and create an environment where you can transform the company into a hyper efficient organization
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About Ryan Boyk, the C3 UC Guy: Ryan has been helping businesses evaluate UCaaS since 2002 and has been involved in over 600 individual UC deployments.
