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Hybrid Work: Transform Your Workplace with Security and Collaboration

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The future of work is hybrid–with over 50 percent of people saying they’d prefer to work from home at least three days per week. But many workplaces don’t have the tools in place to make the transition to this new working style.

To implement hybrid work successfully, organizations need streamlined communication and security for safe collaboration and inclusive communication. By selecting the right tech tools and organizational strategies, hybrid work can be a boon for productivity, employee engagement, and even DEI.

Our Guest: Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s Executive VP and General Manager of Security and Collaboration

On the latest #WorkTrends podcast, I spoke with Jeetu Patel, Executive VP and General Manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco. He leads business strategy and development and also owns P&L responsibility for this multibillion-dollar portfolio. Utilizing his product design and development expertise and innate market understanding, he creates high-growth Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses. His team creates and designs meaningfully differentiated products that diverge in the way they’re conceived, built, priced, packaged, and sold.

To successfully achieve these things, Jeetu stays open-minded and flexible, especially when it comes to hybrid work. In order to ensure that experiences are great for employees, he says organizations need to understand that people typically work better in a “mixed-mode.”

“The future of work will be hybrid. Sometimes people will work from the office, other times, from home. In this ‘mixed-mode’ reality, it is going to be harder than when everyone worked in the office. And the reason for that is there’s more of an opportunity for people to feel left out,” Jeetu says.

To prevent feelings of exclusion, organizations must implement tech solutions for collaboration. At Cisco, they provide various options for remote workers to participate in company goings-on. For instance, they allow people to engage in asynchronous communication, sending stand-alone video messages to contribute ideas. They also use things like Webex and Thrive to make sure everyone is up to date on what’s happening.

“You’ve gotta have the right tools and technology to collaborate in a frictionless manner,” Jeetu says. “You need world-class connectivity and delightful software experiences that can allow you to collaborate, be secure, and not have to worry about someone hacking into your system.”

How Hybrid Work Can Strengthen DEI Efforts

Part of creating a frictionless hybrid work system is focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Jeetu explains that DEI should be prioritized in hybrid work scenarios because it’s the right thing to do.

“No one should feel left out because of their race, gender, ethnicity, geography, language preference, or personality type,” Jeetu says. “Those things shouldn’t make people feel like they don’t have the opportunity to participate.” 

Hybrid work empowers organizations to focus on DEI because it gives global access to talent. Opportunity is unevenly distributed all over the planet, explains Jeetu, while human potential is not. So hybrid work can help make positive changes in the workforce regarding issues of equality.

“Hybrid work allows people of all types to feel that they have a level playing field,” Jeetu says. “People shouldn’t have to feel like they have to choose between where they want to live and having access to a career opportunity. They should be able to do both.” 

I hope you enjoy this episode of #WorkTrends, sponsored by Cisco. You can learn more about integrating hybrid work into your organization by connecting with Jeetu Patel on LinkedIn.

Also, on Wednesday, October 20, 2021, from 1:30-2:00 pm ET, don’t miss our #WorkTrends Twitter chat with Cisco (@Cisco).

During this live chat, our global “world of work” community will discuss how companies can develop an intelligent workplace, how collaboration tools empower the hybrid work model, and more. Be sure to follow @TalentCulture on Twitter for all the questions and add #WorkTrends to your tweets so others can see your opinions and ideas!

6 Ways Existing Tech Can Improve Employee Experience

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Questions of “experiences” in business often focus on those of the customer–and not without cause. The ideal customer experience makes it easy for consumers to learn about your company and access its goods and services. The same logic applies to the employee experience as well. After all, you want to remove as many barriers as possible between your workers and the essential tasks they need to perform.

The smoother the employee experience is, the more efficient, effective, and satisfied your team will be in the long run. While every office will have different areas in need of improvement, here are six easy ways to improve the employee experience with tech you likely already have available to you.

Smoothing Out the Onboarding Process

The onboarding process is the first real taste of your business for employees, and that taste is rarely as sweet as many wish. This is due in no small part to the dearth of resources and personnel devoted to this critical process. According to a survey conducted by payroll services provider OnPay, over 60 percent of small businesses have their HR handled either by the head of the company or by an employee who also juggles other responsibilities. That means employee onboarding can–and too often, does–take a back seat to other duties.

Thankfully, the right tools can help facilitate onboarding without making any greater demands of your existing team members. Some automated HR platforms, like PulseHRM and Namely, can help set up direct deposits and deploy mechanisms to ensure compliance with company policy. Relying on automated onboarding processes will let you focus more of your energy on the more human elements of the process, such as acquainting them with office culture.

Streamlining Communication

Anyone who’s ever even set foot in an office knows just how critical good communication is to the work environment. But it’s not just the efficacy that’s at stake here. In a 2019 survey from employee experience platform Dynamic Signal, 80 percent of the American workforce reported feeling stressed because of ineffective company communication. With numbers that high, your business simply cannot afford to ignore whatever communication issues might exist.

Every business has a whole suite of communication tools at their disposal—Slack, Teams, email, Zoom, and so on. But the key here is not to let your employees get stuck in the cracks between them. Choose one or two platforms and stick to them. Hopping around between different platforms is a surefire way to put the burden of communication management on the workers who can handle it the least. Whatever software you opt for, opt for it all the way. In the end, simplicity and efficiency are your team’s best friends when it comes to communication.

Facilitating Collaboration

Collaboration may go hand-in-hand with communication. However, work teams must tackle these two soft skills on their own terms. Effective communication platforms are vital for keeping an office running smoothly, of course. Simultaneously, collaboration tools like ClickUp and Asana are an absolute must for ensuring projects are completed on time and with care. With remote work promising to have a permanent impact on the way companies operate, collaboration-enabling tech is a must for just about every business.

This far into the pandemic, this shouldn’t be new news to anyone. In fact, Salesforce reports that 86 percent of executives identify ineffective collaboration as a major cause of failure in business. So there should be no hesitation when it comes to embracing tech that makes collaboration easier. Of particular interest should be platforms that help facilitate collaborative equity. For instance, tracking the volume of tasks and amount of time each worker spends on a specific project ensures that no employee’s experience has to come at the expense of another’s.

Compliance

“Meeting with HR” has long been a specter of the modern office, a dreaded event no matter what the reason. Thankfully, service providers have flooded the market with technology that ensures worker compliance through digital means instead of requiring endless strings of face-to-face meetings. HR platforms like Oasis Advantage and ComplianceHR ensure that employee paperwork is always in good order. More are starting to crop up that make it easier for workers to report incidences of misbehavior without the potential snag of an in-person confrontation.

Overall, leveraging these digital platforms makes it much easier to guarantee a safe and satisfying employee experience for all.

Offering Flexibility

Flexibility may be the single most significant gap between the attitude of employees and employers in the world of work. According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, some 96 percent of US-based professionals want flexibility in their work. And yet, only 47 percent of workers actually have that flexibility. This is primarily due to the long-subscribed-to logic that an out-of-office worker is a less productive one–a myth that the COVID-19 crisis all but shattered overnight.

Modern project management software and digital communication tools like Monday.com and Slack allow employees to fully plug in no matter where they are. For some workers, this could mean greater travel opportunities. For others, it could allow for more time with loved ones at home. Regardless of why an employee desires flexibility, the right tech can help facilitate without a blip in productivity.

Dynamic Training Systems

Job descriptions constantly mutate as businesses themselves grow and evolve. A couple of decades ago, professional retraining was a long, laborious process involving months or years on a college campus. Today, there are more virtual courses and mini-degrees available than any one person could possibly manage. You can take a look at Lynda.com and Open Culture to get an idea of what’s available. The opportunities for succinct, targeted training are greater than ever before. This also means that workers can grow and expand their skill sets. And they can do so without significant interruptions to their careers, facilitating the employee experience in a big way.

Employee experience is the single greatest contributing factor in determining employee satisfaction. By working to make your workers’ lives easier, they’ll work to do the same for you. A happy employee is a productive one. And by ensuring the former, you can all but guarantee the latter.

So, with the sole focus of improving employee experience, leverage existing tech. Your team members, and your bottom line, will thank you.

How Executives Intentionally Create a Culture of Collaboration

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John is an average person of the workforce. A 4-year veteran, he has worked at the same company since he moved on from the military and graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Now, with newborn twins at home, John’s priorities have changed. While he remains a professional committed to his career and his employer, he now requires more flexibility in his work schedule.

John is not alone. Many members of today’s workforce are asking for more flexible work schedules. In one study, 45 percent of men want more flexibility in their work arrangements. (Surprisingly, that’s slightly more than the 39 percent of women who want the same thing.)

Adding to the complexity, Microsoft Office observes in their eBook “5 Faces of Today’s Employees” that “you’ll find a variety of employees spanning different work styles, personality types, skillsets, and generations” all working together in one organization. Management nightmare? Only if you’re unprepared.

Because of changing work expectations and longer hours, there’s greater pressure on executives to respond with more modern work practices. Specifically, schedules that allow for employees to have more choice over where they work and when. Google, for example, understands that traffic patterns in the morning aren’t helpful to Dads and Moms who need to drop off the kids to school. Employees can come in after 9am without hassle from management.

Employee work styles range along a continuum of “give me quiet” to “make it loud.” Their expectations of the tools to help them work virtually or in the same space range from using email to the having access to the latest collaboration tool.

The truth is work and non-work demands no longer neatly fall within their supposed boundaries.

The good news is technological collaborative-solutions have made it easier to pair them with business practices. Collaboration has become a fluid interaction, no matter the physical location of the employee.

For many executives, however, the question remains: how do you successfully implement a collaborative solution that satisfies the needs of your employees while also meeting the sometimes competing – even contradictory – needs of the business?

Begin with Understanding Generational Differences

When Work Works, a joint project between SHRM and The Families and Work Institute, found that over 4 out 5 people say work flexibility is a critical factor when considering or taking a new job. Beyond the obvious implications of this finding lies a significant workforce expectation: Employees have a growing need to fit both their personal and professional lives together more neatly. A way to support this growing need is to ease the way teams collaborate—onsite or virtually.

Both Millennials (34%) and Gen X (34%) are the dominant generations in the workplace. Baby Boomers make up 29 percent of the workforce. Be careful, however, to assume that Baby Boomers aren’t as tech savvy or don’t have needs for more flexibility in their work arrangements. Boomers also want flexibility to accommodate the season of their age: being grandparents, taking care of elderly parents, and time off to travel, for example.

Yet, when it comes to Millennials, the first generation born with access to advanced technologies in their youth, expectations are high regarding the use of technologies at work. It’s not enough to enable collaboration for onsite interactions only—meetings, brainstorm sessions, team lunches, etc.

Ubiquitous technologies make it easy to collaborate anytime and anywhere.

Resolve Competing IT Demands

The type of tools referenced above have put IT in a difficult spot. From a 2013 Symantec survey, IT found that 77 percent of businesses have encountered unsupported cloud applications. This exposes the organization to outside threats; the ones that keep executives awake at night: cyber-attacks or confidential data or information exchanged and stored in the cloud.

The unsupported applications, according to Microsoft research, are cloud-based file sharing solutions. The proliferation of rogue cloud applications is an indication of employees finding solutions to meet their needs—needs organizations aren’t meeting fast enough.

CIOs, CTOs, CEOs, and CHROS need to develop a business strategy that introduces collaboration practices AND related technologies that adapts to how employees now want – or need – to work

Tips to Boost Collaboration

  • Find your change champions—those who support or are likely to support the change
  • Develop a list of employees’ needs
  • Clearly define business needs
  • Develop a work flexibility policy that aligns with company values
  • Avoid big-bang technology implementations (break the rollout into phases aiming for quick win that shows that you intend to bring change)
  • Engage middle-managers early in the process
  • Don’t underestimate the emotional side of changed

IT alone can’t drive this type of culture change. And this can’t be a technology-driven change just for the sake of change. To introduce collaboration technology solutions and do it successfully, the business needs must be clear to all stakeholders. The whole organization must work together to co-create the shift in culture change.

Collaboration is a central part of our humanity; it’s how we have always accomplished important outcomes. From our ancestral history where working together meant survival to technology linking humanity across a global, virtual network, collaboration has always been the glue to achieving significant advancements.

Savvy executives recognize that technology plays an essential role to help employees work effectively in a global society.

What’s more, the make-up of those working for your organization is diverse. To cite Microsoft, “More likely than not, you have remote workers, independent contractors, and business partners, all working outside your office walls.” Resisting this current reality is the equivalent of burying one’s head in the sand.

Employees’ demands for greater work place flexibility isn’t a fad. As technology advances and our use of it further integrates into all aspects of our lives, there’s no denying its role in how, where, and when we work. Adopting and adapting to its influences is equivalent to a first-mover advantage. The sooner you move to deliberately change your company culture, the greater lead time you have over those who wait and wait – and wait.

This is a Microsoft Office sponsored post.

A version of this was first posted on switchandshift.com

Being a Remote Worker is No Day At the Beach!

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There was a time when I used to dream about becoming a remote worker. The thought usually arose while stuck in rush hour traffic on the 405 (note: rush hour is approximately 7am to 7pm in Southern California). I pictured myself on an outdoor chaise lounge, tropical drink in hand, as client after client called to tell me they were ready to sign on the dotted line. Pineapple slice? Don’t mind if I do.

Fast forward a couple years. I am now a remote worker, thanks in part to my wife taking a teaching job on the opposite coast, and our house is literally one block from the beach. And though we do own a chaise lounge, it gets virtually no weekday use, and nothing is quite as I pictured it (example: I still wear pants every day). Being a remote worker is not as easy I thought it would be.

According to the NY Times, the number of telecommuters rose 79% from 2005 to 2012. There’s a variety of reasons one might choose to work remotely: geographical limitations, family situation, the desire to become one’s own boss. In some respects, there’s never been a better time to work remotely. Fast internet and myriad communication tools help us to overcome the everyday inconvenience of a lack of facetime.

But there are drawbacks too. Working out of a home office can be distracting, as family (and pets) compete for your attention. Being a remote worker is psychologically taxing, as you can sometimes feel isolated and miss out on the social gatherings an office affords. On the productivity side, access to critical data and company updates are often stymied by a breakdown in the communication process.

Having experienced the highs and lows of transitioning from cubicle dweller to master of his own home office, I thought I’d share three important lessons I’ve learned along the way:

  1. Schedule your day tightly (and stick to that schedule)

In an office, the most important items on your to-do list are often dictated by outside forces (“Can you follow up on this lead?”, “Can you help me find a reference client?”, “We need you in this meeting”). You likely would have a schedule, but there was some fluidity to account for the needs of other team members.

As a remote employee, you must create a strict schedule for yourself and stick to it. You have to be incredibly proactive and not easily distracted. And you can’t wait for others to do things for you. It’s not exactly “out of sight, out of mind”, but it’s a lot harder to be the squeaky wheel when the oil is 3000 miles away. (side note: your mixed metaphors get less appreciation when you’re remote)

Repetition is also an important part of scheduling. For instance, I have a call with one particular client every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 12:30. I can schedule the rest of my calls and tasks around that one particular anchor task.

  1. You must be succinct and direct in your communication

In an office, you can iterate often. The logo is off-centered, pop over to the graphic designer’s desk. Now the logo’s too large, head on back. You wanted burnt sienna not burnt orange, one more trip.

You don’t have that luxury as a remote employee. You only get attention sporadically, so you have to be very specific in what you want. And definitely don’t be shy. If you don’t ask for something, you don’t get it.

You also must be succinct – if you write a long rambling email, you’re going to lose your audience halfway through. Plus, you want to place emphasis on only that which is important, something easier in-person via dialogue, because you don’t want your fellow employees to focus on the wrong area.

  1. Take advantage of online collaboration tools

The internet can be a huge time suck (thanks, Twitter). But it can also make you more effective and connected with other employees.

There are a number of different online collaboration tools out there. One company I consult with, WorkSmart.net, has a productivity suite that includes cloud-based document management, project management, and database apps. Some of the other indispensable solutions I’ve used recently: Skype, Trello, Hipchat, and join.me.

Solely relying on email can lead to information overload – plus it’s hard searching through 1000s of emails – so seek out more efficient solutions. If you use an online collaboration tool, you can effectively work with teammates while being geographically disperse. I’m able to work collaboratively with colleagues in the UK and India often without having to pick up the phone. Plus, building out these online collaboration portals helps bring new remote employees up to speed quicker after hiring.

I must confess, there’s a lot of things I miss about working in an office: lunchtime basketball, high fives, saying “goodnight” to friends/colleagues. But one thing that hasn’t changed is my productivity. Don’t let the realities of being a remote worker derail your career. Just because you’re remote doesn’t mean you have to be distant.