More than two years have passed since the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people around the world to work remotely. Two years in which most employees have maintained or increased their productivity levels and have made many wonder what the world was like before having the possibility of working remotely.
But there have also been two years of lessons learned, especially in the technological field. CIOs have had to launch digital transformation processes in record time and adapt them based on different realities and circumstances. In the new normal, in which what seems to prevail is hybrid work, there are a few lessons that are worth highlighting.
Desktop as a service is here to stay
As the number of people starting to work remotely has increased over the last couple of years, CIOs at many companies have been challenged to provide them with the tools they need to work.
In many cases, this has been through allowing employees the opportunity to work with their own devices or the company funding (in whole or in part) laptops for telecommuting. The PC market, which had been flat for the past five years, grew strong again. It will not last. CIOs themselves are already noticing how even with the return to the office, companies are not replacing the equipment they had in place and it may not take long for us to go back to business as usual.
The good news is that in the face of this “shortage” of IT equipment, CIOs have discovered that they have new tools, once solutions such as “desktop as a service” or VDI platforms have solved the performance problems they had only a few years ago. a few years and make it easy for anyone with an Internet connection to start working without worrying about much else.
A culture of collaboration
Working remotely means, among other things, a loss of contact and collaboration between people… who could be much more creative when They shared the same space.
This has been resolved in part with the development of a hybrid work that combines both scenarios, but to which must be added the use of appropriate collaboration solutions.
Once the workers have found their individual work rhythms from home, its management requires different types of communication. Workers have found that overcommunicating is important when everyone is remote, since online communication only conveys a fraction of what they share in person.
The immediate solution may be to use tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack or others… but just as important as the platform is being able to foster and train a culture of remote collaboration.
What is a working day?
Despite the worst omens, the pandemic has not translated into a loss of productivity but rather the opposite. Not having to travel to and from work, more agile meetings and greater time flexibility, they have redefined what a working day is. Work has gone from being a place you go to, to something you do.
The great beneficiaries in technological terms have been companies such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, which have seen the number of daily active users increase from 32 to 75 million in less than a year.
As interesting as the above are data that indicate that the use of Teams is especially intense between 8 and 9 in the morning and between 6 and 8 in the afternoon, time slots that have traditionally been “valley”. Its use has also increased over the weekend, with a growth in the number of chats of 200%.
So, when does the working day start and when does it end? Are the laws that advocate disconnection outside of working hours enough and do they really work?
The challenge of attracting and retaining talent
Despite the return to a certain normality, being able to work remotely has been installed in what most workers consider an acquired right, so in the fight to attract and retain talent, companies that do not offer this possibility, are at a clear disadvantage.
However, we come to a scenario in which this is not enough. CIOs are investing in technology so that employees can be even more productive from home, purchasing new computers, widescreen monitors, ergonomic chairs, etc.
In the challenge of retaining talent that is in short supply in some technical positions like never before, companies they will do their best because your employees feel comfortable: if that means buying them even a coffee machine with a subscription to the best capsules, they will do it.
the new normal
All of the above, together with phenomena such as the massive adoption of the cloud, the exponential increase in mobility and the new cybersecurity risks, make up a new panorama in which we are only now beginning to draw the first rules.
Faced with this avalanche of changes, it is likely that some CIOs feel the need to throw themselves into the arms of new technological solutions that promise to be able to solve all kinds of problems, without taking into account that technology must always be a means and not a solution in itself. looking for challenges to overcome.
Sometimes it is necessary to keep a cool head and analyze what is happening, what is best for the company and before implementing new tools, understand what new interdependencies are established between employees, managers and those solutions both in the office and outside. distance.
