Remote/Hybrid Workforce
your entire hybrid and remote workforce simultaneously is useful for communicating company news and hosting all-hands and town hall discussion groups. It’s also invaluable in workplace emergencies where clear, quick, effective instructions are vital for effective mediation. What are the latest additions to the Zoom platform? Zoom has added some 1,500 new features and improvements this year, all helping to build the next-generation workspace. For example, Workspace Reservation enhances on-site work and
“Being able to reach your entire hybrid and remote workforce simultaneously is useful for communicating company news and hosting all-hands and town hall discussion groups”
operations, and Zoom Mail and Calendar integrate popular email and calendar services into Zoom. Coming early next year, we have Zoom Spots, a persistent video-enabled co-working space, which helps bring the natural, fluid interactions of in-person work to hybrid teams.
What’s the best way to adapt your current infrastructure for remote working? Te first step is to perform a full assessment of your workforce, their location and their technological needs for their individual roles. For example, if some are working completely remotely, they may require additional support in the form of hardware and home- office equipment, where others working a hybrid arrangement may not need as much support. From there, business leaders can
adopt communication’s platforms to fit the needs of all the daily requirements of remote and hybrid employees.
Do you see this as a fad or future long-term prospect? Our own research at Zoom has highlighted that employees are comfortable with remote and hybrid working and have little desire to return to the ‘old way’ of working. We found that 69% of respondents want to decide where and how they worked, rising to 85% among those who are already working remotely. Employers who try to force workers back to the office may be in for a rude awakening, as 45% of people surveyed in our research said they would look for a new job if they are not allowed to work where they want, rising to 55% among workers who are already working from home.
What developments do you see on the horizon for the future remote workforce? Asynchronous work, where employees choose when they work as well as where, is set to be a defining trend in workplaces around the world, helping to boost employee satisfaction and inclusivity. A study conducted with 10,000 knowledge workers found that flexibility on time was more important to workers (93%) than flexibility on location (76%). Technology such as soſtware, which allows people to replay video meetings aſter and offer input on the content is helping to enable asynchronous work in knowledge- based industries. Asynchronous work also helps employers to be more inclusive of workers with families and caring responsibilities.
What role does the cloud and digitisation play in the remote/hybrid workforce and how can companies look to optimise this to achieve the most effective infrastructure? In the UK, the high proportion of businesses in financial and professional services means that there is an opportunity to migrate around 48% of jobs to hybrid working with productivity either increasing or remaining stable. Meeting this demand wholly relies on the efficacy of the cloud. Digitising through the cloud, and creating a robust hybrid working strategy and infrastructure is vital to realising the ongoing demand for hybrid work. When building that infrastructure, organisations should lean on the range of cloud based services available to them through unified communications vendors, which will see them reap the most benefits of the cloud and digitisation processes.
On a larger scale, what improvements to the UK’s IT infrastructure need to be made to serve the remote/ hybrid workforce better? At Zoom, we have called on the British Government to set goals to make the UK a global leader in hybrid working, which would feed into the Government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda, encouraging wider economic participation across the nation. For example, funding a network of local co-working hubs to provide workers in every community with the option of a ‘third space’ to work from, expanding the eligibility criteria of the Help to Grow (Digital) scheme, and good old fashioned leading from the front, by cementing hybrid working practices across local government and the wider public sector.
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