The future of work is hybrid. Though companies are encouraging employees to return to the office, many don’t believe a full return to in-office work is on the cards. In fact, only a third of CEOs in one study said they believe all of their employees will be back in the office full-time in the next few years.
Embracing hybrid work practices can lead to lower operating costs, improved productivity, and higher employee satisfaction. However, managing hybrid workplaces, and ensuring teams can remain efficient and productive wherever they are, can be complex.
With various different devices, rooms, spaces, and employees to keep track of, it’s easy for efficiency to falter. Here’s your guide to boosting efficiency for hybrid employees.
Step 1: Use Data to Power Hybrid Office Design
Despite the rising demand for hybrid working experiences, 72% of companies admit they don’t have a clear strategy for the future of work. Enabling effective hybrid working experiences is about more than just giving employees a choice of where to work. Companies need to understand how their teams use the office, and what they do when working remotely, to provide them with the right resources.
Collecting insights, through employee surveys and focus groups, as well as analytical tools that track how teams use different spaces and amenities will help you make better design decisions. You can use your data to determine how many meeting spaces you need, whether hot-desking is a good strategy for your business, and even what kind of mobile devices are necessary.
Using this data, you can work with a service provider to create a customized hybrid work strategy, transition your employees into the cloud, and even reduce overhead costs.
Step 2: Maintain Insights into Hybrid Work
Data isn’t just essential for the initial stages of designing your hybrid office, or determining which resources (hardware and software) your employees need. It’s also crucial to ensuring you can improve adoption of SaaS tools, and track issues that can cause inefficiencies in the workplace.
Without insights into technical problems and team performance, your employees may even avoid coming into the office. 34% of employees say slow or problematic technology deters them from visiting the office. A comprehensive analytical platform, offering insights into various elements of your voice system, network, and endpoints can help you identify and troubleshoot issues faster.
Coupled with advanced monitoring and reporting tools, intuitive analytical solutions will help business leaders minimize roadblocks that could harm employee productivity, efficiency and engagement. Plus, the visibility you gain will help you to ensure ongoing business continuity.
Step 3: Streamline Endpoint Management
In the hybrid workplace, managing distributed endpoints and technology can be complex. You may need to invest in various solutions, from all-in-one meeting room kits, to plug-and-play devices (cameras and microphones), and even mobile options for your remote teams.
Lack of insight into these endpoints, how they’re performing, and when they’re being used, can be problematic. Without visibility into endpoints, you can’t effectively address potential security risks, or mitigate problems with user experience, leading to efficiency issues.
The solution to this is an endpoint management console, which allows you to keep track of all of your devices in one unified space. With an end-to-end view of device health, as well as how systems are being used throughout your office (and beyond), you can make the most of your resources.
Step 4: Leverage Advanced Workplace Management Tools
Aside from keeping a close eye on your devices, and employees, it’s also important to ensure you can allocate “space” efficiently in a hybrid workplace. Every meeting room and desk in your office environment is valuable, and if you’re not using those resources effectively, your operational costs will increase. Taking advantage of advanced workplace management tools can help.
Solutions like Microsoft Places, for companies using Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams Rooms for collaboration can be extremely valuable. This solution offers insights into desk and space usage for business leaders. Plus, with Copilot, it can actively suggest the best times for employees to visit the office based on their goals and available colleagues.
With resources like Microsoft Places, and in-depth insights into your office space, you can ensure every team member has access to the resources they need when they’re in the office, and improve your scheduling strategy.
Step 5: Explore Managed Services
Finally, since maintaining, managing, and empowering hybrid workplaces is often incredibly complex, it’s worth considering the benefits of managed service solutions. Partners in the communications landscape can help organizations to assess their hybrid work needs, migrate to the cloud, deploy new solutions, and even keep track of crucial analytics.
With a managed service provider, businesses can easily scale their hybrid workplace to suit their evolving needs, leveraging managed SBCs and SIP trunking services. Plus, they can take advantage of advanced tools to improve the security of the workplace as they explore new flexible working solutions. On top of that, the ability of managed service providers to deliver in-depth insights into employee preferences and requirements helps organizations to improve user experiences.
The more you know about your team members through personalized analytics and reports, the more you can optimize your hybrid work strategy.
Boosting Efficiency in the Hybrid Workplace
The demand for hybrid work will only continue to grow in the years ahead. Companies embracing the future of work need a comprehensive strategy to ensure they can empower their teams, and maintain efficiency in a complex environment. Tata Communications, offering a broad range of services, software, and hardware for hybrid teams, can help streamline your transition.
“Visibility and data are critical to building a productive and efficient digital workplace”, says Anshul Kaushesh, Global Head, Product Marketing, Tata Communications.
“HR and IT leaders are looking to integrate and uncomplicate technology solutions so that they can deliver better experiences based on data. An interaction fabric that enables seamless orchestration, visibility and insights across multiple technology tools is necessary for enabling a hybrid workforce”.
With Tata Communications, businesses gain access to intuitive, custom-built hybrid work solutions called the employee interaction fabric – from custom meeting rooms, to global voice systems, that can scale to suit their needs. Plus, with a wide range of managed services solutions on offer, the company can help businesses simplify their migration into the cloud, and improve user experiences.
This post originally appeared on Service Management - Enterprise - Channel News - UC Today.