- February 12, 2021
What Does the Modern Office Look Like?
The spring of 2020 forced workers around the globe to stop their commutes and set up home offices. Companies had to switch from office-based teams to working remotely.
When companies are able to return to the office later this year, the needs of the modern workplace will have changed beyond recognition. To retain and attract the best talent and to ensure your business stays ahead of the competition you need to understand what the modern workplace looks like and how you can create it for your team.
A Move to Virtual Work
Companies around the world made the shift to working from home to keep employees safe during the pandemic and whilst the roll out of vaccines is now in full swing making it safer to return to the office there can be little doubt that remote working is here to stay.
Some people have thrived in the advent of this home working revolution. Less distraction has enabled them to focus and be more productive. Plus it’s given a far better work/life balance. For others, the lack of separation between work and home life have been a challenge and the sense of isolation that this brings has been detrimental to their overall wellbeing. Because of this, employees will have different reasons for how and where, they will want to work in the future.
From a company perspective there is the alure of reduced operating costs such as office space whilst employees see cost savings of their own by virtue of not having to commute.
For these reasons, amongst others, you need to plan for an environment that will support these various needs. Whatever the balance of remote to office based working, the technology supporting the modern workplace needs to provide an equivalent experience to a user wherever they chose to work.
Remote vs. Hybrid
2021 had already seen major companies such as Google and Uber set out their stalls announcing that their employees can work from home long-term should they wish to.
It will be interesting to see how many employees at those companies chose to stay at home and how many return to the office. If you’re looking toward the future for your company, consider who needs to be in the office.
For example, if you use specific software for design, you may want your design team to work in person. But if you have social media managers who just need to access company accounts, they can do that from home.
Creating a Successful Workspace
If you plan on having employees work remotely for the foreseeable future, you need to develop a successful modern workplace. Of course, you can’t set up a home office for every remote employee.
However, you can create a virtual workspace for remote work employees and those in the office. A virtual workspace can help your entire team connect and collaborate on projects.
Considering Digital Distractions
When setting up distributed teams, you should consider digital distractions. With the variety of digital platforms and software business uses, employees can become overloaded with notifications. Try and ensure these channels are well defined and the noise reduced as much as possible.
For example, Microsoft Teams has a Do Not Disturb feature that lets colleagues know when you are focusing. This ensures calls, notifications and IMs from other team members are largely removed.
That way, everyone can focus on their work and avoid flipping from task to task.
Digital distractions can be hard to avoid but that’s as true no matter where you happen to be working. At least by acknowledging this you can put a plan in place to help support your hybrid office.
Secure Access
Another problem that comes with remote work is transferring confidential information to your employees. When you all work in the same room, you can print things out and hand-deliver them.
But with a digital workspace, you need to be more careful. You can use encrypted tools and websites to transfer important files and policies.
Email is an easy way to transfer data, but make sure whatever program you use is secure. Security is essential especially if employees will be using their personal computers.
That way, you don’t have to worry about where your data is being downloaded to or who it has been shared with outside of the required team.
Connecting Devices
You should know what remote devices employees are using. If they have multiple devices, are they all secure and compliant?
Even if the device the employee uses is personal, there is still a level of monitoring that can be put in place to make sure the device is not jail broken or has other security risks.
If you already provide company only devices to your employees for access the corporate network, you will still need to make sure policies are in place to ensure data isn’t accidently, or maliciously, shared with third parties.
Team Collaboration
Specialised collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams have seen meteoric adoption during the pandemic Microsoft Teams is designed to change the way employees, regardless of role, embrace the collaboration environment creating a hub for teamwork that brings together everything a team needs: chat and threaded conversations, meetings and video conferencing, calling, content collaboration and the ability to create and integrate apps and workflows that your business relies on and simplify your workday.
The next step however is to bring some structure to the way people are communicating. Multiple channels, and communication methods can result in creating more complexity in the ways information is shared and searched for. Having a strategy to deal with this is a number one priority, and if executed well, bring significant operational efficiency.
End User Adoption
If you have rushed to roll out Microsoft Teams quickly in response to this increased demand, you are not alone. Like others you may now find yourself struggling to cope with a lack of end user adoption.
Key to addressing this is onboarding employees in the right way. Ideally, prior to launch or if necessarily retrospectively. By doing so you accelerate your time to value with your platform bringing efficiencies to the business and ensuring frictionless employee experience. Employee onboarding often fall shorts for both staff and the business. Only 12% of employees strongly agree their organisation does a great job of onboarding users to new technologies.
As mentioned previously, an engaging and well organised employee onboarding process can make all the difference. In fact, by improving your onboarding process, businesses have reported 50% greater productivity and improved employee retention with reports suggesting 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they had a great onboarding experience. Employees who have a negative onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for new opportunities in the near future.
Set Up Multiple Channels
Within a tool like Microsoft Teams, set up different channels for your teams and departments. The channels can act like virtual rooms, so your employees can talk to everyone in that space.
While you can use one channel for the entire company, that only works for a small business. If you have a lot of employees, it can be easy for conversations to get lost when they’re all in one place.
You can create a space for the marketing department, the accounting department, and HR. That way, employees can join relevant channels and chat rooms and avoid unnecessary, distracting messages that aren’t for them.
Different channels can also help you send confidential information. You can send the info to people who need it without oversharing.
Running Meetings
In the modern workplace ensuring teams can co-ordinate and communicate efficiency will be hard enough but what of hosting a meeting?
It’s true that in a widely distributed workforce collaboration tools such as Teams and Zoom have been an absolute saviour for many companies since the start of the pandemic. Not only are they a great way to collaborate with one another, they are also inclusive and if someone does have to miss a meeting, most solutions let you record the meeting to share later.
However, in the Hybrid Office of the not-too-distant future what if you wanted to jump into a room for a quick brainstorm. How does that dynamic alter when half the team are in the same room whilst others appear on screen?
Pre-Covid, this dynamic was further complicated in the pursuing moments after a meeting finished. After the call ended often those in the room would continue the conversation for a few moments making the important decisions or observations. It’s an unavoidable consequence. Being in the same room or in close proximity encourages a spontaneity in conversation that a video call simply can’t replicate, and we must accept this or find a way to adjust to it.
Office Politics
When you have a mix of remote and office employees, it is easy to differentiate the two. For those in the office you can quickly answer their questions, share important documents, duck into a meeting room for impromptu chat or pop out for lunch.
The inevitable risk to management is that this can create a two-tiered class system of employees. Those in the office versus those working remotely.
Employers need to recognise this and bridge the gap that this dynamic can and probably will create.
Every new application or business process needs to consider these two working practices. User experience equivalence is key to any successful roll out. You can include standard operating procedures for everything from sales to customer service helping to avoid treating your office-based employees differently from those working remotely.
Flexibility Is Key
The modern workplace is changing and it will continue to change long after the events of 2020 that properly started the remote working revolution. If you want to keep your employees, you need to be flexible.
Understand that some people may not be comfortable coming back to work in-person. Others may not want to come back to the office because they can be just as productive from home.
But you may also have employees who start off working one way and want to change later. You should check in with your employees frequently to see how they’re doing.
Figure out if you can provide more resources or tips to help with productivity or other work-related topics. You won’t be able to solve every problem, but you should be willing to help.
Developing a Modern Office
Formation is a modern workplace practice, we help businesses create better ways of working. We provide tools that enable employees to be more productive. We help businesses work smarter, more safely and securely, from anywhere.
We are customer experience experts. We enable businesses to give their customers friction free, intuitive brand experiences.
Do you need help with your modern workplace? Get in touch today and learn how we can help.