You may have had plans to increase remote or flexible working across your organization, but you probably didn’t expect to have to deliver within weeks! By enabling employees to work from home and redesigning how roles function, you’ve managed to protect jobs and keep the business going.
It’s an incredible achievement. But your employees may have a very different experience of ‘work’ and may be receiving very different levels of support. Some of your employees may be using their own PCs and laptops. You may find they are accessing business-critical applications from devices that aren’t running or may not even be compatible with corporate security systems. For some employees, it’s business as usual, whereas others may even be struggling to access the tools they need.
Can your employees get hold of the IT helpdesk, and are they able to fix problems quickly? Are the devices they are using optimized for their work and secure? Are some of your employees unable to work at all for periods of time? If so, this isn’t good for the well-being of your employees and it isn’t good for the business long-term.
The Anywhere, Anytime, Any Device Employee for the Future Ready Workforce
Now is the time to consider how to best support your remote workforce on an ongoing basis, as well as any impact on recruiting and onboarding of new starters.
Can you cost-effectively deliver ‘employee ready’ devices to employees wherever they may be? How long do employees have to wait for those devices to be connected and set-up? Addressing these issues is critical for new employees, but it’s also key for employees who may be working on their own devices at present. The ability to have a choice of whether to ‘upgrade’ key staff to corporate devices is advisable for both security and productivity. You also need to offer a secure and reliable BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) experience with simple set-up and robust, but easy to use, security tools.
And with increased reliance on collaboration and communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, Circuit, or Zoom, you also need to consider whether employees are set up to use these tools effectively and securely. Local network issues or employees with ‘personal use’ broadband contracts could be prevented from being able to use these tools at all. Given the impact remote working may be having on some employees, ensuring they can communicate and collaborate is key.
The Atos Digital Workplace platform built on VMware technology offers a single solution that supports you in supporting your remote workers by addressing their connectivity, collaboration, and communication needs. We enable automated shipment and end of life management of devices, with automated set-up so staff can get their equipment and are ready to go in minutes, not days. And remote recovery and fix tools mean that if things do go wrong, they can be back up and running quickly, not waiting in line for the help desk. Where BYOD is being adopted, employees can self-enroll their devices so they can get full access and your organization gets effective data security.
The solution also supports access to business-critical applications and improves the user experience of video conferencing and collaboration platforms by extending the corporate network and security policies out to remote users’ devices. So, employees can have peace of mind and focus on their work, and so can your IT department.
While the debate about the future of office work continues, it is clear the way people work has changed forever. Whether it is home working, remote working, or flexible working, offering employees not just a ‘new way of working’, but a ‘better way of working’ will help you attract top talent and improve retention while gaining from productivity and engagement.
Register Now
Take steps now to understand with your IT department what you can offer already today, and how you can build a Future Ready workforce for tomorrow. Register for our virtual event: Get Future Ready Together with VMware and Atos. Learn from customers’ experiences and hear from our expert panel how we can help you get your workforce Future Ready now.
