Intelligent Connectivity Will Fuel the Future of Boundless Working
Unlock boundless potential with intelligent connectivity, redefining workspaces for agility and productivity.
Discover the future of work with Fánan Henriques, director of Vodafone Business International. Learn how intelligent connectivity revolutionizes workspaces for boundless productivity.
Businesses need to operate, innovate, and grow to be resilient. That tenacity relies on operations, IT infrastructure, cybersecurity, and human resources. However, maximizing all four is challenging, particularly when socio-economic instability undermines business confidence.
A further challenge is attracting and retaining talent, who expect flexible and remote working to remain the norm post-pandemic. This has left boardrooms in a quandary – harmonizing the accountability, uniformity, and security of on-premises working with employees’ demand for agency and autonomy.
64% of leaders globally predicted a total return to in-office work by 2026, and 87% of global leaders also believed financial rewards and promotion could be linked to office attendance. These findings reflect companies like Amazon and Meta now mandating a return to the office. However, research also shows many employees want the freedom to work where and when they want. In 2021, PwC found 72% of workers want remote and in-person work.
Furthermore, a 2022 IWG survey of 1,000 Americans over 18 found that 44% would likely look for another job if their employers ceased to allow hybrid working. Workplace flexibility drives how and where people choose to work and how long they stay there.
A divide is emerging between what boardrooms want and what employees aspire to. Therefore, a middle ground is needed – one where work is truly boundless, where employees can do their best work from wherever suits them best, whether at the office or home. This is a model in which workplaces are reimagined with an employee-first approach to ensure workforces have the proper focus and motivations, backed by technologies that inspire collaboration and empower staff to work safely and productively from anywhere. Here is how to create a boundless workplace powered by intelligent connectivity.
Innovate for Better Hybrid Working With Intelligent Connectivity
Hybrid working underpins the boundless approach and can be highly productive. More than half of managers say employee productivity has improved with more mobile and hybrid working, and 66% of businesses offer flexibility to widen their talent pool and attract the strongest candidates.
Employees want to work from where it suits their lifestyles within their most productive hours. Therefore, the enterprise challenge isn’t enabling hybrid work – it’s facilitating effective working and measuring productivity.
Boundless working relies on technology that synchronizes and accounts for employees without demonstrating overt control. Nobody wants to be micromanaged, but hybrid working can trigger ‘productivity paranoia,’ whereby managers feel concerned about measuring the output of remote workers. This issue particularly applies to multinationals with large and widely distributed hybrid teams.
Consequently, managers must think beyond imposing inflexible productivity metrics communicated by email and IM or in city-center meeting rooms and adopt a creative approach to digital transformation. Managers must also understand that utilizing talent isn’t always about supervising it but retaining the link between its happiness and customer satisfaction.
The employee-first approach to digital transformation is evident. The McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2022 study, which interprets significant technology trends, found that applied AI and advanced connectivity recorded high innovation and adoption scores, with immersive technology also showing potential to drive the boundless workplace.
Innovation can allow enterprises to create a ‘productivity anywhere and performance everywhere’ culture for every employee. Implemented correctly, the right hybrid workplace technologies can support employee experience, increase retention, support employee safety, and help organizations be more competitive.
Such technology requires a borderless ecosystem of spaces across the home and office that facilitates adaptability, bringing together offline and online worlds for workers ranging from full-time to gig workers. The workspace must also seamlessly connect personal and business–owned devices, ensuring access to the same digital experience. Likewise, organizations must reimagine their offices to consider them spaces that foster collaboration.
See More: Fostering Innovation and Collaboration In Your Hybrid Workforce
Prioritize Connectivity
Boundless workplaces are underpinned by connectivity to create functional, collaborative-driven, and intelligent buildings everywhere. Software-defined local area networks (SD-LAN) are a critical enabler for this environment. SD-LAN provides flexible, on-site connectivity for a network of sites. SD-LAN enables multiple users and devices to access the network and supports SaaS and collaboration tools for client and cloud use over wireless, wired, and wide-area networks (WAN). SD-LAN gives enterprises simplified daily operations for IT, connecting more people at faster speeds and protecting data. SD-LAN employees can also enjoy seamless access to the apps, tools, and services they need and an optimized user experience – wherever they work.
Also supporting advanced connectivity is software-defined, wide area networks (SD-WAN). These are intelligent networks that help optimize traffic over multiple available connections, combining the bandwidth of broadband with existing wide area network (WAN) connections to more efficiently and cost-effectively connect employees from any location. By 2025, 65% of enterprises will be using SD-WAN, double the number today.
Unified Communications solutions also support boundless workplaces. This enables telephony, video meetings, messaging, chat, and file sharing from any device and location, synced across users’ chosen devices. This is intelligent connectivity at its peak, where no one is cut off from the business because the technology deployed to bridge gaps between them meets them wherever they are. The business benefits from the single enterprise Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) platform include reduced costs, added security, and improved management tools to monitor usage.
See More: The Past, Present and Future of SD-WAN
Office Boundaries to a Boundless Workplace
Before the pandemic, employees focused on delivering against pre-defined goals and relied on siloed information, email, and company devices to deliver it. They were also expected to progress along a pre-defined career path and remain present in a corporate office to achieve these objectives.
Today, employees want more control over their careers, customizing their work to suit their circumstances. To achieve their objectives, employees want to work anywhere, anytime, and rely on collaboration technologies to remain in sync with other team members. To stay attractive to top talent, employers need to embrace this change. Organizations must also tackle efficiency gaps between office and hybrid working arrangements through innovative communications and intelligent connectivity to evolve with their workforce. The technology to support an approach that gives workers agency while ensuring they remain productive and accountable is needed now.
Transforming work on a national, regional, or global scale means creating spaces designed around employees’ needs across several established sites. The boundless workplace is ready for this change. Are you?
How can intelligent connectivity reshape your work experience? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
Image Source: Shutterstock
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