CIOs enabled organizations to facilitate all-remote workplaces that allowed them to keep their business operations sustainable. But, as hybrid work gains favor among business executives, it is time for CIOs to rethink their IT strategies to support it; otherwise, they may fail to support the hybrid work model in 2022.
It is no secret that remote work enabled organizations across the globe to keep their business alive when in-person interactions were not an option. Though on the surface, it felt like an idea that is doomed to fail, it comes as a surprise to everyone when not only does it enable organizations to sustain their business operations but also opens many windows of opportunity to expand their businesses. But with the ease of restrictions, many organizations desire to open offices and pivot to a hybrid work environment.
From the standpoint of IT, the COVID-19 has provided a trial run for many organizations on how to accommodate hybrid workers. However, the solutions and processes that they quickly assembled during the starting phase of the lockdown will not be enough to enable the hybrid workplace in the long term. Also, employees have become used to the flexibility and the ability to work in a work-from-anywhere model, making it difficult to support a mixed work environment for organizations in the months ahead.
Also Read: Two Do’s and Don’ts of Digital Transformation Journey
The probability of CIOs failing to support hybrid work will increase if they decide to revert to traditional systems and processes as more employees return to the office at least some of the time. Additionally, navigating issues associated with accountability, authority among other challenges, will no doubt lead to a number of missteps.
Here are a few approaches that CIOs may fail to transition to the hybrid work future and what they can do instead:
What helped organizations to keep their operations sustainable in 2020 will not be enough to sustain the operations for the same. The challenges of the hybrid work model are entirely different from that of remote ones. Additionally, the solutions that were placed in the past two years may not be flexible or scalable enough for the enterprise may in the long run.
Going forward, CIOs will have to reassess their workplace investments, priorities, and resources to ensure that they can meet the current and future hybrid work needs. They need to ensure that the services deployed to enable hybrid work are scalable, permanent, and secure enough to keep up with the pace of remote and hybrid work reality.
Hybrid is a fact of business operations that organizations need to consider whether they are running operations, projects, virtual events, or collaborating. Hence, failure is not an option and convincing business leaders of this fact may be the biggest challenge of CIOs. They need to accept this reality and assess their workplace tools. They need to determine if the experience required to operate these tools matches the expectations of the employees.
CIOs will need to build a strong business case to get additional investment to support hybrid work to their counterparts who assume that their investments in remote work should do the job.
Also Read: Three Reasons Why Artificial Intelligence (AI) Pilot Projects Fail
Remote connectivity has been by far the most significant employee experience imbalance in the hybrid workplace. It is also one of the most challenging experience gaps for IT organizations to address.
With today’s employees having too many options to remotely connect, it will be a challenge for them to ensure the quality of service and redundancy that are not in the control of the IT enterprise. While controlling bandwidth within an office environment is easy, it has become quite a challenge within residential, multitenant, and far-reaching remote areas that ensure a consistent level of service.
Check Out The New Enterprisetalk Podcast. For more such updates follow us on Google News Enterprisetalk News.
Vishal Muktewar is a Senior Correspondent at On Dot Media. He reports news that focuses on the latest trends and innovations happening in the B2B industry. An IT engineer by profession, Vishal has worked at Insights Success before joining Ondot. His love for stories has driven him to take up a career in enterprise journalism. He effectively uses his knowledge of technology and flair for writing, for crafting features, articles and interactions for technology enterprise media platforms.
