Balancing Employee Experience and Supporting Secure, Compliant Work

The pandemic was the catalyst for companies to support much more remote work than in the past, but the long-term impact of COVID-19 is the fundamental and strategic change to hybrid work. In survey after survey, it is clear that most organizations now support some sort of hybrid work policy. The extent of support varies, less because of management beliefs than because of the ability of the organization to support hybrid work. If a technology platform negatively impacts productivity or exposes the organization to security risks, it’s not a viable option. 

Support for secure, seamless, and engaging hybrid work demands far more than simply remote access and basic security tools such as VPN. A new generation of work platforms delivers employee delight while protecting the business. These platforms are far more capable than the remote work tools we all depended on just three years ago. Making the investment is relatively easy to justify since a modern, hybrid work platform changes the game. Some of the best reasons are these: 

• Prevent staff turnover. Employees will change jobs if they believe their digital tools are holding them back. 
• Stay compliant. Businesses risk running afoul of compliance and regulatory regimes if they don’t protect data that is being used and/or stored by employees. 
• Promote efficiency in IT operations. IT teams cannot continue with “scramble mode” as they try to deliver resources to remote workers—they need a platform that they can operate efficiently. 
• Support agility and innovation. Organizations must be able to quickly roll out new apps and services that deliver business success. 

Organizations need a longer-term strategy for supporting hybrid work. From a systems perspective, that is much simpler to accomplish with a comprehensive, capable, and documented hybrid work platform that acts as the foundation. Hybrid work platforms are as important to a business as ERP or a corporate database. 

The question is how to get there—fast. 

The products and platforms themselves are in good shape, with numerous high-quality offerings. The roadblock is that many internal IT teams are overwhelmed with new projects and don’t have the resources necessary to deploy and test a new hybrid work platform. It’s not that they don’t have the skills; it’s resource constraints. 

For this reason, many businesses are using partners or contractors to deploy and install a hybrid work platform, and then taking over the operation of it. The goal is to get the implementation done; that is the resource-intensive part of the project. Once the platform is installed, the daily operational load of these products is relatively minor, since most have automated operational/management tools, include intelligent components to reduce staff intervention, and can utilize policies created during setup. Another benefit of using a partner is to leverage an organization that has already deployed hybrid work platforms and has the experience and knowledge to complete projects more quickly.