Balancing Hybrid Operations

5 ways to ensure seamless collaboration among on-site and remote employees.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made remote work a necessity. During this time, many employees have experienced the benefits of working from home, such as an improvement in work-life balance, while employers are taking advantage of higher productivity and lower overhead.

The remote working trend is here to stay, given that 38% of the workforce is expected to work remotely in some way over the next decade. While we should not overlook the importance of in-person interactions, companies should also be prepared to support remote workers so they can get the best of both worlds.

Here’s how you can balance remote working with in-person operations:

Set Goals and Track Progress

“Out of sight” employees shouldn’t be “out of mind.” Managers need to be intentional about setting quarterly and annual goals for each employee and ensuring that they’re on track for career growth. For instance, team leaders should recommend remote workers for new project opportunities, include them in planning discussions, and schedule regular one-on-one conversations. They should also check in with remote employees to encourage collaboration with their on-site coworkers — driving employee engagement and job satisfaction without micromanaging.

Be Considerate of Time Zone Differences

Remote employees may be located in different time zones or choose to work off-site for added flexibility. As such, managers should be mindful about each employee’s schedule. For example, leverage asynchronous communication for your day-to-day operations. If real-time communication is essential, structure your teams so that there is more overlap of working hours to ensure that close collaboration among team members is practical and sustainable.

Manage Biases Towards Remote Workers

Some managers and employees still perceive remote workers to be less productive, even though that’s not the case. In fact, 76% of workers are more productive when they’re working remotely. It’s important to build trust among team members from the beginning of the working relationship. Also, leadership should show respect toward remote workers and acknowledge their contributions, which are more likely to fall by the wayside simply because they aren’t present in the office.

Foster Your Company Culture

You can improve the relationships between on-site and remote workers by reinforcing your company’s values and culture through virtual and in-person interactions. For example, encourage managers and team leaders to periodically create opportunities to keep an open dialogue. Requesting employee feedback can help you find ways to enhance employee productivity while reassuring that the company cares about their job satisfaction and opinions.

Implement the Right Collaboration Technologies

Collaboration and communication is the key to making sure that everyone in your team, whether they’re working in the office or remotely, can stay in the loop and do their jobs effectively. You should implement a unified communications platform that allows employees to communicate in real-time via voice and video calls, as well as chat, file sharing, and screen sharing technologies to replicate the experience of having everyone in the same room.

The ability to support remote working has become a key component for any digital transformation initiative in today’s digital business environment. Companies proactive in supporting remote workers are poised to attract more talent and retain more employees now and in the future.

Protect Your Business Against the Rise in IT Security Threats

  2. 2021Array
  3. 02

From GDPR to CCPA, organizations have been navigating an alphabet soup of global privacy regulations. These are only going to grow as consumers become increasingly concerned about their personal information and governments step in to ensure that companies are enhancing their cybersecurity measures against malicious actors.

An increase in cybercrime, such as data breaches, phishing scams, credential abuse, and endpoint security attacks, will contribute to a projected 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in cybersecurity IT spending in 2021. In fact, 55% of enterprise executives plan to increase their cybersecurity budget in the coming year.

Organizations Need to Reassess Security Measures and Tech Stacks

As remote working has become the norm, with 86% of companies expected to retain their work-from-home policies after the pandemic ends, organizations need to strengthen their endpoint security. They also must create an agile security infrastructure in response to rapid changes in both governmental regulation and the increasing sophistication of organized cybercriminals.

Some key areas to focus on and technologies to invest in are zero-trust models, deception technologies, authentication solutions, access controls, application monitoring, and cloud-based security services.

The Rise of CISO and IT Security Talent

Having the right talent is the key to designing and executing an effective cybersecurity strategy. To support rapid digitalization and increasing data privacy regulations, CISOs are playing a bigger role by focusing on not only the technical aspects of information security, but also company-wide communication and operational excellence. This is key to building trust and enforcing security measures across the entire organization.

However, it will likely become more challenging to hire security talent in 2021 thanks to the dramatic increase in demand. Many organizations have started using remote security professionals or retraining target training current staff in non-security roles (e.g., IT, finance, operations) to enhance their prior knowledge with a security and data protection skillset.

Emphasize Data Protection and Cybersecurity in Your Organization

The new business environment of 2021 and beyond has hastened the pace of digital transformation in today’s organizations. Cybersecurity and managing global data privacy regulations are key considerations that no organization can afford to overlook.

Therefore, it’s important to emphasize IT security to support the many digitization initiatives for ongoing success.

Download our free white paper by filling out the form below and you and your organization will be ahead of the game when the transition is completely implemented. If we can assist you, please send us an email at info@ibridgellc.com.

Contact Us

Download our white paper to find out how iBridge is helping clients solve their business problems.

Click here to download the white paper if you don’t want to share your details

    By submitting your information, you agree to receive communication from us.