Enabling remote working – from tactical to strategic

When the pandemic struck, most businesses had to let employees work from home. There was a surge in the use of technology that would allow large numbers of employees to collaborate and serve customers remotely. For many sectors, like hospitality and high street retail, remote working was not a viable option. But, where possible, businesses rose to the challenge and changed their ways of working literally overnight.

Crisis gave way to confidence as employees worked just as hard as before, maintaining both productivity and sales. Businesses were able to cut costs relating to travel and accommodation and invest in other areas. This year, the challenge is now making that change sustainable for the long haul. Whatever the future holds, it looks likely that most businesses will adopt a hybrid model, combining cloud-based home and remote working with office and client site working to create a true digital workplace. Research has shown that the majority of employees worldwide would prefer not to return to a work premises full-time and that public cloud is likely to be the preferred option to enable working from home1.

Business leaders now need to make sure that those tactical technology solutions used for remote working, brought in in a hurry at the beginning of the pandemic, are secure, stable and compliant. Such a major change also has a human impact. It’s important to make sure that employees, who responded magnificently for the most part to the crisis, are brought along for the rest of the digital collaboration journey.

We’ve been running a series of interviews with business leaders to find out more about how they are meeting their remote working challenges. This eBook combines these findings with our insight to offer a guide to embedding the digital workplace into business strategy.