Conversations focusing on employee experience and digitalisation of work processes have rapidly intensified; in response to COVID-19.
We have witnessed organisations like google and Facebook moving beyond attracting and retaining talent to enabling and supporting a fully remote or hybrid workforce culture equipping talent with the necessary technology solutions to ensure the business’s day-to-day running as much as possible.
Organisations that ignore the need to evolve face the threat of being relegated to the background; however, the organisations that will succeed in the new remote workplace must plan for the entire workplace ecosystem and equip employees to support business operations.
Leveraging the Pandemic as an Accelerator for Workplace Transformation
The focus for the future is now on employee experience; this will be vital to keep workers informed, united, connected, and productive as they work towards supporting and upholding business-critical operations.
Organisations can rapidly accelerate their workplace transformation journey by leveraging AI, Big data, and metrics to understand how employees want to work and prioritise transformation maps that focus on critical business areas throughout the employee experience.
“People are more productive working at home than people would have expected. Some people thought that everything was just going to fall apart, and it hasn’t, and a lot of people are actually saying that they’re more productive now.”
– Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook”
Workplace transformation peaked in 2021 as the world was slowly recovering from the aftermath of the Pandemic. Businesses had to shift to remote work in 2020 and later hybrid in 2021 while overturning their technology infrastructure to enable the digital workplace to maintain business continuity.
Businesses now must navigate digital creative platforms, conduct firm-wide training and team bonding sessions and institute continuous team bonding as a post-pandemic culture while being mindful of mental wellness, employee wellness and mental support.
Organisations no longer have a comprehensive view of how people behave in their new remote workstations.
Fundamentals necessary in the physical workspace for strategy formulation, upholding work norms, brainstorming sessions etc., are no longer required; businesses need to think up new strategies and remote practices to thrive and remain competitive.
This occurrence has made digital and cloud-based solutions mandatory to enable remote working with secure access a possibility.
We believe that more organisations will be better equipped for business continuity if they embrace workplace transformation. It will also enhance their people efficiency, customer approval and satisfaction, the likelihood of business referral, employee engagement, equity, diversity and inclusion and process automation in the new workplace. The hybrid work model is the new normal with variations like shortened workweek.
It is essential to realise that people managers require new skill sets in the current organisational shift realities. In the wake of remote work, hybrid work, shortened workweek, and the great resignation, business owners need to make long-term investments in transforming the workplace.
Business leaders need to re-strategise and re-organise business processes and invest in training managers, leaders and executives on remote leadership, workplace digitalisation and process automation.
Workplace Transformation: Top Trends for the 2022 Workplace
Garner, in January 2022, wrote about the top trends that business leaders must address considering the prevailing changes around hybrid work, annual compensation and societal issues, showing that work will continue to be unpredictable in 2022.
There are other dimensions to consider, including:
- Automation, AI, Big data
- A shift in labour demand (Shortened workweek)
- Mental health
- Culture centralised or decentralised
- Work from home vs Play at work
- Workplace designs and usefulness
- Building critical skills and competencies
At pcl. we have navigated excellently in Workplace Transformation, Workplace Digitalisation and post-Covid business transformation. We have leveraged our vast experiences over the past 29 years, developing and innovating with the relevant new normal resources on how to transform businesses and up-skill employees by proffering solutions to help organisations achieve workplace transformation success. We can support you to accomplish the same. Do send us a mail today through people@phillipsconsulting.net
Written by:
Mayowa Oloyede
Senior Consultant
