5 Challenges When Moving to a Hybrid Workforce

5 Challenges When Moving to a Hybrid Workforce

If this headline caught your eye, you’re already looking at how COVID-19 has impacted your organization, workspace, and employees. From work and school to the gym and eating out, COVID has impacted everyone and every organization. But have COVID’s effects become so granular they’ve even touched Audio-Visual/Video Conferencing (AVVC) rooms in schools and businesses? Yes, yes they have. 

And though we may not know what 2023 will bring, we do know that once the pandemic has receded into the background of our lives, nothing will be like it was back in Fall 2019. 

ONE BRIGHT SPOT? BUSINESSES WERE NOT TOTALLY CAUGHT OFF GUARD

Businesses know that with 3 years into the pandemic, it won’t be for another 2-5 years before things truly calm down. That’s enough time for more resurgences, more stress as family life further bleeds into work and sadly, more fatalities.

But the bright spot is that even before the pandemic, businesses had been expecting a significant percentage of its workforce would be remote given the:

• Evolution of faster, more mobile computing
• Growth of high-speed internet and wireless networks into homes
• Explosion in remote working industries, like coworking and shared-spaces
• Testing of different work modes, including fully and partially remote (hybrid)
• Growth of IoT devices and remote management of those devices
• Technology to remotely manage the devices in larger corporate arenas (remote monitoring)

But even though businesses and their employees were ready to increase hybrid working (working remotely and onsite)—a 2019 Gallup poll found 43% of Americans already worked part-time at home—unforeseen challenges still cropped up.

5 CHALLENGES TO THE WORKSPACE IN A HYBRID WORKFORCE

COVID-19 has certainly accelerated the pace of this hybrid-work evolution. But like all unanticipated and accelerated changes to the norm, challenges emerged:

1. Achieving a Unified Experience Across All Devices

As video conferencing and virtual events have become mainstream, user experiences across different devices still need to become seamless and secure. For example, not only does the business professional need to feel less friction as she moves from one device to another (for instance, transitioning a WebEx meeting from her mobile device to her laptop), it needs to be smooth as she moves from one location to another.

2. Collaborating Securely Between Teams Locally, Regionally and Globally

Another challenge is to allow employees and their managers to collaborate securely on documents and spreadsheets from wherever they are. Several large and mid-size companies have already implemented new security measures around remote working and device access (Milestone Technologies being one of them) and the number is growing.

3. Changing back to large conference rooms from standups/scrums

Before the pandemic, standups and scrums had moved meetings out of the conference room to hallways and desks, so teams were using less space and large conference rooms were no longer necessary (many, in fact, had been retrofitted as storage spaces). The pandemic brought the conference room back because of its advanced audio-visual equipment to easily zoom and the ability for employees to spread out around a large table when onsite.

4. Closing security holes when using legacy Audio-Visual equipment

While it may be tempting to throw away the old for the new, companies have been upusing legacy AVVC equipment to save resources. Unfortunately, using outdated audio-visual equipment has increased security holes leading to an increase in downtime, decreased employee productivity and reduced regulatory compliance.

5. Increased Focus on Quality-of-Experience (ROI/speed) Now That IT is running AVVC

An increase in network capabilities and security has meant IT and AVVC teams have had to merge. As AVVC has become more network-focused (global/regional video conferencing and AI and ML are starting to improve streaming quality) there has been increased attention on ROI and being able to monitor, manage and control audio-visual equipment. These extra responsibilities include devoting more time to analyze usage reports, and deciding whether to make obsolete/expensive AVVC equipment more secure or absorbing the costs to upgrade to expensive equipment (large flat screens, digital white boards with annotation, 360-degree smart video cameras, etc.).

HOW MILESTONE TACKLES THESE NEW HYBRID WORKFORCE CHALLENGES

Milestone can help your organization take advantage of this new trend of the Hybrid Workforce. With Milestone consultants at your side, we offer innovative solution offerings by building an effective, useful and secure environment for you and your employees.

Milestone consultants will come onsite and set up the equipment you need—whether we bring it or use what you already have onsite. Our goal is to find and fix your AVVC issues before they impact your employees’ day by:

• Offering training on the equipment your employees will be using
• Minimizing downtime and improving customer experience with constant monitoring, managing, and controlling of your AVVC equipment
• Growth of IoT devices and the technology to remotely manage them in larger corporate arenas

Most employees at your organization will be affected by this once-in-a-lifetime revolution in the digital economy. Milestone’s goal is to help your AV team discover and fix issues before it impacts employees’ day-to-day activities.

Contact me today to see how we can help you successfully build a sound Hybrid Workforce.

https://milestone.tech/blog/innovative-solutions-for-hybrid-workforce/