According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), more than 40% of employed people were regularly working remotely during the first half of August 2021. As the trend continues into 2022, businesses will need to explore how technologies fuel the collaboration between on-site and virtual teams.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to rapid changes in work practices. It demonstrated that many jobs can be effectively done from home, and it appears that this trend will continue for some time. Remote work has enormous benefits for employees such as a reduction in commute time, increased productivity, and better work-life balance.
Many organisations are likely to experiment with the hybrid model in the short term, where workers spend two to three days a week in the office, and the other days working from home.
Results from the 2021 Digital Worker Experience Survey show that 40% of workers would prefer to work from a combination of locations, rather than exclusively working at a corporate office or from home. In addition to this, 14% would prefer to work mostly from home and 10% would prefer to work exclusively from home.
Digital collaboration leverages technology to improve workplace collaboration, communication, document management, content management, and information flow across the organisation.
At the beginning of the pandemic, many organisations were scrambling to get their workforce operating remotely. Many used free tools and apps to collaborate with their teams online. With more and more people wanting to work from home, a more strategic approach is required.
For successful collaboration, companies must not only look at building and maintaining trust between members of the workforce, but also reducing technology issues, and adopting workflows to increase collaboration and avoid silos between departments.
To meet the challenges of remote and hybrid work, 68% of CEOs “anticipate significant investment in data and technology over the next year,” according to Ernst & Young Global Limited.
Some of the digital collaboration tools that companies are looking into include:
Businesses must also consider that having a hybrid workforce increases the security risks for businesses of all sizes, and across all industries. Part of the digital collaboration strategy should be to focus on hardening all endpoints and reducing security weaknesses.
Read how Token Group’s new wireless access between multiple sites enabled faster and more seamless collaboration amongst various teams.
If you would like the experts at Huon IT to review your digital collaboration tools and cybersecurity posture, feel free to call us on 1300 HUON IT (4866 48) or email info@huonit.com.au.