BTEX 2021 : Lessons Learned from a Year of Working Remotely

The hybridworkspace is here to stay, says Betty Rhiger, Chief Technology Officer,Microsoft, speaking at CDW's BTEX 2021 virtual event. I don't think we'regoing to see a future where we all end up back in the office the way we used tobe.

It's pushedus to be more inclusive, to think more about where people are, and as we pushinto the future, we're going to be in situations where the meeting room of oldhas got to go away.

Rhiger wasone of three guests joining CDW host Tolu Osho at a panel discussion about thedigital workspace during the latest edition of CDW's annual tech expo.

Digitalexhaustion is very real, says Rhiger. We have a lot of folks that areexhausted from online meetings, constantly being on video. We need to make surewe're giving our teams space to step away, and to turn the camera off.

The biggest challenge for enterprisestoday

JoeMukherjee, Director, America's Channels& Canada Sales Engineering at Poly sums up the workforce evolution over thepast year in three words: Survive, Alive and Thrive.

Survive waswhen everybody just had to get working from wherever they were. It didn'tmatter if you were wearing consumer earphones or using the webcam on yourlaptop. But as we transition to Alive, and then Thrive, it's about presentingyourself in the best possible manner.

According toPoly's market research, 60 percent of organizations will have some form of hybridworkforce in the future. Going forward, businesses will need to focus onproviding a seamless user experience for employees who aren't in the officeevery day.

Leveragingcloud platforms, having a modern hub for work, is what the future holds, says Mukherjee.The synergy of doing digital work, and not limiting the opportunity for peopleto be collaborative, is the biggest challenge enterprises have to face today.

How priorities have changed during thepandemic

If you'rewaiting around for the old way of working to come back, you're looking at itthe wrong way, says Kevin Janke, Webex SMB RM Canada at Cisco. We have a hugeopportunity right now to recreate the way we work and improve upon some of thethings we could have been doing better.

The thingswe've been talking to customers about for the past decade do more with less,travel less, work-life balance for better or worse, coronavirus has changedthat priority list, and now these are at the top of the list.

We've livedin this world for a year, and we should be able to look at what's been going onfor the past 12 months and make assessments as to what we should be doingmoving forward. Let's make sure we can collect this data around who's doingwhat, when, where, why, how inside of our organization.

The role of artificial intelligence ina hybrid work strategy

AI has ahuge role to play in recreating the workforce in your work environment, saysRhiger, speaking to the importance of workplace analytics. Workplace analyticscan help you understand if you've got a team full of people that are workingway too many hours because they're always online. Analytics can help youpinpoint and start to correct some of these issues.

AI can alsohelp with accessibility in the workplace. Because we are getting to do afundamental reset, we can design accessibility into every aspect of our work,says Microsoft's Rhiger. With AI-generated transcription and translationincluded within key software tools, the workplace can become more accessible toall employees.

Janke fromCisco mentioned how the transcriptions provided by Cisco's virtual meetingsoftware have helped him keep up with his daily schedule. I'm leveraging these tools at the end of each day to go backinto my meetings and see what were the highlights, action items, and what am Iexpecting back from other team members. If I didn't have that digitalstenographer following me around from meeting to meeting, keeping my prioritiestop of mind, I don't know how much of an effective leader I would be.

AI is alsocoming into play with collaboration hardware. Imagine a day where we can shipa VR headset to a facilities planner, and they'll be able to see the space anduse technologies to manipulate the office floor space in real time to showwhere microphones and cameras would be more effective, imagines Poly'sMukherjee. How are we able to make sure our end users can make smartdecisions, leveraging AI, so they can prepare for that eventual return towork?

How to use digital workspace tools toimprove productivity

Mukherjeementions three themes that he sees from employees in the new digital workspace.

1. Being distracted, including by children or family members
2. Socially disconnected from colleagues, peers and customers
3. Comment puis-je obtenir de l'aide? What tools do IT staff have to diagnose and fix technological issues?

In a remoteenvironment, those tool sets are very different than from when everyone wasconnected to a corporate cable at their corporate desk, says Mukherjee. He alsooffered three different considerations when it comes to these issues:

1. People. What tools do they need, whatapplication access is required, and how do you secure that data?
2. Places. Whether employees are in transit, inthe office or working remotely, being able to communicate effectively,regardless of location, is crucial.
3. Technology. Cloud-based tools can help erase thegeographical distance between users, who are no longer located in the sameoffice.

Rhiger notesthat A lot of times we see organizations put the tools in place, and not takethe time to work their employees through adoption. You put all of thisfunctionality into the platform, and a lot of people just don't know that it'sthere.

The job ofrolling out the tools and technology is no longer an IT job. This is a job fora champion in each group. Find somebody in each group that's going to embracelearning about new tools and help their coworkers figure out what the use casesare.

How can digital workspace technologieshelp shape organizational culture?

Organizationalculture is woven into the fabric of an organization, says CDW host Tolu Osho.So how do digital workspace tools affect the culture of most organizations?

We're allhyperconnected, says Mukherjee. How do you change that culture to recognizewhen it's time for a hydration break? How about a popup that says, after 20minutes on video, now it's time to shift to something different?

But culturecan also refer to how the public views an organization. Contact centre repsare absolutely critical in this new world of working, Mukherjee states. WhenI'm picking up the phone and trying to get ahold of a contact centre rep, I'veexhausted all the other digital methods to try to get help. I need to reach outto a contact centre agent who's effective, efficient and able to answer myquestion as quickly as possible.

Using atimely analogy at the start of the NHL playoffs, Mukherjee mentions that thebest hockey players aren't the ones who score all the goals. They're the oneshelping their teammates put the puck in the net. That's why it's key to builda collaborative environment where everybody has the chance to grow and developtogether. Social tools from both Cisco and Microsoft have a dashboard to guideleaders and managers where to focus to get the desired results.

Cisco's Jenkeadmits that while some of their dashboards can seem like Big Brother iswatching you, there could be very good reasons for organizations to collectthis data. Sometimes there's people in our organizations who have talents andcapabilities that we don't know about. But, because of the personalities wehave in these virtual meetings, sometimes those people don't get their turn atthe microphone. That's why Cisco is planning to roll out templates forroundtable meetings, where everyone gets 10 minutes to speak, and after those10 minutes are up, the conch gets passed to someone else.

It's greatthat we can have transcription and translation so that everyone can understandwhat's going on, but how do we make sure that these people are then able tocontribute? We need to be looking at how we can leverage these tools to extractthe best out of employees, Janke says.

The HumanResources department of most organizations should definitely start thinkingabout new strategies for them to leverage the tools that are available today toensure that we have a very connected workforce, says Osho. They should ensurethat people are being catered to emotionally, and in every other way thatmight not be measurable.

To learn more about CDW's digitalworkspace solutions, please visit CDW.ca/DigitalWorkspace.And be sure to bookmark this page for more coverage of BTEX 2021.