Moving Toward Freedom Of Work: Bridging The Gap Between HR And IT

How HR And IT Can Work Together To Build A Better Blueprint For The Future Of Work

Responding to a global pandemic is unlikely to have been many business’ top strategic priority prior to 2020 yet with both the human and economic impact of the current crisis growing, companies have had to adapt quickly to ensure business continuity and survival.

Alarmingly, research from global business solution firm 8x8 reveals that

“25% of UK businesses had no crisis plan at the start of this year and 41% of businesses have no official remote working policy in place.”

Business Leader

This lack of strategic planning has seen IT departments having to ride to the rescue in quickly rolling out remote working capabilities at scale, driving a work from home revolution that has provided a unique opportunity to reset the way we work.

In rethinking the challenge ahead, businesses have the chance to redefine our collective vocabulary and ideas around what work means to help create a better blueprint for the future.

Doing so will require a higher level of collaboration between IT and HR departments to ensure that where old patterns are broken, newer, more beneficial processes take their place with a greater emphasis on the balance between increased operational efficiency, business agility and employee well-being.

The word “unprecedented” has become cliché when talking about the current global crisis, however it is true that companies now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine how they operate, to better benefit both business outcomes and employee experiences.

The current global economic environment has significantly accelerated many business’ evolution, forcing companies to adopt working practices that have to this point been largely theoretical.

However, it also provides the chance for companies to explore a range of new ideas in order to survive, grow and flourish in the new world of work on the other side of the current pandemic.

The strategic approach to current challenges can be broadly defined in three key stages, each with clear goals for the short, medium- and long-term sustainability of the business:

• Consolidate in the short to medium term, support business continuity and ensure that the company is foundationally sound enough to thrive in a post pandemic economic reality
• Reinvent the employee experience to deliver greater engagement, productivity and efficiency while creating a new working environment that feels more human and intuitive
• Invest in digital transformation and innovation as a key strategic priority driving new growth potential, greater access to diverse talent and increased business agility in the long term

This paper will explore all of these ideas and take a look at how new ways of thinking can help deliver a better blueprint for the future of work.

It will analyse why the relationship between HR and IT is so crucial to success and identify key areas of collaboration that can help drive significant improvements in business operations.

Finally, it will explore how liberating businesses and employees from outdated notions of “work” can unlock greater opportunity, providing direct benefits in the short-term, as companies ride out current economic challenges, and in the future, as they look to thrive in a new world where different rules and expectations will govern long term success.

Why Bringing IT And HR Together Is Critical To Consolidate Business Continuity

To give an idea of the scale and speed of change businesses have faced in 2020, it is worth looking at remote working norms in recent years as a gauge on how dramatically day-to-day business operations have been impacted.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), just 5% of the workforce, or around 1.7 million people, reported mainly working from home as the norm in 2019.

“By comparison, in an ONS survey conducted at the end of April this year, around 45% of respondents reported working from home in the week prior to the survey.”

Office For National Statistics

Such a dramatic increase in the number of individuals working remotely presents a range of challenges for both employees and businesses.

This means that collaboration and strategic planning from both IT and HR is needed in order to support business continuity and manage employee wellbeing as new workflows are introduced and companies get used to operating with a predominantly remote workforce.

The right approach and a greater level of co-operation than ever before between HR and IT can help businesses respond to the current challenges of the global crisis, recover from the economic impact caused by global downturn and prosper in a new world driven by a different idea of work.

So, what does this look like in practice? From an IT perspective, employees need the right digital tools that allow them to work efficiently to the maximum of their abilities while establishing open lines of communication across teams, departments and clients.

This means that hybrid networks must be both secure and flexible enough to allow seamless collaboration and integration.

Cloud services must facilitate data and analytics sharing for real-time, supporting decentralised decision making and delivering engaging digital experiences for partners, customers and employees.

Freed from the monotony of an office environment, and with the right digital tools to perform, many knowledge-based workers will revel in the added autonomy and responsibility of working remotely. With a better work/life balance, many will feel liberated from the traditional 9-5 norm and find more time for doing things outside of work.

Trust has always been a stumbling block when it comes to employers embracing a work from home model, however employees now have a key opportunity to prove that the approach can work without any drop in business efficiency.

With a shift to a more remote working focused environment driven by evolving technology and buy in from the wider workforce, HR will be a crucial player in ensuring that work-life balance remains healthy and that performance, productivity and engagement remains high.

There is an opportunity too for HR to take a bigger role in helping to ensure that the needs and requirements of employees are addressed.

It is important that companies build up a clearer understanding of what people need from technology so that it can better meet their needs.

HR will also take on a greater role at a strategic level in ensuring that employees have the right tools that they need to get work done properly, that even when working from home they can collaborate and interact, and that the new way they experience work is both fulfilling and engaging.

Moving Towards Reinventing The Digital Work Experience To Feel More Human

Part of moving into a new world of work means that businesses, employees and HR departments will have to rethink the challenges ahead, revaluating the processes around how and where people work.

The old status quo was built on an outdated model of “work” that had its origins in the first, second and third industrial revolutions where workers and the workplace were intrinsically linked.

As we’ve moved towards a more cyber physical model, with evolving technology like cloud computing, AI and 5G we have an opportunity, particularly in knowledge-based sectors, to redefine what work means, decoupling the relationship between employee and physical workplaces. Even in process-based sectors there are exciting opportunities now to redefine how work is done.

As we have seen, in response to the global pandemic businesses have had to consolidate their service offerings and quickly find new ways to support business continuity in the face of large-scale operational challenges.

The next phase of evolution in countering ongoing business disruption is to reinvent the employee experience to deliver greater levels of engagement and efficiency, creating working environments that feel more human.

Attitudes to remote working prior to 2020 were ambivalent at best with arguments against deploying at scale revolving primarily around concerns about visibility, productivity and security.

With businesses having been forced to undertake what is essentially the largest scale remote working experiment in history, the genie is now out of the bottle with regards to working remotely.

Benefits for workers include less time commuting and a reduction in associated costs, less distractions, greater time at home with family and more flexibility over office hours.

When done well, it can help add a sense of equilibrium to the challenge of achieving a healthier work-life balance.

In a wide-ranging survey last year, International Workplace Group found that 85% of over 15,000 global businesses confirmed that greater location flexibility lead to an increase in productivity too.

These benefits however must be viewed within the context of the overall employee experience, in a recent survey from The Institute For Employee Studies, 33% of respondents working from home reported feeling isolated while 34% were concerned that decisions would be made without them.

Clearly there are issues to be addressed and finding a balance is crucial in helping to ensure both high levels of productivity and a deeper sense of employee wellbeing.

Offering employees the right tools to do their work remotely is important as is having open lines of communication to encourage collaboration and support a positive work culture that feels inclusive.

This includes virtual meeting and video conferencing, SMS and instant messaging apps, virtual workspaces and more.

Dedicated time for informal social interactions is vital as is clear structure around reporting on progress, knowledge sharing to support problem solving and regular performance and feedback reviews. Setting boundaries between work and leisure hours is important as the lines between ‘office’ and home become blurred.

Managers and leaders can also play a key role in engaging directly with employees, using collaboration tools to help bring teams together, encourage productivity and create a sense of purpose and structure.

As the use of technology and new digital tools becomes more widespread so the supporting role of HR in understanding how these changes affect workers becomes even more nuanced.

Good HR leaders have always been excellent communicators and this strength will be critical in helping employees manage expectations, understand responsibilities and thrive in the new digital, always on work environment.

New rules for everything from meetings to virtual and physical events, new training processes and requirements and even socialising will need to be mapped out and finessed.

So what does all this mean for the future of work and how can businesses best position themselves to benefit employees while driving sustainable, long-term growth?

Digital Transformation And Future Proofing Operations In The New World Business Environment

Investing in a new working model with technology, employee wellbeing and wider business agility at its core is fundamental to future success.

Doing so will require innovative thinking about how and where employees work, the tools they have to do their jobs effectively and new digital workflows that add value to operations.

Post crisis, will we see businesses moving towards a model where offices and company HQs become more collaborative working spaces where employees can set up meetings, work in shorter sprint cycles, meet clients and connect with company culture?

If decoupling workers from the workplace becomes the norm, businesses will need to think about what offices look like and how they work, with fewer desk spaces, more emphasis on collaborative working spaces, meeting rooms that better bridge the gap between virtual and physical presence, and individual focus areas designed to be distraction free zones.

Should this become the new way of work, companies will also likely need less physical space and both HR and IT will have a huge role to play in facilitating a strategic approach that delivers on a clear vision which benefits both fundamental business needs and employee experiences.

Greater collaboration between IT, HR and employees will help build more empathy and better support the adoption of new tech and working processes while tech partners who can provide forward- looking digital infrastructure will be crucial in maximizing new opportunities and helping optimise new workflows.

As businesses get more proficient and comfortable with a remote workforce, hiring opportunities outside home regions and countries of origin becomes more realistic too. Companies will have greater opportunity to attract more diverse global talent with less disruption to working practices than in the past.

With a growing digital workforce, often in various geographical locations, building and maintaining company culture becomes more complex. HR professionals will need to be more involved at a strategic planning level to help ensure that company values are adhered to and that standard practises are widely adopted.

A new form of code of conduct will also need to be reviewed as working environments evolve and employees spend less time at physical company locations. Better long-term strategic planning around how businesses deal with potential disruption must be undertaken too.

IT and HR must have key roles in this planning and increased collaboration will help ensure that both the digital tools and new working processes around them put businesses in a strong position to react to changing business outlooks quickly and intelligently.

This increased collaboration will directly benefit employees as insights into how workers use the new digital workspace will help improve the overall employee experience. With access to better digital tools, workers can work more efficiently and collaborate better with the wider business to improve operational efficiency.

Finally, with both HR and IT helping to make the digital workspace a reality, employees have an opportunity to strike a far more healthy work/life balance.