This is a guest blog post by Dion Hinchcliffe, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. This post originally appeared on the Constellation Research blog.
Over the last year, the world has undergone a true work revolution the likes of which has never quite happened before now, as it did in 2020. What’s more, this revolution took place more quickly than just about anyone thought it could or would. Accompanying the many changes that have happened are new business contingency methods which have been employed during the pandemic that were only possible because of recent technology trends like widespread internet connectivity, the cloud, and mobile devices.
46 million people in the U.S. alone have been able to rapidly shift physical work location over the last year due to these new digital tools. This now marks the moment in history as the first time the impacts of a pandemic have been addressed so thoroughly with a rapid and pervasive digital response. Digital transformation of work, at least during a crisis, was achieved in an incredibly short period.
The majority of knowledge workers have now shifted their primary employee experience to their residence or remote office. They’ve also largely stayed productive, despite their dislocation and physical disconnection from the office. In a remarkably short time, the resulting work upheaval in the real world has been considerably resolved, enabled, and buffered in most cases by technology in a way that has prevented far worse economic damage which could have resulted (and that we’ve seen across other areas of the global economy).
Nevertheless, this year’s challenges remain, both complex and interconnected. New and countervailing trends have also come into play, as the rapid global expansion of working from home has simultaneously created millions of appealing new — but poorly-protected — digital targets for bad actors to exploit. Cybersecurity threats and budgets will be at an all time high in 2021, just as workers and organizations seek to minimize disruption in their lives and surroundings.
Staying abreast and getting a handle on these momentous shifts is a daunting task for those charged with navigating this rapidly unfolding new future of work for their organizations. Just tracking the changes that happened to the way people worked during 2020 has been an ongoing challenge. Yet it’s an urgent subject to monitor and understand so that organizations can intelligently manage their present situation, as well as guide their future direction. This is especially true as we prepare to address the future of work needs and unlock potential in 2021 and beyond.
The Digital Big Picture of Changing Work
There are three major trends influencing the future of work at this significant moment in history:
- Rapid shifts in business operations, due to aforementioned global pandemic situations combined with secondary impacts from the resulting economic downturn and social unease.
- A convergence of global technology and business trends, most significantly high-speed internet access to most homes, widely available new cloud computing services, fast yet inexpensive wireless mobile devices, and the recently-arrived debut/proliferation of 5G.
- A continued exponential tech evolution in the background driving steady and often disruptive change, regardless of other trends.
Collectively, these shifts are fostering one of the most dynamic environments in history for dramatic changes and improvements in the future of work, which was highlighted in recent the “Work 2035” research report by Citrix in conjunction with Coleman Parkes.
- High-speed internet access. The era of remote work is unequivocally divided into two historical epochs: before fast Internet connection was widely available to most people and after. The latter was when virtually any amount of data needed to do one’s job could be easily tapped remotely or when a worker could readily engage in multipoint video calls. This has made remote work possible for most knowledge workers today. Soon, new so-called satellite “megaconstellations” launched by Elon Musk and others will bring the internet to virtually every corner of the earth, truly revolutionizing many areas of employment.
- Cloud computing services for digital work. For businesses, the industry has now reached the definitive breakthrough for the cloud as the preeminent delivery platform for the digital workspace and employee experience going forward. Cloud-hosted services now make it possible to put a digital employee experience anywhere in the world there is moderate internet connectivity and keep workers effective, engaged, and productive there.
- A better digital work experience. A new, rapidly-evolving employee experience has emerged that is more integrated, available anywhere, multi-channel, assistive, automated, personalized, and contextual. Substantial changes are continuing to come to most workers’ day-to-day journeys to make their digital lives far more streamlined, proactively enabled, and better organized.
- A better focus on and organization of digital work. Businesses are now busy deploying new tools and programs for worker learning, skill building, retraining, and upskilling. Digital work skills have become a top new priority as a core talent retention and sustainability model. This is especially true of next-generation digital literacy in the face of the recent mass global moves to remote work/work from home. Many companies prefer to downsize or cut costs through natural attrition, then use digital education to bring existing workers up to speed quickly or augment the missing workforce with just-in-time automation programs.
- A better focus on and organization of digital work. Businesses are now busy deploying new tools and programs for worker learning, skill building, retraining, and upskilling. Digital work skills have become a top new priority as a core talent retention and sustainability model. This is especially true of next-generation digital literacy in the face of the recent mass global moves to remote work/work from home. Many companies are preferring to downsize or cut costs through natural attrition, and then use digital education to bring existing workers up to speed quickly or augment the missing workforce with just-in-time automation programs.
- A more proactive IT support model. Endpoint management has become one of the top challenges as organizations go from having a few locations to many thousands of operational locations, mostly at workers’ homes. Waiting for workers to experience support issues and deal with cybersecurity incidents on their own is no longer acceptable. Organizations are increasingly taking a proactive stance to ensure workers have uptime and quality functioning of their remote digital workspace.
- A digital replacement of the physical workspace. There were useful qualities in the in-person workspace, such as ability to have a shared awareness and culture, as well as the ability to quickly engage in impromptu collaboration. New means of replicating these features are being explored by enterprises in the latest virtual meeting and event capabilities, seeking to recover the loss of the physical workspace.
- More holistic employee experience programs. There is a renewed interest and effort by many organizations to more comprehensively encompass the entire employee journey in a consistent digital environment. These efforts seek to take a worker’s well-being, personal growth, contribution awareness, and personal/business purpose much more into account in the digital work experience. These aspects are increasingly being woven into and across the main work experience by applying digital analytics, process tracking, sentiment measurement, and other feedback mechanisms, from and to the worker. The goal, as with preventative medicine, is to proactively measure, detect, diagnose, and address the real-time conditions of the worker more effectively in a systemic and overarching way. Examples include digital employee recognition programs that automatically identify major achievements and distribute congratulations to co-workers appropriately. Another example is wellness surveys that detect physical and mental health conditions early enough to intervene. Such programs would not have one or two such capabilities, but a larger interlocking set aimed at the worker’s overall condition.
- Acquiring resiliency and avoiding fragility. Organizations now seek a new emphasis on making the workplace more resilient to change and major exceptions, through new digital strategy, planning, operations, and especially, security programs. More proactive reviews of digital capabilities and governance are being put into place so that disruptions are less likely to create impact. Examples include stronger and more dynamic cybersecurity defenses and better funded, staffed, and regularly tested contingency and disaster recovery plans.
Watch Constellation’s New Future of Work Reality Show Above To Explore the Trends Described Here
Where to Uplevel for the Best 2021 Digital Workspace
The world learned a tremendous amount in 2020 about the strengths and weakness of our current digital workforce capabilities. The top technology considerations — along with their priorities — which have emerged and are likely to be prioritized to support the remote or more distributed workforce are:
- Remote work “dial tone.” Bandwidth and access considerations have made new work practices like all-day multipoint video sessions for all workers, no matter where they live, is still creating challenges that will drive companies to more rapidly adopt next-gen connectivity including 5G and emerging satellite solutions to ensure business continuity. Priority: Highest
- Protection and safety of worker endpoints. Cybersecurity regimes in most organizations will continue to require rather substantial upgrades and reinforcements in the face of worldwide shifts in endpoints, worker locations, major new exploits, and changes in equipment. Consequently, new highly intelligent and dynamic cybersecurity capabilities and enabling the (either partially or fully) remote workforce built on a zero-trust model and/or VPN-alternatives approach such as low-footprint yet high performance digital desktops will be a major focus area though 2021 ad beyond. As such, cybersecurity regimes in most organizations will continue to require quite substantial reinforcement. Priority: High
- A more enabling employee experience. Next-generation employee experience platforms are being widely sought to deliver the new all-digital, 100 percent remote workspaces that have emerged. These will be much more integrated, seamless, contextual, and personalized, as well as infused with artificial intelligence (AI) assistants and digital adoption features, as well as other wellbeing and health monitoring features in best-in-class organizations. Priority: High
- Mobile channel parity. A continued push to make the digital workspace for mobile devices have full parity with PCs for remote workers. Priority: Medium
- Measurement to drive digital work performance. Talent analytics will become a new major management capability in many organizations to make performance visibility and management much easier in remote work digital silos. Priority: Medium
- Improved remote work. A new generation of applications designed to address the potential downsides of remote work will continue to emerge and be adopted. These will include worker status dashboards, meeting tools that return the feel of intimacy in a physical office, the first great VR/AR meeting and collaboration tools, and many other innovative advances. Priority: Medium
- Hybrid, no-compromise digital worker enablement. Next-generation hybrid employee experience platforms designed to deliver the new all-digital, 100 percent remote workspaces that have emerged. Most organizations will now will likely realize a maximally flexible work model, which is distributed between in-office for those returning, work from home, and the growing remote option from anywhere. Priority: Medium
The digital transformation of knowledge work has been profound for many of those impacted by COVID-19. While the changes have been challenging, many are ultimately welcome and needed in an increasingly distributed and diverse world. While digital technologies are not a universal panacea for the widespread and difficult challenges of a global pandemic, organizations have been able to build a working digital foundation in short order.
But a basic digital work foundation is not enough. More must be done by the average organization to make a more livable, sustainable, and flexible digital work experience. The solution space outlined here is a strong beginning from which to start. Ultimately, it will be the organizations willing to make the necessary steps to increase the maturity of their newfound state of digital work — along the lines laid out above — that will reap the most substantial benefits in terms of talent acquisition, retention, and business growth. Next-generation employee experience platforms will have to be much more integrated, seamless, contextual and personalized. In the next part in this series we’ll take a pragmatic look at how to truly rebuild our disrupted digital employee experience, with the digital workspace as a foundation of those endeavors.
Additional Reading
- Reimagining the Post-2020 Employee Experience
- It’s Time to Think About the Post-2020 Employee Experience
- How Work Will Evolve in a Digital Post-Pandemic Society
- Revisiting How to Cultivate Connected Organizations in an Age of Coronavirus
- Working in a coronavirus world: Strategies and tools for staying productive | ZDNet
- A Checklist for a Modern Core Digital Workplace and/or Intranet
- Creating the Modern Digital Workplace and Employee Experience
- The Challenging State of Employee Experience and Digital Workplace Today
