Cord-Cutting Hits the Enterprise as Employees Become Anywhere Workers

Did you know that sixty percent of U.S. households have cut the cord, removing traditional phone “landlines” from their homes? Mobile devices are now pervasive, making home lines redundant. But more so, how people communicate is also radically changing. This is starting to play out at work as well. Employees are choosing mobile devices over their desktop phones. Yet, enterprises everywhere still invest inordinate amounts in desktop technology and maintenance. With the rise of cloud apps and services, IT now needs to look at where they can make small and big impacts within the organization not just to improve operations but to also keep employees productive and happy.

I recently published a new research report with DialPad that explores the rise of the “Anywhere Worker” and how it’s setting the stage for the future of work. You can download it here. Please note, there’s an email gate.

The Rise of Anywhere Workers

Do people really need phone lines anymore?

Traditional phones simply cannot keep pace with the universal reach and impact of the internet and mobile innovation. Beyond voice calling on mobile devices, consumers now also communicate and network through an abundance of apps. They text, FaceTime, Hangout, Snap, Instagram message, use Facebook Messenger, Tweet, WeChat, Line, live stream, et al. And, every day, new devices, apps, and trends continue to shape how we communicate.

While this is happening in the home, what’s happening in the workplace? Employees are progressively opting out of desktop phones there as well. Like at home, they choose to use their mobile devices or laptops to communicate.

This ultimately creates headaches for IT, as the historical experience of updating enterprise communications technologies to a unified communications (UC) or pure- cloud system is daunting, expensive, and not a priority on their roadmap.

IT obviously has many efforts that require immediate and long-term attention. Investments such as updating enterprise resource planning (ERP) and CRM systems can often take years. At the same time, modern business communications and productivity solutions can be rolled out in a fraction of the amount of time. This creates a critical opportunity for IT leaders to improve employee communication, collaboration, and productive at enterprise scale with more immediate ROI.

Those companies that make the move will also recognize that it’s not nearly as daunting or expensive as many people perceive it to be.

Cord-cutting is Affecting the Future of Work

Welcome to the new world of the Anywhere Worker, which is having a massive impact on how IT should adopt technology. Employees need digital freedom at work the way they do at home. This takes more than technology; it takes a new mindset to re- imagine, simplify, and improve the future of work. It’s time to rethink the relationship between IT, agile technology, and the needs and expectations of your employees.

Being chained to a desk, commuting, desktop computers, meetings, email, intranets, training, etc., are relics from a bygone era of work. In fact, how employees want to work versus how they actually have to work is leading to lower employee productivity and happiness. Every day, more employees opt- in to cutting the cord at both home and the office.

According to research from Global Workplace Analytics, employees at Fortune 1,000 companies are not at their desks 50% to 60% of the time. A new survey from Dialpad found that only 19% of respondents worked at a desk 40 or more hours per week. Fifty-three percent stated that the desk phone is outdated, and nearly one-third of respondents believe desk phones won’t exist three years from now.

Yet still, 66% of companies provide employees with desk phones, even though 75% of employees prefer a mobile smartphone over a desk phone for business calls. According to IDG, these unused phone systems come at an average cost of $8.1 million for every enterprise, a significant investment for an outdated technology that doesn’t fulfill today’s employee needs.

Employees are more empowered than ever to work from anywhere in the world within their current roles and job parameters. In fact, working remotely in the United States grew by almost 80% between 2005 and 2012.

Whether you agree with the philosophy of telecommuting, the reality is, employees are demanding that part of their work time can be spent wherever they want. In fact, there are upsides in empowering them to do so. A recent Gallup State of the American Workplace report found that people who work remotely are more engaged, enthusiastic, and committed to their work.

It’s highly recommend that IT/CIOs review all usage of their existing systems to see the true impact on productivity and employee satisfaction. It also helps to survey your employees prior to making any decision that affects how they work. User-centered strategies can save time, money and headaches later while also communicating to employees that their input is important. And, when you examine the data on what employees want and what makes them more productive, it’s clear that IT and HR need to accelerate the pace of transformation.

The Evolution from BYOD to BYOD+Apps

The Anywhere Worker is just that: someone who can work anywhere. To work well from anywhere, they must have the right tools at their disposal. This means that the days of “bring your own device,” or BYOD, have also evolved.

Anywhere Workers may begin their day on the phone in bed, perhaps they transition to their tablet over coffee, continue with their laptop at a nearby café, and end their day with their mobile device on the couch. The future of work is quickly becoming BYOD+Apps where employees bring their own app-filled devices anywhere. Where people work goes beyond the office, or even hotels and airports. Now, people are choosing environments that are more social or scenic such as restaurants, cafes, and public areas.

What’s starting to become clearer is that Anywhere Workers also want to change how they work as well as the technologies they use to do so. The cloud is enabling people at work and home to mobilize, untethered from legacy systems.

For instance, more progressive companies are investing in productivity suites, such as Google Apps for Work and Microsoft Office 365 because they help workers operate in any environment. For those companies that don’t yet provide a cloud-based suite that works anywhere on any device, employees hack the way they work.

That means they will use their own devices (61% bring their personal mobile phone to work) and apps to get work done their way.

Employee Happiness is Defined by How They Work and How They Can’t Work

Whether IT or HR realizes, employee needs and methods become more important than protocol. While frustrating, the stark truth is that employees value this way of working to the point that they would consider leaving a company to move to an organization that understands and supports their mobility.

When employees were asked if mobility was key to joining a company, a resounding 82.9% said yes. As a result, Anywhere Workers raise new demands from IT to rapidly implement cloud-based technologies that by default define a new business paradigm and ultimately the evolution of work. Digitally transforming organizations now need to consider many different cloud-based apps and platforms that bring with them benefits.

One such benefit is something that IT rarely measures: employee happiness. When asked if flexibility to work anywhere would make employees happy, 83.5% said yes. An additional 78.6% believe that remote work flexibility would improve their overall creativity, and 77.5% believe it would improve their overall productivity.

People want to work differently whether IT enables this or not. The next big thing in digital and business transformation is designing a more relevant and productive employee experience to empower the Anywhere Worker today and over the next several years.  This is a new call for CIOs to evaluate where they can make more focused and precise investments that carry significant impact and ROI. This is also a call to HR to explore new aspects of employee happiness. Taking a human-centered approach offers incredible promise to boost efficiencies, create better products and customer experiences, and increase longevity of the workforce. 

Brian Solis is the author of X: Where Business Meets Design. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn. Brian is also available to speak at your next event or meeting.