Employee Empowerment: A New Future of Work

Whether you are an established global enterprise or an evolving startup, the repercussions of the ongoing pandemic are something all of us must cope and manage. Being told to transition your entire workforce, or at least most of it, to remote working techniques have caught the best of businesses off-guard. As businesses have been operating remotely for the last couple of months, there has never been a better scenario when technology has proven to be the helping hand every enterprise needed when their chips were down.

While the pandemic has presented us with a rather ambiguous future, it has also introduced to us, a chance to reinvent and reshape the workplace for the new normal post COVID-19. While most of us have been talking about the new normal – a new way in which work, life, leadership and business will function post the pandemic, one of the major aspects that ensures smooth functioning of any business – large or small, are its employees. In the current situation, the most affected part of the business is its people and hence this situation is helping bring back the focus on employees. One such key part of the people aspect is employee empowerment. With remote work is becoming mainstream – improving employee engagement & productivity through employee empowerment is becoming a big focus.

Empowering Employees – the key to braving the lockdown

For any organization to function together and for the employees to feel a sense of belonging, culture and employee experience are key. Businesses with a more thoughtful and empathetic approach toward supporting their employees have a better chance of pulling out of this storm together. Amidst rising importance of digital transformation, enabling and empowering your employees with the necessary tools to ensure smooth remote working can go a long way in helping businesses tackle business continuity more efficiently.  Since technology is going to play a pivotal role in enabling remote work - adopting remote collaboration tools and digitally enabled environments to ensure work-as-usual for employees, has become an important focus area for every CIO.  

Driving Employee Transition through Technology

Although most of us are working remotely today, the much talked about future, inclusive of the new normal, is standing right in front of us. As businesses return to offices post the coronavirus-induced lockdown, technology is yet again set to be at the heart of every workplace. From the perspective of employee experience, companies will look to not only make workplaces more secure but also deliver services to their clients differently through enhanced surveillance and faster processes. Leveraging technologies like automation and artificial intelligence (AI) would play an important role in defining work in the post-COVID-19 world. Besides, cloud-based solutions that had become popular a decade ago, will now form the core of any IT toolbox. The most important application of cloud would be in digital workspaces. Hence, by encouraging the use of secure remote access tools and a combination of tech solutions, the post Covid-19 world is going to be about striking the right balance between employees and technology. Traditionally experience, choice and security have always worked at expense of each other – but in remote work scenario with employees asking for BYOD option (their choice of device and not company provided hardened machines), most IT traffic generating from employees’ place of choice (and not branch offices), application and data flowing over public networks (and not corporate WAN) and with many applications moving to public cloud (and not company datacenter) – enterprise architecture will have to be redrawn and security being thought through from a much wider perspective.

Embracing the New Normal

A few hardened organizational “myths”, like large scale remote working not being possible, have been dispelled by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It has forced companies to relook at how they interact with key stakeholders and plan working in the “new normal”. Among the many changes that this crisis has ushered in, workplace flexibility has been the one in reckoning. As the % of population on young employees continues to increase – these employees are going to demand workplace flexibility as a basic need or condition of employment. With the World Health Organization (WHO) also warning of a possible second wave of the virus in upcoming months, no business can let their guards down once the lockdowns are lifted. Despite the economic compulsions, things cannot go back to how they were when we were last in the office, at least until we find a permanent remedy. Ensuring the employees’ well-being along with business outcomes must take priority. As the rebuilding phase gathers pace, the need for employees to feel valued and included is higher than ever. A CIO’s role in ensuring digital transformation through better remote working and collaborative innovations for employees, will be key to driving business growth. The role of HR and CHRO will also evolve and will renew the focus on employee engagement, productivity, and facilities.

As work-life balance moves towards work-life integration, organizations will continue to learn, unlearn, and grow through this rather steep learning curve. Employee engagement can truly prosper when people having the right technological tools, have the freedom to create and innovate, are connected regardless of their physical location, and most importantly know that what they do really matters. This is exactly why this is not just a post pandemic phenomenon; it is the future of work story – the one which is going to be driven by employee empowerment.