New Tools for New Ways of Working

Parvis des Talents is a self-help group for French-speaking people, some in professional transition, and living in the Greater Zurich area. Based on sharing and developing the professional network, it is also a perfect place for exchanging knowledge and a possible laboratory for new ideas. 

We took advantage of the lockdown to develop and showcase a Zoom webinar including a live demo, perfectly in line with this period: New tools for new ways of working.

During one month, we (Jerome, Xavier and Cécile) set up this training using only collaborative tools, allowing us to understand and fully adhere to this new way of working. The webinar is perfectly replicable across your company or organization, and we will be pleased to come and present it to you.

“The way we think, form opinions, and assimilate information today is different from what it was two decades ago. We have very little time, opportunity, or inclination for reflection. And yet we have to think, reflect, and absorb, from a constant and abundant flow of information.” F. Goulding & H. Shaughnessy, FLOW

The “Old” Corporate World

Emails and meetings have been for long the most standard way to bring people together at work and to foster collaboration. This is not without challenges for the teams and their individual members. While many workers confess that email management remains a very heavy daily task, they also question the true effectiveness of many of the meetings they attend. In environments where more and more people are expected to work remotely, this opens up some room for improvement where new collaboration tools can help in two folds.

Reduce and displace traffic

One way to start is to make your email and meeting management more effective in reducing their amount, by increasing their quality and transferring what can be communicated in a more optimal way. The most obvious example is the use of instant messaging instead of emails for quick information sharing within small remote teams or eliminating long strings of casual non urgent one-to-one emails in your inbox. More sophisticated collaboration platforms allow nowadays to integrate such messaging with other features, again minimizing non critical communication.

Utilizing the liberated time to better collaborate

The time that you have now saved with a more effective collaboration must not be filled in with new emails or ineffective meetings. This a time which you can use on the most value added activities, e.g. enabling better decision making to execute your strategy, focusing on customers and suppliers, mentoring your future talents, partnering with your cross-functional stakeholders, and why not, spending more time to advance your own personal projects.

Not only thinking out of the box about the way you can better use new tools and achieve your goals every day is a great way to learn about the latest technology developments but being more effective will certainly bring you a better sense of accomplishment. A win-win for all as one says!

Tools for the Future of Work

Corporate Trends

The Covid-19 crisis forced us to change many habits we had and use new tools & systems… But is it a complete revolution? Not really. The trend was here earlier, and people adopted the new tools quickly when they were introduced.

So, what are those new Corporate Trends? Which buzzwords are revolving around the Future of Work?

This all leads to new expectations, focus, and needs for the workforce, and results in new behaviors, rulesets, and, obviously, systems and tools.

Pros and Cons

Yet, there still is a need to balance the decision to introduce and use these new tools - for your company, and for you!

Indeed, there are great opportunities for productivity, such as portability (multi-platform) and collaboration (multi-users), availability (accessible everywhere, always backuped), and the usability and visualization capabilities render better communication outcomes.

But it does come together with critical challenges: dealing with data protection & control (ownership, privacy, security), internal competition with enterprise standards (shadow IT) and with resistance to change by users, not to mention tool lifecycle issues (maturity, sustainability).

Worth mentioning: costs and the capability of integration in the current IT landscape can be seen both as pro and con. This is caused by the fact that the business models of the software manufacturers are still evolving, and that market consolidation is currently happening.

“This current wave of digital transformation is driven by a great need for fast, safe and reliable software solutions because the customer experience now lives on apps and sites, and software is what makes them functional, beautiful and successful.” Forbes, What The Software Tools Market Consolidation Means For Enterprises, Dec’2019

A good way to assess whether a tool is mature and relevant enough for a possible introduction is to build and maintain a Tech Radar (Hold, Assess, Trial, Adopt), increasing awareness and easing decision-making. It balances innovation risks and adoption, and enables the alignment between IT and the business.

Tooling Categories

Most of the tooling categories are impacted and each vendor faces fierce competition to become the tool of choice and de facto standard. This is especially relevant in industry-neutral categories (task management, communication, file sharing, etc.).

In industry-specific categories (bespoke tools) or for typical enterprise tools (ERP, CRM), the choice for alternatives is not yet very broad. Additionally, new tools appear every day, so the list is never final.

Wrap-Up & Next Steps

To sum up, the world is changing, whether we like it or not, with its positive and less positive sides. So be aware of those changes!

Most of these new tools and collaborative ways of working are user friendly and should reduce complexity. So try, play, experiment, be curious!

As change is on the way, embrace it: be an early adopter, act as a change agent and be ready for the next change!

And if you are also transitioning - willingly or not - it is a perfect opportunity to make use of your free time, to continue learning and fill up your toolbox - be an active learner!

We hope that you enjoy reading this article as much as we enjoyed creating this webinar. If you want to know more, feel free to contact us or Parvis des Talents.

Jér?me, Xavier and Cécile

Sources & inspiration:

• CloudApp The 11 Best Productivity Apps for 2020
• Go Skills The Best Tools for Your Remote Team
• Forbes The Evolution Of The Employee
• Future of Work in 2 Minutes | Work Tools #1 (video)
• Apple at Work - The Underdogs (video)
• A Millennial Job Interview (video)