Why the future of hybrid work is mobility
Did you know that Spain now offers a ‘digital nomad’ visa? You can live in the country for up to five years, work anywhere you like and only pay 15% tax [1]. Imagine it.
If you’re thinking, ‘sounds great, sign me up’, you’re not alone. Almost 60% of Americans say they want the opportunity to work at least some of the time from home, or a location of their choice that isn’t the office [2]. And employers are listening.
Seventy-four percent of US firms now offer hybrid working [3]. In a tight talent market, firms are giving employees what they want. And they’re realizing other benefits, such as lowering costs on office space, that also give them a competitive advantage.
But that begs the question, are those companies properly equipped for this new way of working? One of the biggest gaps we at AT&T see in how companies are preparing for this new reality is in the way they treat employee smartphones.
The rise of the smartphone
In the United States, 64% of us use smartphones for work [4]. But in most companies, smartphones are far less likely than other devices to be part of the enterprise communications and collaboration ecosystem.
And that matters. On the most basic level, if you don’t control the transport layer, you can’t manage?quality of service. If your employee smartphones aren’t properly integrated into the corporation’s communications platform, data from the phone may not find its way to the right destination. Meetings go unlogged, calls unrecorded, calendars unsynced.
That lost information translates into lost productivity and lost opportunities. The answer is to treat smartphones in the same way we do PCs, laptops and tablets — integrate them into the company’s communications infrastructure, with adherence to corporate policies providing an enhanced network experience especially during times of network congestion, and the ability to connect securely to all the necessary enterprise applications.
Even that is just the base layer for the kind of service companies should expect for their employee smartphones. The next step is to look at how your cell phones integrate specific features with enterprise-wide systems.
For instance, do your cell phones save voicemail to the same system as your desktop phones and your messaging platforms? They should. Can your company smartphones elevate an audio call into a video meeting? ?Again, they ought to.
With the right unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform, all these things are possible. We know that the future of work is hybrid but also mobile — that is to say, people won’t just move between home and work, they’ll also work from a range of different locations.
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Companies which realize this early on, and build communications and collaboration infrastructure accordingly, will enjoy a competitive advantage over their less nimble and technologically less adept competitors.
To support the rise of mobile working, the future of collaboration must be fit for multi-location working, and that means company smartphones must be an integral part of it. Already today 62% say their smartphones make them more productive at work [5]. The leaders of tomorrow will be the enterprises that take this number as a starting point and do what it takes to make it higher.
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1 年Enabling companies to support hybrid workforce is trully a game changer! Exciting news.