The corporate landscape has changed as a result of the shift to hybrid working, which offers flexibility and a more balanced approach to work-life integration. But there are drawbacks to this progress as well, especially when it comes to data management, engagement, and collaboration.
Let’s examine some of these challenges.
Employees can now seek flexible working arrangements as soon as they begin their jobs, instead than waiting 26 weeks as was previously the case, thanks to amendments made to UK legislation on April 6. Employees will also be permitted to request more flexibility twice a year under the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023, and they won’t have to justify how their working arrangements would affect the company as a whole. Requests must be answered by employers within two months.
Remote and hybrid working have several advantages. Knowledge workers are more productive when they work from home, according to two Harvard Business Review research. Employees who work remotely are more likely to take responsibility for their work and may be less distracted. But to maximise these digital working benefits you need the right support in place.
1. Overcoming the challenges of collaboration especially when working hybrid
The “silo of one” has become a problem for many companies that provide hybrid working. Team relations may become fragmented as a result of hybrid work, making real-time collaboration more difficult. The impromptu interactions that inspire creativity might often be impeded by geographical distance. Collaboration is clearly valuable to a business, especially one that is struggling with the difficulties of digital working.
71% of HR directors are now more worried about employee collaboration than they were before to the epidemic, according to recent Gartner data. Additionally, according to GoRemotely, 50% of workers are more engaged when they work in group settings.
That collaboration and teamwork are critical to success is not new. And technology provides people with more options for collaboration. The key is that business leaders need to intentionally create collaboration opportunities for their hybrid and remote workers. The payoff, according to Gartner5, is greater levels of innovation.
Solution: Enhance collaboration by making it easy and frictionless
Creating ways to collaborate means making access to digital workspaces available to the entire workforce. If the organisation uses Microsoft Teams, for example, everyone should be able to access Teams from wherever they are and on any device.
Atlas integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, facilitating real-time collaboration and communication. Its centralized knowledge platform ensures that team members, regardless of location, can access and contribute to shared projects and information.
Making collaboration easy and frictionless is another way to break down silos. If people need to switch to another digital application to chat to a team member, share a document or make notes everyone can see in real-time, collaboration becomes a burden. Enabling people to collaborate in the flow of work, as Atlas does, keeps people focused and makes collaboration productive and rewarding.
2. Engagement can be hard with hybrid working
Maintaining employee engagement in a hybrid setup requires effort. Without regular face-to-face interactions, employees might feel disconnected from the organization’s culture and goals. The physical presence of our co-workers is something we’ve taken for granted. Being in the same physical space keeps us on the same page and reminds us we’re part of a team. Without it, it’s harder to stay engaged. And as a leader, it can be difficult for you to motivate your staff when you don’t know what might be affecting their morale.
Solution: Boost engagement with knowledge
People are increasingly accustomed to a more social digital experience, even at work. Knowledge plays a huge part in how engaged employees are. At the core of the thinking behind Atlas is the idea that knowledge needs to be captured, shared, democratised. When people can tap into all available knowledge, they work smarter and better and are more engaged in their work. Therefore, by centralizing corporate knowledge and resources, Atlas helps sustain a sense of belonging and alignment with organizational goals, enhancing employee engagement and participation.
3. Lower barriers to adoption
Teaching people new things is difficult! Even more so when you’re trying to teach someone a piece of technology using that technology – a situation many of us found ourselves in with remote working software. It’s slow-going getting people up to speed with new solutions.
Having a company intranet with a help centre full of how-to videos, FAQs and forums where people can ask questions helps employees learn how to use new technology and processes and troubleshoot issues.
Solution: Streamline adoption with familiar tools
When things are designed with a people-first principle they become more user-friendly and easier to figure out. With its intuitive interface and integration with familiar tools like Microsoft 365, Atlas lowers barriers to adoption, encouraging employees to embrace new technologies with minimal resistance.
4. From sprawl of data to a unified experience
As people spread out, so do their files. Slow internet connections, VPN difficulties, and clunky legacy software can lead employees to store information wherever they can access in the moment. Often this isn’t a place anyone else would think to look! Annoying in the office – disastrous when working remotely.
Read Also: Hybrid Work Culture: Building a Strong Remote Team Culture
The decentralization inherent in hybrid models exacerbates data sprawl, with information scattered across various platforms and locations, leading to inefficiencies.
Solution: Unified data and experience
Atlas automatically tags content when it’s saved, making it easily searchable. Atlas centralizes information, making it easier for people to find what they’re looking for. Instead of having to search for a document in email, chat and a SharePoint library, for example, a single search query will collate all related information.
Atlas takes this principle further, using tools and AI to target and customise content and surface all knowledge relevant to the context. This means that people find knowledge even if they didn’t know it was available and get the information most relevant to them. Serving up relevant and requested information also helps filter out ‘noise’ and distractions.
5. Hard-to-find resources
Locating specific documents or data becomes time-consuming, impacting productivity and decision-making. This is especially more difficult for new employees who have to navigate an idiosyncratic shared file system. It’s important for information to be shared intuitively so that people can find what they need.
The user-experience needs to be simply and friendly. A fast, comprehensive search experience is essential. Information and people who can help need to be easily found and contacted and knowledge sharing should be applauded.
Solution: Accessible resources on one platform
Atlas provides a unified experience of the information you need to get your work done, combined with powerful search capabilities and enhanced with AI. This ensures that employees can quickly find the resources they need, boosting productivity and efficiency.
6. Too many apps
The proliferation of applications meant to aid productivity often leads to confusion and app fatigue among employees. According to RingCentral the average person has 60-90 apps and 69% of workers waste up to an hour per day navigating between them all. Ugh!
This has been exacerbated by digital working as people juggle communications software on top of collaboration platforms, as well as all the programs they use for their primary job.
Solution: App consolidation
A solution like Atlas provides a single digital platform from which you can access all the apps you use at work. By offering a comprehensive suite of collaboration, knowledge management, and productivity tools, Atlas reduces the need for multiple apps, alleviating app overload. Even better, Atlas provides a more intuitive, user-friendly interface to Microsoft 365 technology making it easier to use and allowing you to use it in the flow of work. Being able to access all the digital tools you need in one place is a valuable hybrid working solution.
7. Too many silos
Outside the physical workspace it’s easy for teams and individuals to become insular. Lack of communication can end up with people duplicating each other’s work or failing to share vital knowledge. This is a costly inefficiency – poor communication and collaboration costs UK companies £8,000 per employee, every year, according to a report by Mitel.
Solution: Break down silos
Changing silos requires a cultural shift, one that values knowledge and rewards those who share it readily. Atlas promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration across departments, breaking down silos and fostering a more cohesive organizational culture. Atlas supports this by centralizing information, collaboration and communication. In other words, you don’t need to leave the application you’re working in to email a file to someone or to search for a document. By removing the friction of these tasks, you allow people to work across team boundaries freely.
8. Security concerns
The expanded digital footprint of hybrid work introduces complex security challenges, with increased risks of data breaches and cyberattacks.With employees logging in remotely, new vulnerabilities are created. These are exacerbated if frustration with slow legacy software leads people to use unauthorised programs for file sharing or digital communication. And IT support is more complicated to manage from a distance, leading people to seek their own workarounds for problems.
Solution: Robust security for hybrid work model
Technology like Microsoft 365 has underlying infrastructure features that support your security requirements. Added to that, Atlas ensures that data is protected, supporting secure access and collaboration in a hybrid work model. Atlas also provides a user-friendly interface that enables people to self-serve within the governance framework set by your IT team.
9. Fatigue
The blurring of boundaries between work and home can lead to burnout and fatigue, affecting employee well-being and performance. Many businesses have attempted to address remote working challenges by creating a ‘virtual office’. But trying to simulate the physical office has proven to be counterproductive. “[Many] of the strategies that organisations are employing to ensure productivity are actually exacerbating these fatigue drivers, says Alexia Cambon, Gartner. ”
Solution: Mitigate fatigue
Fatigue can be eased when managers instead focus on taking advantage of the flexibility and opportunities of digital working. Encouraging conscious collaboration is key. Atlas’s efficient organization of information, helps employees manage their workload more effectively, contributing to a healthier work-life balance and reducing burnout.
In addition, tools like Microsoft Viva Insights offers employees and their managers ways to manage this, including booking in ‘focus time’ and identifying trends work trends that can either be healthy and therefore encouraged or unhealthy and therefore can be addressed.
Bottom Line
Yes, working remotely or hybridally has its issues, but there are also opportunities and solutions for digital working. These solutions can be found in everything from technology to changes in management and organizational culture. You can use this checklist to see how your organization is addressing these new work problems.
- Setting clear expectations
- Providing the proper tools and support
- Making communication mindful and strategic
- Creating inclusive employee experiences
Cultural shifts like democratizing knowledge, establishing clear expectations, and permitting flexible working can be supported by a strong digital working solution. It offers a concrete remedy in the form of an online platform for communication, collaboration, and information gathering. Additionally, it promotes inclusion and employee engagement by making it simpler for everyone to obtain information and resources and complete their work. To put it briefly, a strong digital workspace assists individuals and companies in overcoming the difficulties associated with remote and hybrid working.
