BUSINESS

During the first stage of the lockdown in the spring, almost half of Brits worked remotely, causing businesses to completely rethink their working structures. Employees too have re-examined the traditional working day and now as many as 72 per cent of UK employees want to continue working from home, at least part-time. They state that working remotely helps them increase productivity and offers a better work-life balance. This sentiment from workers coupled with strong financial motivation for companies to continue to support distributed workforces, it seems unlikely we’ll ever return to the office in exactly the same form as before Covid-19.

In fact, for many, the office nine-to-five is already in the past. Instead, the pandemic has accelerated the trend of “nomadic work”, where a healthy percentage of employees can work from absolutely anywhere. This helps workers find the balance that works for them, whether that’s sometimes in the office, a couple of days from home or even working while travelling.

Covid-19 has proved that where we work isn’t as important as we thought. Instead it is how we work, and the outcome of that work, that’s critical.

The pandemic has thrown companies into a moment of shock-change, as they have had to determine nearly overnight how to support a now-remote workforce. How, when and where we work changed, making maintaining productivity on the right work in this new environment incredibly difficult.

Realigning on what it means to be productive – and how to measure that productivity – is now essential for companies. The notion of a structured, on-premisis workday where activity could be observed and continually calibrated is a thing of the past. And yet, in order to navigate the current and future state to positive business outcomes, this new distributed workforce must function as an interdependent web that consistently generates not just output, but focused and strategic outcomes.

For some businesses the move to remote working was a new concept, and they experienced a sudden, greater dependency on technologies they had not typically used before. Zoom, Teams and Slack have become defining tools amid the pandemic, with many individuals using them both to continue business operations and socialise with colleagues they otherwise could not see physically. It was a fast and simple way to connect colleagues who were suddenly working in isolation.

When the pandemic struck, the question most leaders focused on was simply: “how do we keep everyone talking?” And while that was an important first step, the fact

that the workforce could communicate didn’t necessarily mean they had the support they needed to engage fully in the right work.

Strategic work needs more than just communication, it requires constant connection between the day-to-day work (wherever it happens), and the prioritised objectives of the business.

Present and future work requires that companies meet employees where they are, with the right processes and technologies to support them in becoming, and staying, engaged with both each other, and on work aligned to strategic objectives.

Collaboration technologies have seen a huge surge in uptake as leaders look for ways to keep their newly nomadic workforce productive. And while most collaboration tools can help teams coordinate and complete tasks and projects, without broader connectivity to systems, teams and departments across the rest of the business their impact is limited.

Tasks and projects themselves do not exist on islands. They require budget and personnel data from financial and human capital management systems to properly allocate and manage resources. Many projects require compliance oversight from legal and regulatory departments. Work also happens in specialised applications such as Jira, ServiceNow and Adobe.

Unless collaboration tools can integrate with the data, and processes happening in those and other applications, work stays siloed, and employees and leaders have limited context and visibility into why and how work is – or is not – progressing toward the right outcomes. Work management engages your team, wherever they are

Work management practices and platforms are fundamentally different to collaboration applications. Instead of focusing solely on connecting people and teams, they are designed to connect strategy to delivery. This shift in approach absolutely requires that nomadic workers are outfitted with the right communication and collaboration support, and then goes several steps further.

Enterprise work management platforms also integrate work and data across people, systems and departments, providing context and connection for frontline workers, and visibility and navigation for leaders. Wherever they’re working, each person has what they need to do their best work, and the assurance that their work is making an essential contribution to a larger whole.

The pandemic meant businesses had to take a deep look at the way they work and operate to support their workforce from home. Now that we know nomadic working is here to stay, organisations must think beyond just the digital systems they need to get staff talking. It’s time to rethink the best way to build a truly nomadic working structure for your enterprise.

We’re in a time of workplace transition. ERP systems previously transformed how enterprises manage corporate resources and CRM solutions helped businesses find value in customer data. Now, work management platforms are set to transform how companies manage work -- including nomadic workers -- to become creative forces and give enterprises a competitive advantage.

Paige Erickson EMEA MD Workfront

Uncertainty is the word that describes the 2020 experience in a nutshell. We entered January with a strong economic foundation. Many banks were beginning to execute on strategic initiatives, expand on technology and attract new talent. Our plans, however, quickly shifted in March when COVID-19 entered the United States and began to spread. We immediately had to rethink how our businesses would operate during a pandemic, how we’d serve clients, and keep employees safe and secure, all while being forced into a quarantined state.

In the chaos of a new and unpredictable environment, growing cases and operating in a new remote state, we responded to one of the largest stimulus packages our country had seen and America’s Banks served as the conduits to get our businesses the funds needed to keep their staff employed.

While our investments in technology, communication tools and digital channels played an instrumental role in allowing us to serve our clients through these times, there was really one investment that proved paramount for ConnectOne’s ability to navigate the pandemic – our culture. Investments in culture, once hard to quantify, can be directly correlated to business impact today. Our culture was the primary reason we were able to expedite and deliver some of the first PPP loans to customers, processing more than 3,000 applications, delivering $474M stimulus loans and saving more than 45,000 jobs. Even in times of uncertainty and economic hardship, our bank was able to not only do the right thing by meeting the needs of existing clients, but also still find opportunities to grow markets and a new customer base.

The pandemic served as a microscope separating true culture from culturetheatre. In these ever-changing uncertain times, it has become a necessity for banks to remain operational, innovative and seek longlasting sustainable growth.

In order to cement a culture for the long-term, we believe the following:

Hire for Culture, Train for Skill: There are so many banking professionals that have the right skillsets to fit your hiring criteria, but few that fit with your bank culture. Start identifying culture-fit at the hiring process and change the dynamic and the employee engagement from the start.