In a new eBook created with Wired, Cisco thought leaders explore how the future of work has shifted and why collaborative technology is business critical.
Riots were quelled in Italian jails when family visits were restored to restive prisoners virtually. In University Hospital Galway’s Intensive Care Unit, video conferencing enabled patients to communicate with remote clinical teams and loved ones. In the Czech Republic, a primary school went from in-person to interactive almost overnight.
As Covid surged across the continent, the gradual yet inexorable transition to digital was accelerated. From remote working to distance learning, and telemedicine to e-commerce, many of these shifts look set to be all but irreversible as a post-pandemic hybrid-landscape begins to emerge, with clear benefits for both employer and worker. For the former, these include reducing the need for costly primelocation bricks-and-mortar and opening up access to talent globally, while appearing to offer – according to at least one study – meaningful productivity gains. New research, meanwhile, which surveyed 10,000 office workers across Europe, the Middle East and Russia, found that employees prize the flexibility the hybridmodel offers, so long as they have the technology and training to support them.
Yet while this new era of hybrid-working may sound like a win-win, it also presents a number of challenges for top executives around isolation/mental health, effective communication (including brainstorming), data safety and security, mentorship for younger recruits, performance evaluation, regulatory compliance and company culture (if colleagues aren’t face to face, company culture can quickly wither on the vine). Speaking to Cisco thought leaders and focusing on three sectors – education, government and healthcare – this e-book explores how collaborative technology is transforming the world of work in the new remote economy and considers the takeaways for CIOs.