Hybrid working has quickly become a reality for a majority of organizations. It’s a new world for everyone, and there will be a period of adaptation for both employers and employees. The hybrid model will also continue to evolve. New opportunities, challenges, technologies and paradigms will emerge, and organizations need to be ready to take advantage of the positives while minimizing the negatives. To do this, leadership must be proactive about measuring the outcomes for both employees and the organization. They need to tap into the data at their disposal so that organizations can know what’s working well and what needs to be improved. It’s up to IT and HR teams to work together and provide the tools to facilitate this management and measurement, and that means putting in place ten key enablers to drive the success of a hybrid workforce.
- Continually enhance and measure employee experience
Aim to provide collaborative, work-anywhere digital environments that encourage collaboration and deliver engaging digital experiences that increase employee satisfaction. Make sure employees feel as supported and connected as possible, and that management gets early warning of any feelings of isolation or burnout.
- Help HR use technology to safeguard well-being
Everyone responds differently to hybrid working, depending on personalities and circumstances, so it’s vital to carry out regular checks on individual well-being. This can’t be automated because it calls for human empathy combined with professional skills and insights. However, technology can help HR teams spot warning signs that an employee is struggling so that they can arrange help. This help might be as simple as providing training in the use of tools, or it could mean promoting greater interaction between colleagues, or offering tips and tools for a better work-life balance.
- Provide visibility for management
Give managers accurate status updates on employee experience and success based on all relevant types of data (there could be thousands of sources) from across your entire IT estate. Use these results to report against the business’s KPIs. Provide configurable dashboards, KPI scores, and data analytics, so decision-makers can access the right information at the right time.
- Assess and benchmark current capabilities and infrastructure
Establish a baseline assessment of your current IT landscape and level of digital agility that allows IT leaders to understand both the existing hybrid infrastructure and the workforce’s ability to absorb change and utilize IT.
- Optimize technology deployments
Make sure that whenever you deploy new IT solutions, you can accurately measure progress and highlight any obstacles. Once you can see where gaps, risks and challenges with adoption exist, you can correct your course. Make sure you have analytics that reveal broad, consolidated activity patterns, whether at team, segment, country, region, or global level.
- Actively drive adoption
Promote and track application use. See which employees, teams, roles or locations need help with using technology, and which solutions need intervention to increase adoption. Use these insights to target campaigns that will boost adoption and to identify the digital leaders in your organization. For the next roll-out – these are the teams you’ll want to go to first, who can help to bring along their less digitally-savvy colleagues. Continually monitor usage data to track adoption progress resulting from these campaigns.
- Remove blockers to increased effectiveness
Evaluate user journeys at a granular level so you can understand the sequence of steps that employees follow as they interact with technology to carry out a particular task. This allows you to identify inefficiencies and fail points that are hindering digital growth. Remove any friction in workforce-system interactions and optimize processes to enhance effectiveness.
- Promote continuous improvement
Evaluate your return on investment (ROI) in technology in terms of real business value. For each completed implementation or intervention, make sure you have ongoing access to the metrics needed to keep ROI on track and identify further optimization opportunities.
- Measure and analyze changes to team dynamics
Use relational analytics to understand how hybrid working may have changed team and individual dynamics. For example, new influencers and ideators may emerge, cross-team efficacies may evolve, and new pools of innovation may develop. Metrics enable you to gauge and understand these shifting dynamics and align them appropriately throughout the business.
- Track the impact on business goals
Measure, maintain and improve digital agility, constantly assessing performance against KPIs. Check that the use and performance of collaboration apps like Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom meet business requirements. Ensure that everyone is following the correct security precautions. Make sure that you understand how remote and flexible working is affecting the organization’s revenue streams, and that any operational risks are being adequately managed.
Scalable Software’s workforce analytics platform, Acumen, helps you deliver these enablers. It collates data using agent and agentless discovery from across an organization’s infrastructure. Using a blend of digital KPIs and metrics, data is presented back to the organization through configurable dashboards. Common and consistent metrics allow for deep visibility into how the hybrid model is performing and how digitally agile the organization is. Learn more about the Acumen platform.
Download the new report on how to deliver exceptional hybrid working experiences to help your organization enable the success for a hybrid workforce.