The world we live in has become very different in the past six months. National lockdowns were unheard of, and the phrase social distancing was not an everyday idiom. The same could be said for Unified Communications, the adoption of video conferencing, collaboration tools, business continuity, which were expected to take years to become the standard way of working, suddenly started to see a significant increase on their up-taking.
In a few short weeks, the adoption of Unified Communications became apparent, and video conferencing alone saw an increase of 500% on a global scale. Timescales to implement these tools for large organisations would have usually taken up to 12 months, however, in some cases, this was carried out in 72 hours.
You could say that Rome was built in a day, or 72 hours in some cases…
Unified Communications is seen as a new strategy going forward, rather than an adoption just for the pandemic. Unified Communications has become an essential aspect of business continuity, and the heart of business communications. Many organisations around the world, are looking at making their workforce, a remote workforce.
This, of course, brings many benefits to both parties. For the employer, rent, building and maintenance costs become much lower for every team working remotely. For the employee, a more flexible lifestyle is adopted. Commuting time is made obsolete while offering a more flexible approach to how they work. Employees can, for example, drop and collect their children from school, they are able to work at all sorts of times, essentially allowing them to work around their family. It’s known that if an employee is happy with the flexibility of their employer, they will work much harder. Happy remote employees often work longer hours than an employee working regular office hours.
However, with many benefits, some challenges come to play. Employees can get fatigued working from home, collaborating with colleagues becomes different, and a working home office can be a challenge for some due to the space in their homes. For most of this, Unified Communications brings a range of communication and collaboration tools, which will allow employees to avoid fatigue when working from home and it will enable them to collaborate with their colleagues in new ways, while still retaining communication with each other. Spaces at home can be changed to multi-purpose rooms, allowing employees with limited space, to make the most of their existing rooms.
What the recent months have shown is that employees have valued the ways in which their employers recognised the human element to the pandemic. Employee well-being, consequently, has received more boardroom attention than ever before.
The impact of connectivity on well-being in the workplace is undeniable. Productivity, job satisfaction and the ability to manage stress levels are all closely tied to feelings of connectivity between colleagues. Which isn’t surprising given that a sense of belonging is one of the most basic and influential intrinsic motivators. So far, nothing new. Take away the proverbial ‘water cooler chats’ and shared coffee breaks, what has changed? The reliance employees have on their employers to build virtual environments that foster these connections. Employers must now find ways to create and support social connections in the workplace in order to build (and retain) a productive workforce.
Quite simply, connectivity is no longer a commodity; it’s the new currency. Unified Communications should be seen as a strategy and not a product.
Maintaining relationships and connectivity in a primary virtual working environment, is a big challenge for business leaders and one that will prove critical in the coming months and years.
To find out more information on Unified Communications and how we can help your employees work remotely, call us on 01509 410 410.
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