The Virtual Workforce: Here to Stay?
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every company, large and small. Companies have had to adhere to government stay-at-home orders, shutter their offices and scramble to sustain operations with all non-essential employees working from home. And with giants like Facebook and Google already committed to a remote workforce through the end of the year, one may ask will work as we once knew it ever be the same again. Is the virtual workforce here to stay?
Business Reimagined
This massive change to the way we do business was thrust upon us. Companies had to quickly adapt as state and local stay-at-home orders were issued. Some companies were ready or able to quickly get ready. Others may still be struggling with deciding which collaboration tools are best for them long-term or learning to take advantage of the tools they have implemented.
Policies, procedures, workflows and processes have had to be re-evaluated. As business processes and operations are reimagined, companies will need to equip and empower their employees to not only survive in the remote work environment but also to thrive. Employees may be struggling to stay productive while dealing with homeschooling their kids, taking care of their pets or worrying about the last time they washed their hands.
According to The Hartford Business Owners’ Playbook, “the whole point of establishing a virtual workforce is to make it easier for employees to work remote across the country or even around the world.”
Technology to the Rescue
There are numerous collaboration tools on the market to bring teams together online. Some have specific uses like virtual meetings, document collaboration or project management and others encompass many of these features in one platform (e.g. G Suite, MS Teams, Slack).
Everyone seemed to jump on the Zoom bandwagon as their virtual meeting platform and Zoom quickly became the go-to meeting app (no pun intended) for business and personal use. Some companies quickly jumped off that bandwagon though, as security issues like Zoombombing were exposed. Zoom has acted swiftly to address these security concerns by acquiring Keybase to leverage its end-to-end encryption and security expertise. Zoom has also joined forces with Oracle to shore up its cloud infrastructure in support of the 300 million daily meeting participants. That’s millions of people working remote!
Prior to the pandemic, there were already 7 million Americans working remote. Let’s face it. Until there is an FDA-approved vaccine that works to prevent COVID-19, an anti-viral medication to effectively treat it and global herd immunity, the community will have to continue to protect itself by practicing social distancing. Companies will need to continue to provide the flexibility of working remote.
But with so many technology options available, how does a company choose the best platform and tools to optimize its remote workforce?
Consort Solutions Group (CSG) can help. The CSG team has years of remote work experience and has used many of the available tools to meet with our global clients. In our upcoming Virtual Workforce Optimization blog series, we will review some of the most popular collaboration tools and provide unbiased reviews with pros and cons for choosing one versus another.
Ann McDonald | Director of Business Transformation and Technology Solutions