COVID-19 turned our lives upside down and lockdown forced millions of people to suddenly give up their office routine and relocate their desk to the kitchen table. As we discussed in a previous article on this topic, these changes came with several challenges. But it’s not only individuals who are affected by all these. Companies lose billions while being forced to rethink employment, advertising, and even their business models.
Transparency may seem like a corporate buzzword, but it actually has real-world benefits. According to a recent poll, two thirds of consumers would spend more if it meant buying from a transparent company, and 94 percent of consumers rank transparency as the biggest factor in brand loyalty.
Flexible work is no longer just a trend. And remote working — mostly from home during this pandemic — comes with a unique set of challenges. While none outweigh the overall benefits of distributed teams, leaders do need to shift their management and processes to get the best results from a remote workforce.
In 2019, remote employment secured its position as more than just a trend but as a mainstay in American business. With 62 percent professionals working on a remote basis either full-time or at some frequency, according to Owl Labs’ State of Remote Work Survey, remote work was quickly becoming the norm.
In 2020, this flexible option has abruptly become mandatory. In the economics of the Coronavirus pandemic, organizations were forced to switch in order to survive. And for this purpose, they need to keep their remote teams virtually connected, no matter how spread out they are. Not only to drive connection between employees, but also to ensure productivity.
The core concept of working from home has changed overnight. Instead of making a choice when the context was right, millions of people are now forced to work from home during a crisis that affects and even threatens their lives and the lives of those they hold dear. Our way of living turned upside down and we are forced to readjust without prior notice. As a result, even if previous studies have shown incredible benefits in favor of remote working, most of those do not apply in the current situation.
Gone are the days when companies had everybody working physically side-by-side and remote teams were scarce. The future of work is upon us, by choice or by context. And now more than ever, it has become vital for any business to streamline its communication flow and enable access to the company’s life to all their employees, regardless of where these are located.
Cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) platforms have become increasingly more popular for businesses of all sizes. Enterprise spending on UCC tools grew to a $45 billion industry this past year, according to Synergy Research Group, with an average annual growth of 16 percent year-over-year.
Business communications are getting a do-over. Moving to the cloud is not a new concept anymore. However, there’s plenty to consider. Especially when you move business communications to the cloud.
Business communications are, by all means, the living breath of any organization. They can make or break a business. Especially today. The amount of information sharing is, by all means, unprecedented. And getting ahead is, in fact, staying relevant.
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Studies show that Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) services represent a fast-growing segment in the broader cloud communications market. That’s not a surprise considering the increasing number of companies who expand their activities far from their traditional borders. But are their employees, especially Millennials, playing any role in this change? I’m a firm believer that this digital-native generation is fueling the change. And scientific facts seem to support this idea.
Larger teams generate better concepts, and the more diverse the team is, the higher the impact of their innovation efforts. That’s the key takeaway from a recent field study that showed how mixing up different departments and putting the right software in their hands can be an innovative idea in and of itself.
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