Covid19RemoteWorkresilienceSecurity
COVID-19 brought with it a range of economic, societal and behavioural changes that disrupted business and government on a scale not seen in recent times. Of the many challenges faced by organisations, implementing remote working was the most common, cited as a key challenge by 75% of respondents.
This was a multi-faceted challenge that posed immediate concerns for organisations as societies entered lockdown, including:
The challenging aspect of remote working was that many organisations were unprepared for it. Google and Apple have long been against the idea, while in 2017, IBM pulled back into the office thousands from its then 40% distributed workforce.
Many organisations had no choice but to embrace a work-from-home model. Research has found that for 31% of companies, COVID-19 was the catalyst to begin allowing remote work. Since then, 88% of organisations have implemented work from home arrangements for their employees.
The challenge of technical connectivity matched hardware deployment as the most prevalent challenge for IT departments as they enabled their teams to work from home during the pandemic (57%). Some organisations that had already adopted a cloud-first approach to tooling saw less down-time, whereas those using legacy and on-premise tooling encountered additional challenges.
While VPN access was already common, many organisations needed to increase their capacity to enable their staff to access essential files, apps and other resources while working remotely. This was one of many measures employed to address the changing security landscape, which was cited as a key concern for 36% of respondents.
Enabling remote teams to collaborate effectively was cited as a key challenge by almost 50% of organisations. For many, the solution was to adopt or improve their utilisation of collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, which saw a massive spike in utilisation, facilitating more group chats, calls, file sharing and task management.
As video chat became an essential means for replacing daily stand-ups, boardroom meetings, break-out sessions and casual chats, total video calls on Teams also grew by over 1,000% with users turning on their camera two times more than before.
Beyond collaborating, employing solid communication processes was also essential as organisations needed to issue urgent updates to employees, customers, suppliers and partners. In fact, this was cited as a key challenge by 41% of respondents.
With their workforce distributed, many organisations (43%) experienced disruption in the way they coordinated projects and managed teams. The absence of close physical proximity required project leaders to adjust their management style to match the characteristics of email communication and online collaboration tools.
Co-located teams make much better use of informal communication methods and feedback, such as asking for help, double checking understanding or even small complaints. When these are removed from teams it can create vacuum which can make people feel isolated and less productive. Team leaders need to find a way of replacing that.
Although many struggled with the technical and logistical side of implementing it, remote working has enabled organisations to be more elastic and responsive than ever before. In fact, remote working has been cited as the biggest benefit IT departments expect to carry over when the situation normalises, cited by 63% of respondents. A further 14% cited improved use of communications and collaboration tools as their key win moving forward.
Research has also found that organisations are seeing other positive benefits of the work from home arrangement, such as 77% of executives expecting it to lead to lower operating costs. It is also expected to have a positive impact on workforce retention, with most staff (75%) asking to increase their remote work hours by 35%.
6% of organisations saw improved productivity from their staff, also likely a result from remote working. Before the pandemic, it was found that remote workers are 35-40% more productive than those who work in the office, and that number is likely higher now.
While many organisations were caught off-guard with the on-set of COVID-19, the event has enabled them to identify weaknesses as well as potential market opportunities.
When the lockdown ends, 55% of organisations expect to prioritise the delivery of customer-centric digital and cloud applications, ensuring they are robust, fast, and secure. A key enabler for this is test automation, cited by 52% of respondents as a main area of focus moving forward, helping them to achieve their quality goals and drive the levels of efficiency required in today’s climate.
With 74% of companies planning to have their staff doing more remote work permanently post COVID-19, it is no surprise that many (43%) will be investing in technologies to further enable their distributed workforce.
41% will carry out business continuity planning to avoid any of the disruptions they may have experienced during COVID-19. Industry research has found that 71% of executives are worried about continuity during the pandemic, which has led to 81% of companies putting a crisis response team in place to better coordinate the current situation, and any others that may come along in the future.
Meanwhile, as less people work from the very controlled office environment, 39% of organisations will be keenly focusing on strengthening their cyber security. The importance of security was further accentuated by the increase in cybercrime during pandemic, which actually quadrupled due to all the COVID-19-themed scams and phishing attacks.
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