As coronavirus-induced remote work stretches into the summer, workers are increasingly open to the idea of permanent remote work as 61% of respondents to an IBM study said they want to work from home for good.
As of June 4, 45% out of 18,000 U.S. respondents to the survey said they were working remote, and 81% of them (up from 75% in April) said they’d like to work from home at least some of the time.
However, 61% said they want working from home to be their primary way of working. That’s up from 54% who said the same in April.
Now, organization shave to rethink their workforce strategy given these shifting preferences and increasing willingness to work outside of the traditional office, writes Jesus mantas, senior manager partner of IBM Services, in a blog post.
Employees and employers alike have embraced benefits of working remotely for some tasks, including reduced travel time and improved productivity. However, they also recognize the limitations and risks of remote work, like the potential loss of rich collaboration, and the need for a new set of tools to encourage engagement. Leading companies will emerge stronger by fully embracing a new set of modern collaborative work tools, and most importantly, dedicating time and resources to build an agile, open culture and leadership models among their employees.
Businesses also need to adopt technology and systems that can prevent technical problems and address new cybersecurity threats that are likely to grow as remote work becomes more common. For security in particular, it will be critical to design secure frameworks for systems at risk of exposing intellectual property, client and employee data, as well as collaboration tools like video conferencing platforms, and file sharing platforms.
Given those shifting preferences that have been well documented for months, your organization should already be taking steps to support remote workers for the long term. If you haven’t, now is a good time to star investing in solutions like cloud computing, unified communication and collaboration, videoconferencing, remote monitoring, employee experience software and more.
Not only will those solutions help you maintain your current productivity levels, but they will also help your company retain and recruit workers who desire that flexibility of remote work.
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