04 Jan
Workplace Effectiveness in The New Normal: 5 Myths Debunked
The key to successful work experience is the ability to adapt and change as swiftly as possible.
The impact of the ongoing crisis has hit all sides of the spectrum, and organizations are still grappling with unprecedented situations. Due to work from home becoming a new normal, the relationship between employee and employer needs to be extremely digitized and flexible.
While challenges remain, this situation has unlocked and given the entire ecosystem a wealth of opportunities to innovate, transform, discover, and learn new things from it.
As we all know that remote work is here to stay for long, and it is completely impacting us mentally and physically in the workplace. So, it is the right time to debunk a few of the most rooted remote work myths that are still around with us.
When structured and managed effectively, remote work unlocks potential for improved performance, higher wellbeing, and better work-life integration –
Myth #1: Remote Work Equals Less Engagement
In the current situation, it is a known fact, remote work is not a privilege or perk anymore. It has become the norm and many organizations are also permanently planning to implement remote work in the future. Many organizations on the other side are still worried about remote work being less engaging.
To further refute this myth, with the right digital tools in a place, remote workers are more engaged and happier at work.
Remote work is not just beneficial for both employees and employers, but it is also more effective for the business landscape. Adopting a modern intranet unlocks the potential for improved performance, employee engagement, and better work-life integration. It expedites a platform for different talents and ideas to collaborate and engage, incubating a higher standard of work efficiency and performance.
Myth #2: Remote Work is Less productive
In these stressful circumstances an organization with a traditional intranet, remote working employees face communication and information sharing challenges, resulting in relevant information getting missed in translation. It makes the employees unproductive and frustrated towards work.
Here the truth is an organization with a modern tool, like an AI-infused intranet. Works as a savior in remote working, acting as a one-stop-shop to share information faster, eliminating the time-wasting to search for files and data with the cognitive search feature, and spending less time in switching multiple apps. Employees can access all corporate information, collaboration tools, HR documents, policies, forms, and more all in one place. These results in a higher productivity level and better employee experience, especially working away in a physical work environment.
Read more: How to ensure remote employee engagement during COVID-19?
A study from Stanford found that employees working from home are, have a massive improvement in performance with 13% more productivity.
Myth #3: Remote Work Reduces Communication and Collaboration
The truth is: An organization that does not try to keep their employees engaged and connected to each other suffers. Communication is the key in any work environment: in-office or remote. The communication feature of the intranet allows employees to stay connected via sharing content and ideas, engaging their co-workers, social features, and more.
The idea management tool acts as a key driver for employee collaboration. It helps coworkers to have regular brainstorming sessions to allow remote employees to share ideas, capture, review, and work effectively by solving business issues.
In a survey by Mckinsey, 84 percent of executives say innovation is extremely or very important to their companies’ growth strategy.
Pooling innovation facilitates an interactive platform to stitch the gap between employees and senior executives through their ideation sessions.
Additionally, the social feature helps to know each other by sharing content, feedback, and likes and in this way get to know each other and socialize with their coworkers. These result in more natural communication between dispersed team members.
Read more: How modern intranets are driving employee engagement in the new normal
Myth #4: Remote Work Reduces Training and Learning Opportunities
Training or learning sessions for remote employees isn’t a problem. According to a McKinsey study, COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of fully digitized approaches to re-create the best of in-person learning through live video and social sharing.
With the digital workplace tool, it is easy and extremely cost-effective to train employees digitally. Online courses, training documents, and all other resources are the best way to be shared with remote employees, saving the organization’s time and resources. Additionally, it provides an AI-enabled approach to “recommend” relevant Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) based on the user’s role, interests, activities, location, preferences, etc.
Myth #5: Remote Work Increases Loneliness
Ultimately, many organizations hold the notion that remote work increases loneliness and employees work in isolation. It isn’t the case anymore if organizations are ready to work on the goal of a workplace effectiveness strategy.
Employees can feel well informed and engaged with the Intranet bot, which works as a co-worker for supporting employees around the clock for all their queries and doubts whenever they are in need. Besides intranets that are designed to function as a Virtual Water Cooler facilitates employees with a perfect platform to collaborate and communicate with their team members.
The exciting social features for employees and employers like discussion forums, likes, comments, polls, and mentions, etc., across different areas, empower users to be more engaging and collaborative.
The organization strategically managing employees’ engagement can have a profound business task to take on. Nevertheless, it will make the work environment more pleasant and productive to work in, and it will also empower employee retention in the organization.
Read more: 6 Tips To Improve Employee Experience In The New Normal
Conclusion
Organizations need to embrace flexibility to experience the best way to navigate in these changing times. Some companies are introducing hybrid work culture. An advantage of operating, which enables employees to work from home or the office, whichever is needed, including maximum flexibility and least constraints towards work– optimizing business performance. Organizations are turning it to be the best route for themselves by truly supporting the employees and the company’s culture.
Everyone needs to be aware of the right digital workplace practices and tools to work remotely or in hybrid work culture. Debunking the myth will help the organization to have a clear perspective in these challenging times before taking a call. The organization will have a check on the right digital tools they need. It will also empower their workforce to create a positive work environment and be ready for any uncertainties around.
To know more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with our digital workplace experts for a personalized consultation.
Poonam Chug is AVP - SaaS Strategy & Business. She has worked in various areas, right from designing and executing sales & account management strategies to reengineering digital workplace solutions. With her determined focus on our mission and progressive approach, she has achieved customer delight in the space of AI, Knowledge Mining, Content & Collaboration, Virtual Assistants, RPA and more. Backed with a deep understanding of customer needs and technology, she leads the SaaS business unit with an upshot of maximizing revenue while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Poonam Chug