CIO and CHRO: The new power couple

The future of the work­place has nev­er looked more uncer­tain. More than one in three of us now work exclu­sive­ly from home, accord­ing to the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics, and the idea that remote work­ing isn’t fea­si­ble, which some employ­ers used as an excuse to keep staff in the office, has dis­ap­peared. Work is chang­ing and with it, work poli­cies and IT prac­tices need to as well.

In the ear­ly days of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, employ­ee IT poli­cies and human resources rules went out the win­dow as busi­ness­es moved onto a war foot­ing. Work­ers were sent home and asked to make do and mend with what­ev­er IT equip­ment they could find, while employ­ees felt on call at all hours, strug­gling to jug­gle work pri­or­i­ties and fam­i­ly life. That wasn’t fea­si­ble, nor was it safe, for busi­ness­es and indi­vid­u­als in the long run.

“As dis­trib­uted work­forces become com­mon­place for many busi­ness­es, secu­ri­ty teams must work to bring secu­ri­ty prac­tices up to speed with the new work­ing poli­cies,” says Ian Pitt, chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer (CIO) at Log­MeIn. “The past year alone has giv­en hack­ers so many news­wor­thy events to take advan­tage of, which has seen ran­somware and phish­ing attacks go through the roof.” 

While work­ers sit­ting in a phys­i­cal office among their peers can ask for advice if they receive a sus­pi­cious email, when they’re sat home alone it can be eas­i­er to be caught out. The hap­haz­ard tech­nol­o­gy prac­tices installed in the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic made that more com­pli­cat­ed, as a sin­gle device could be used for work dur­ing the day and to keep the fam­i­ly enter­tained at night.

Rethinking HR

A whole­sale employ­ee re-edu­ca­tion pro­gramme to make peo­ple aware of the risks of work­ing from home is vital. This requires strong rela­tion­ships between the CIO and chief human resources offi­cer (CHRO). 

“It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly in my mind a dis­tinct hand­off between one team and the oth­er in this new future of work,” says Jacky Cohen, vice pres­i­dent of peo­ple and cul­ture at Top­ia. “We both have shared goals: the CIO wants to have the right tech­nol­o­gy in place for secu­ri­ty and data pro­tec­tion, but also they want to enhance the employ­ee expe­ri­ence. That makes IT’s job eas­i­er.”

Man­ag­ing dis­trib­uted work­forces is a chal­lenge, says Yvonne Wasse­naar, chief exec­u­tive of automa­tion firm Pup­pet. “The extremes are much eas­i­er, what becomes hard is when there’s a blend,” she says. While the first wave of the pan­dem­ic brought chief mar­ket­ing offi­cers and CIOs togeth­er in an attempt to keep the busi­ness pro­mot­ed and on an even keel, this “new nor­mal” phase requires chief peo­ple offi­cers, or HR, and CIOs to work togeth­er to shore up busi­ness­es’ work­ing prac­tices and their cyberde­fences. 

“There’s a real pull to bring CIOs and chief peo­ple offi­cers togeth­er to rethink what’s pos­si­ble with the advent of tech­nol­o­gy,” says Wasse­naar.

Cohen is see­ing stronger con­nec­tions built between IT and HR depart­ments in busi­ness­es. “I would hope there is already some sort of estab­lished foun­da­tion,” she says. “If there’s not, it’s just like build­ing any rela­tion­ship inter­nal­ly: you need to estab­lish your shared goal and you need to build trust, and some of that takes time. The foun­da­tion of any rela­tion­ship is under­stand­ing each other’s busi­ness and under­stand­ing your moti­va­tions.”

That’s because the office and ways of work­ing are chang­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Work­places are like­ly to act more as social hubs that peo­ple dip in and out of. That requires tech­nol­o­gy and HR to more care­ful­ly dove­tail togeth­er in pur­suit of the shared goal of busi­ness pros­per­i­ty and mak­ing work­places wel­com­ing, even if they’re accessed remote­ly. 

“The expe­ri­ence of the pan­dem­ic has shown us we don’t need to be at a tra­di­tion­al work­place envi­ron­ment to do our best work,” says Jon Grainger, CIO at law firm Slater and Gor­don.

Onboarding new staff

A major chal­lenge that requires HR staff and IT staff to work togeth­er is the way in which new arrivals to busi­ness­es are brought on board dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. One of the ben­e­fits of the new way of work­ing is it allows com­pa­nies to be braver in who and how they hire. “It opens up a more diverse pool of tal­ent where loca­tion is no longer the pre­req­ui­site to oppor­tu­ni­ties,” says Grainger. But ensur­ing recruits feel part of the team is dif­fi­cult. 

“That begins right at the start of the employ­ee life cycle. How do you onboard col­leagues and devel­op a cul­ture with employ­ees? How do you make sure they have the right facil­i­ties and right access to equip­ment, hav­ing poten­tial­ly not met anoth­er per­son in their busi­ness face to face? This gives up lots of dif­fer­ent chal­lenges as well,” says Char­lie Knox, direc­tor of prod­uct and solu­tions at “peo­ple solu­tions” firm SD Worx. 

One of the main aggra­va­tors of employ­ee dis­en­gage­ment is poor IT: if peo­ple feel they aren’t tech­no­log­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed to do their job, they quick­ly decide to stop engag­ing with the work they’re set. For that rea­son, IT and HR need to not just co-exist, but to build upon each other’s work, to improve the employ­ee expe­ri­ence. 

This doesn’t mean micro­manag­ing employ­ees, though; it’s vital to give them sup­port, but not to be over­bear­ing. Instead, trust­ing work­ers, while giv­ing them the infor­ma­tion they need to keep them­selves and the organ­i­sa­tion safe while work­ing online, is impor­tant. 

SD Worx had to increase the pro­por­tion of its IT sys­tems avail­able online 24/7, says Knox. “We’re increas­ing­ly see­ing sys­tems move into cloud tech­nol­o­gy,” he says. But with this, organ­i­sa­tions are see­ing mas­sive shifts in the way they work. HR and CIOs need to col­lab­o­rate to ensure employ­ees feel well sup­port­ed in tack­ling new process­es. “As an organ­i­sa­tion, we rolled out to all our employ­ees an improved secu­ri­ty aware­ness train­ing,” Knox explains. 

“It starts with aware­ness and then you start to imple­ment con­trols, both from a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive to help you with data leak­age, mak­ing sure you can mon­i­tor and con­fig­ure your sys­tems from mov­ing out of your safe bound­aries, and pre­vent things from mov­ing onto USB sticks.” 

Suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion between CIOs and HR is essen­tial in the long run and, apart from numer­ous oth­er busi­ness ben­e­fits, will avoid IT chaos.