CIO role shifts in hybrid work world

At the start of the pan­dem­ic, with all office staff sud­den­ly need­ing to work from home, chief infor­ma­tion offi­cers (CIOs) had to quick­ly trans­form core tech­nol­o­gy and secu­ri­ty. A year on, hav­ing wit­nessed strong growth in out­put and inno­va­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, CIOs must now rede­fine the expe­ri­ence for employ­ees, cus­tomers and part­ners, enabling effec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion, new rev­enue streams and prof­itable growth.

A more flex­i­ble, hybrid work world is emerg­ing, where employ­ees increas­ing­ly choose their pre­ferred mix of home and office time. While tra­di­tion­al work­spaces are expect­ed to remain part of the busi­ness pic­ture, “in many cas­es, the old nine-to-five office cul­ture and men­tal­i­ty is over”, says Johann Butting, vice pres­i­dent for Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa at Slack, the mes­sag­ing app for busi­ness that organ­is­es con­ver­sa­tions into chan­nels for team effi­cien­cy and syn­chro­ni­sa­tion.

He adds: “Peo­ple like the flex­i­bil­i­ty they’ve been giv­en in the past 12 months to man­age work around child­care and oth­er pri­or­i­ties in the home. Pre­sen­teeism is slow­ly erod­ing in favour of flex­i­ble and effi­cient work.”

CIOs empowering hybrid work

Employ­ees have expressed strong sup­port for hybrid work and few­er than 12 per cent of knowl­edge work­ers want to return full-time to the office post-pan­dem­ic. This is accord­ing to research by the Future Forum, a con­sor­tium that includes Slack, Boston Con­sult­ing Group, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and For­tune mag­a­zine.

On the oth­er hand, a com­plete focus on ful­ly remote-based work is not that pop­u­lar and near­ly three quar­ters of peo­ple want the eas­i­er sense of belong­ing from at least some office inter­ac­tion.

Estab­lish­ment of hybrid work is only pos­si­ble with the C‑suite’s enable­ment of a nuanced approach to cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy and oper­a­tions. CIOs will need to strike a care­ful bal­ance of tech­nol­o­gy and its influ­ence on work styles, unlock­ing effec­tive hybrid work for exist­ing staff and help­ing attract future tal­ent.

In terms of sys­tems, lead­ers will be tasked with ensur­ing more advanced col­lab­o­ra­tion tech­nol­o­gy is in place, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the grow­ing email bur­den for staff. “With remote work, organ­i­sa­tions are find­ing the tra­di­tion­al email inbox has become an infor­ma­tion vac­u­um, get­ting ever more com­plex and exclud­ing impor­tant stake­hold­ers,” Butting notes.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, CIOs face the press­ing need to shape new tech­nol­o­gy-based cul­tures that enable peo­ple to use sys­tems well. They will focus on how to pro­tect effi­cien­cy: some 64 per cent of work­ers who feel aligned to and moti­vat­ed by core com­pa­ny val­ues are still frus­trat­ed oper­a­tional­ly, wast­ing half an hour dai­ly switch­ing between apps, accord­ing to research by Slack. CIOs must con­sid­er how to cut the time lost search­ing for infor­ma­tion or try­ing to under­stand new plat­forms, pro­vid­ing the resources and train­ing nec­es­sary.

With the right cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy in place, tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers can dri­ve out man­u­al process­es, auto­mate effi­cien­cies and design effec­tive work­flows. “The role of the CIO will increas­ing­ly be about help­ing to lev­el up the work­force from a tech per­spec­tive and enable it to be tru­ly effi­cient and sup­port­ed,” says Butting.

As part of the focus on cul­ture and tech, a major effort must be made around employ­ee well­be­ing. Remote staff are com­mon­ly impact­ed by soli­tude, while being expect­ed to be logged on for longer hours. “There is no doubt employ­ee well­be­ing must be front of mind in these tech­nol­o­gy-based changes. There must be poli­cies around how col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms are used for work as well as to com­mu­ni­cate with indi­vid­u­als to help sup­port their well­be­ing,” he says.

Asyn­chro­nous work, in which peo­ple across time zones can eas­i­ly col­lab­o­rate and share expe­ri­ences, will also become cru­cial. “CIOs will need to lis­ten care­ful­ly to the chang­ing needs of employ­ees, who want to be hap­py in the job and able to achieve team results no mat­ter where they work,” says Butting.

In prac­tice

Tech­nol­o­gy heads at more than 750,000 busi­ness­es have already intro­duced Slack as their “dig­i­tal head­quar­ters” across offices and homes, increas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and growth. Slack is enabling them to build a cul­ture of hybrid, asyn­chro­nous work, leav­ing behind the nine-to-five, and replac­ing com­plex email thread bur­dens and siloed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with live chat, bor­der­less work­flow cre­ation and seam­less automa­tion. As a result, they are mak­ing projects more effi­cient, remov­ing man­u­al and com­plex process­es, improv­ing sat­is­fac­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and strength­en­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion.

Com­pa­nies are also using the pow­er­ful Slack Con­nect fea­ture to com­mu­ni­cate con­sis­tent­ly with exter­nal part­ners and clients. As they reimag­ine cus­tomer jour­neys and relat­ed process­es, and find new rev­enue streams for post-pan­dem­ic times, the walls between sales, mar­ket­ing and cus­tomer ser­vice are dis­solv­ing. Across mar­kets, busi­ness­es are rely­ing on spe­cial­ist part­ners to deliv­er mem­o­rable and engag­ing expe­ri­ences to secure sales and deliv­er long-term growth.

HM Rev­enue & Cus­toms recent­ly used Slack to help design, imple­ment and deliv­er a num­ber of dig­i­tal ser­vices that allowed more than 12 mil­lion affect­ed busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens to apply for finan­cial sup­port dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Com­mu­ni­cat­ing in Slack chan­nels, more than 2,000 peo­ple across 60 teams, most­ly work­ing from home, were able to col­lab­o­rate at record speed. This helped HMRC deliv­er a project that would usu­al­ly take sev­er­al months in less than five weeks.

Mean­while, Gymshark, the fit­ness com­mu­ni­ty and appar­el brand with more than 16 mil­lion social media fol­low­ers, uses Slack to replace siloed email inbox­es with col­lab­o­ra­tive, inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, host­ing 95 per cent of the company’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions. And the tele­coms giant Voda­fone has inte­grat­ed the tool into every­day oper­a­tions for tech­nol­o­gy and archi­tec­ture teams, mov­ing from localised mes­sag­ing and email threads, to intu­itive work­flow and knowl­edge shar­ing.

The hybrid work world is here to stay. CIOs have a clear respon­si­bil­i­ty to empow­er employ­ees with the col­lab­o­ra­tion tools and relat­ed work cul­ture that enable pro­duc­tive, pos­i­tive and effi­cient work in all envi­ron­ments.

Learn how to trans­form your organ­i­sa­tion into a more con­nect­ed, inclu­sive and flex­i­ble work­place of the future by reg­is­ter­ing for Slack Fron­tiers, tak­ing place vir­tu­al­ly this Octo­ber

Pro­mot­ed by Slack