Finding the right technologies to keep remote workers engaged

It is clear that hybrid work­ing mod­els are here to stay for many, par­tic­u­lar­ly office, work­ers. NatWest’s chair Howard Davies is the lat­est exec­u­tive to sug­gest cul­tur­al changes caused by the pan­dem­ic are here to stay, telling Bloomberg that the days of staff doing “five long days in the office” are gone. 

That shift is demand­ing the con­struc­tion of tech­nol­o­gy ecosys­tems that pro­mote pro­duc­tive, con­nect­ed and engaged work­forces. Con­nect­ed tech­nol­o­gy is vital to employ­ee engage­ment in this new way of work­ing, equip­ping col­leagues with the right devices and hard­ware reflect­ing the con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy expe­ri­ence.

Yet research from Ricoh shows around a third of employ­ees often feel unmo­ti­vat­ed while work­ing remote­ly due to tech­nol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion issues.

“For a long time, we have assumed tech­nol­o­gy is an IT prob­lem, but it’s not, it is a human prob­lem,” points out Jacob Mor­gan, author of The Future Leader and The Employ­ee Expe­ri­ence Advan­tage.

“When your tech­nol­o­gy does­n’t work you get a very human reac­tion of being upset and frus­trat­ed.  Sim­i­lar­ly, when tech­nol­o­gy works well, you feel more engaged and con­nect­ed. Giv­ing employ­ees the right tools helps with work­place flex­i­bil­i­ty, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, over­all engage­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

The problem of proximity bias

The dan­ger as busi­ness shifts from remote to hybrid work­ing mod­els is ensur­ing a lev­el play­ing field for all employ­ees. Prox­im­i­ty bias still pos­es a threat. While the pan­dem­ic has swept away many mis­con­cep­tions about the need to be phys­i­cal­ly locat­ed in a spe­cif­ic work­place, the chal­lenge remains to ensure employ­ees work­ing remote­ly aren’t dis­ad­van­taged in a hybrid mod­el. 

High-spec tech­nol­o­gy plays a major role in democ­ra­tis­ing the employ­ee expe­ri­ence and main­tain­ing engage­ment for all,  allow­ing every­one the same expe­ri­ence and access to projects and con­nec­tions regard­less of their age, loca­tion, or senior­i­ty. For Vic­to­ria Ush­er, chief exec­u­tive of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Gin­ger­May, invest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy can dis­man­tle feel­ings there is “a pri­ma­ry group and a sec­ondary group, as psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly that is putting peo­ple at a dis­ad­van­tage which can be very demor­al­is­ing”.

Espe­cial­ly where younger work­ers, who may be based in a house share or work­ing from a bed­room in the fam­i­ly home, are con­cerned, it is essen­tial they are equipped with the tools to car­ry out their jobs pro­fes­sion­al­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly to main­tain their con­fi­dence.

“Some peo­ple have great set-ups, but where they don’t have the facil­i­ties, addi­tion­al micro­phones and lights ensure a lev­el play­ing field in how they are seen by clients and by oth­er staff as well,” she explains. “The home work­ing envi­ron­ment must be 100% because it’s a real block if you can’t get things to work prop­er­ly.”

Meaningful consultation with employees

One of the key tenets of engage­ment is allow­ing employ­ees a voice that is gen­uine­ly heard.

Where­as pre-pan­dem­ic, the role of employ­ees in the tech­nol­o­gy strat­e­gy is like­ly to have been lim­it­ed, it is increas­ing­ly recog­nised that mean­ing­ful dia­logue and con­sul­ta­tion is a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver for suc­cess.

Clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion between HR pro­fes­sion­als and tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers makes sense, while lis­ten­ing to employ­ee feed­back on what is work­ing and what is not can improve the invest­ment jour­ney and engen­der trust. Yet in its report Work­place Tech­nol­o­gy: The Employ­ee Expe­ri­ence, the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel and Devel­op­ment found only 35% of employ­ees were con­sult­ed on the imple­men­ta­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy.

Involv­ing employ­ees in the tech­nol­o­gy process means fos­ter­ing a sense of own­er­ship over what is need­ed, mov­ing away from a top-down approach. Con­sul­ta­tion has been a pri­or­i­ty for infor­ma­tion man­age­ment com­pa­ny Iron Moun­tain, which is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a tech­nol­o­gy refresh pro­gramme that “address­es par­i­ty”, explains chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Kim­ber­ly Anstett. 

“We have been work­ing across the com­pa­ny to cap­ture the voice of our employ­ees, empow­er­ing them to be a part of dri­ving their expe­ri­ence,” says Anstett.

“The invest­ment in new, secure hard­ware has proven to ben­e­fit our work­force great­ly as we grow and main­tain a hybrid of remote, office and front­line employ­ees.”

Device investment for technology parity

A new report from IDC found 62% of organ­i­sa­tions com­mit­ted to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion are invest­ing in periph­er­als such as head­sets and cam­eras this year to enable tech­nol­o­gy par­i­ty for all employ­ees. On aver­age, at least a third of busi­ness­es across Europe, North Amer­i­ca and Asia Pacif­ic are plan­ning upgrades to PC or mobile devices, show­ing a com­mit­ment to mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy work for all.

Defin­ing the right tech­nol­o­gy for the job is para­mount as employ­ees become increas­ing­ly inde­pen­dent from a sin­gle phys­i­cal loca­tion. Mak­ing assump­tions about employ­ees’ tech­nol­o­gy capa­bil­i­ties can quick­ly lead to dig­i­tal iso­la­tion, which is where con­sul­ta­tion and tak­ing an indi­vid­ual approach to work­ers can make a huge dif­fer­ence.

For Josh Pert, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at Vir­gin Expe­ri­ence Days, ensur­ing employ­ees know it is ulti­mate­ly the com­pa­ny held account­able for the tech expe­ri­ence has been cru­cial in devel­op­ing a cul­ture of trust. As the busi­ness moved to remote work­ing, its main­ly younger call cen­tre work­ers found them­selves in an envi­ron­ment apart from their famil­iar face-to-face col­lab­o­ra­tive work­spaces.

“For a lot of the call cen­tre work­ers, it was the first time they have been giv­en a lap­top and oth­er equip­ment, which is a respon­si­bil­i­ty for them,” explains Pert. “But as a com­pa­ny we are respon­si­ble for our peo­ple and tech­nol­o­gy so, if we want them to work remote­ly on our behalf, it wouldn’t be fair to make them feel whol­ly account­able for it.”

The busi­ness also allowed call cen­tre employ­ees access to mes­sen­ger tools pre­vi­ous­ly not encour­aged, with a pos­i­tive effect on employ­ee engage­ment; in Jan­u­ary 2021 its employ­ee engage­ment sur­vey record­ed the high­est score ever.

“Every­one has been forced to make an invest­ment in trust, with great effect,” he adds. “Trans­paren­cy comes through as one of the biggest builders of trust, it is almost about over-com­mu­ni­cat­ing. We went out of our way to make sure peo­ple felt they could ask any­thing, so they weren’t sit­ting at home on their own hav­ing a prob­lem.”

Where tech­nol­o­gy and employ­ee engage­ment are con­cerned, there is no one size fits all solu­tion. Frus­tra­tion with devices or tech­nol­o­gy can be an issue at every lev­el of a busi­ness and man­ag­ing dif­fer­ent senior­i­ty is a key con­sid­er­a­tion.

For exec­u­tives, the abil­i­ty to take con­trol of their own tech­nol­o­gy des­tiny is equal­ly as impor­tant as pro­vid­ing IT sup­port and lev­el­ling the play­ing field for more junior work­ers.

Expectation of seamless technology experience

With the shift from the office being the place with the most advanced tech­nol­o­gy, to the home or oth­er remote loca­tions, there is an expec­ta­tion from employ­ees that work devices mir­ror the seam­less nature of con­sumer devices. This can be a change in mind­set for IT pro­fes­sion­als, who need to ful­ly under­stand what employ­ees need to be pro­duc­tive, engaged and excit­ed to do their jobs.

Fol­low­ing a merg­er in Sep­tem­ber last year, wealth man­age­ment and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices group Tilney Smith & Williamson need­ed to ensure all its employ­ees remained engaged.

It is a pri­or­i­ty that “any­one, any­where is able to con­tribute effec­tive­ly with­in their team”, says the company’s chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Mayank Prakash. He adds: “Soft­ware tools like Teams and Zoom have become syn­ony­mous with both home-based and hybrid work­ing but it is just as impor­tant to have the right devices to give employ­ees the end-to-end dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence they receive as con­sumers at home and right­ly expect as employ­ees at work.”

As work becomes more flex­i­ble, employ­ees need the right devices and tools to stay con­nect­ed, be pro­duc­tive, and to pro­mote engage­ment and cre­ativ­i­ty. A strate­gic approach join­ing tech­nol­o­gy and peo­ple pro­fes­sion­als, with a focus on mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion and sup­port, will under­pin enhanced employ­ee engage­ment as hybrid work­ing becomes embed­ded in busi­ness life.