Two years ago, employers sent millions of team members home as the fear of Covid-19 spread increased—and IT teams rushed to find solutions to keep businesses running in the new remote landscape. Today, it’s clear that remote work isn’t going anywhere. Employers are leaning on IT to ensure seamless access and secure connections for all their team members. It has been a scramble, complicated by a global hemorrhaging of top talent straining both IT resources and overall organizational capacity.
Now that the initial, abrupt shift to remote work has given way to a permanent “everywhere workplace,” companies are eager—and in many cases desperate—to attract and retain top talent and keep that talent engaged and productive. It’s no longer simply a question of: “Can everyone log in?” We’ve moved to: “Can we give everyone the experience they need to stay on board and do their jobs well?” The Great Resignation and “Great Reassessment” mandate a new shift: rethink the employee experience through high-value, high-tech touchpoints. In this challenging market, it’s critical that employers build out dynamic digital experiences that support real-time demand for greater team member autonomy, including radical flexibility.
And who can make that happen? You guessed it: IT. This is not to minimize the role of HR, which has arguably never been more important than it is right now. Rather, it’s to emphasize that IT must be a foundational pillar of support for HR, enabling the policies, programs and connectivity that let HR win the war on talent.
Why IT Must Lead The Charge
IT is responsible for coordinating and optimizing rich, seamless everywhere workplaces that empower team members. They’re responsible for facilitating access and productivity whether team members are down the hall or spread out around the world. IT is directly responsible for the way team members interact and engage with an organization’s people and data on a daily basis. And of course, IT is uniquely capable of—and responsible for—maintaining security for team members, devices, applications and networks. When IT is integral to the team member experience, security can be integral to the team member experience. All this is to say that IT and the team member experience are inextricably linked, and the connection is only going to grow stronger as the business world leans further into the permanent everywhere workplace. That means IT needs to embrace the power—and responsibility—that comes from being a critical part of attracting and retaining top talent.
What IT Can Do Right Now
The shift to IT as the central team member experience driver is relatively new. As a result, there’s no go-to playbook that defines what a good digital team member experience looks like. However, there are several key characteristics that ensure IT initiatives support top-level needs and goals.
Every tool that’s being considered as an enhancement to the team member experience should be measured against three factors:
1. Productivity: Does This Initiative Enhance Productivity?
Success in the everywhere workplace hinges on seamless access and an intuitive user experience. Every minute spent trying to log on or troubleshoot is a minute not spent performing the job they were hired to do. It’s on IT to ensure that team members can self-service as much as possible so there aren’t IT ticket bottlenecks that further inhibit productivity. And when team members do need support, that support needs to be available anytime, anywhere.
2. Contextualization: Does This Initiative Support Omnichannel Team Member Experiences And Preferences?
Whether remote or not, your team is likely to use multiple platforms and multiple devices throughout the workday. According to Forrester, 74% report using two or more, and 52% say they use at least three. Additionally, on average, employees interact with 11 systems regularly. The ability to seamlessly transition between platforms and devices is a critical component of a productive (and pleasant!) user experience.
3. Security: Is This Initiative Secure For The Employee And The Organization As A Whole?
Cybersecurity incidents have skyrocketed during the pandemic, with threat actors capitalizing on the abrupt—and often haphazard—shift to the everywhere workplace. Security shortcuts were, perhaps, inevitable in the early days of the shift, but there’s no excuse for them now. Cybersecurity defense plans must evolve to reflect the realities of the permanent everywhere workplace, and that means that current solutions and technologies require enhanced access controls and integrated risk management.
Seamless productivity, frictionless security and an intuitive user experience don’t have to be mutually exclusive. It is possible to achieve all three at once, and that’s the task facing IT teams today.
How To Realistically Achieve An Enhanced Team Member Experience Via IT
If navigating all the above feels like a tall order, that’s because it is. The good news: It’s achievable with the integration of the right tools, specifically AI and intelligent automation. Automating repeatable tasks frees up IT resources to focus on more nuanced, strategic projects. Intelligent chatbots can help team members self-serve and speed incident resolution. Applying self-healing and self-service for devices means remote workers aren’t at an inherent disadvantage.
While many accelerated their plans for automation during the pandemic, few have fully embraced the potential that AI and intelligent automation can unlock. With the team member experience top of mind—and critical to organizational operations—now is the time to put IT at the center, lean forward and embrace accelerated adoption.
Jeff Abbott is the CEO of Ivanti, overseeing all aspects of product and go-to-market strategy and execution.
