As the nations start to return to normal, the question of how we return to the office has become more pressing. 

Theories abound over how the next phase of work will appear. Will companies require everyone to return to the office? Will they expand or reduce real estate footprints? How will they ensure maximum collaboration while enforcing safe distancing? How will they attract new talent and retain in-demand knowledge workers to curb the great resignation? 

The importance of getting the hybrid approach right could not be more important, as enterprise companies look to gather data around their returning workers’ efficiency and how to bring people back safely. 

Jonathan Sass, Vice President of Product for Vyopta, said it is critical for organisations to figure out how their employees are going to collaborate effectively, regardless of whether they are remote or in the office. 

With new tools and work habits in place at the office or for remote workers, Sass said insightful, relevant data on usage patterns for teams and individuals will be the best way to learn how people are functioning in hybrid work settings. 

“Organisations are thinking about moving to hybrid working in many different ways, but they can actually take a data-driven approach to work out who will be coming back to the office, based on collaboration patterns and collaboration quality,” Sass said. 

“Using analytics, businesses can see which teams and departments are collaborating with each other within the business and see who it makes sense to bring back into the office based on those patterns. 

The plain truth is that some people or groups flourish in an office setting while others may find their flow state more easily in the relative quiet of a home office. 

Making decisions on workspace assignments and scheduling can be an imprecise and time-consuming task without the Collaboration Insights provided by Vyopta. 

“On collaboration quality, during the pandemic many of us experienced issues with collaborating directly from home. Using a tool like Vyopta, businesses can see those collaboration issues and use those insights to help determine who should work from home and who should work from the office,” Sass said. 

“That can depend on the level of collaboration they need to take part in to do their job. If someone continually has issues, and their job is very dependent on working with external individuals, employers may want to consider recommending bringing them back to the office where they can have the infrastructure they need to carry out their role, or work with them to help them improve that home environment and the quality of those interactions.” 

Planning the return 

Organisations are struggling with the question not only of who to bring back to the office, but how. Where the goal was once to maximize the usage of physical spaces, workers will return to a changed work environment that requires more space per employee and adjusted rules for how and when to use conference spaces. 

Businesses can use data to plan the best layouts for their office spaces before they start to allow employees back but also, moving forward, they can ensure that infrequent commuters will have the proper technology resources in place – video endpoints, software and other tools – to be productive. 

“If we move one step beyond just who’s in office, when we think about the importance of analytics in hybrid work, a lot of it comes down to planning,” said Sass. “Businesses have been talking a lot about people, but they also have the technology and the spaces to think about. Using important analytics you can plan on all three of those different components, not just who’s working from where, but what technology they need to support them, and what spaces need to be created.” 

Changes through the business landscape seem inevitable as habits change and different parts of the world see surges and slowdowns in Covid-19 infections. That makes it more important than ever for companies to be able to spot the trends within their workforce and their UC technology environments that will let them leverage competitive advantages or address new problems early on. 

Sass said data collected easily from throughout multi-vendor environments gives Vyopta customers exactly the right kind of intelligence to move swiftly and confidently. 

“As we go through this transitional period over the next year, organisations are figuring out what the new office will look like. We’ve already seen the emergence of more hoteling and different types of conference spaces for collaboration where one person is in a huddle room while everybody else in a meeting is remote”

“Businesses also need to think through interoperability. In some cases you’ll be meeting with someone over Microsoft Teams, while others in the organisation might use Webex. This creates an entirely new set of complexities when thinking about how to ensure users of these technologies are getting the best experience and able to seamlessly fulfill their jobs.”  

The future of hybrid work may still be murky on the details, but one thing is certain. Businesses need quantifiable data to make informed decisions throughout the process of returning workers to the office. Rather than guessing or using subjective opinions, it’s data that drives the best decisions.  

 

 



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