How do we best equip hybrid workers with the right skills, tools and training?

There are some jobs you can’t do from home. Yet for the last year or so, many of us have been doing jobs that once would have been seen as impossible from the comfort of a house, flat or cafe. One year on from the UK’s first national lockdown, businesses are preparing for a potentially freer future and a general return to the office. For many, however, it won’t be business as was usual.

Many organisations will pursue a model of hybrid working – comprised of a group of employees working from home collaborating with each other and employees in the office or on the factory floor, with many of these users frequently changing their location of work on a weekly or even daily basis. Of course, making this new system work in the long term will require additional technology and physical infrastructure in the workplace, not just to uphold worker productivity but to ensure their safety and security as well.

Reach for the Cloud

It’s clear now that businesses stuck in the past – in terms of technology and perspective – will struggle in this new hybrid working environment. Indeed, 30% of employees say they will likely change jobs if their employer can’t provide a flexible working environment. What’s more, 64% of customers are willing to leave the businesses they work with if they fail to keep up with their needs. A business, therefore, has to be more forward-looking, able to see disruption coming and anticipate how customer and business needs will change. Yet, they also then need the flexibility and agility to adapt their business to what’s coming down the line.

To achieve this foresight and agility, businesses need to digitalise across a range of business processes. But what does ‘digitalisation’ mean in this context? It means leveraging the latest digital technologies to drive clear business benefits. In the current climate, the most important things for businesses to improve across all processes are speed and efficiency – particularly when it comes to accessing information.

Whether they are on-site or working from home, getting hold of company data has long been a major bugbear for employees. Pervasive silos disrupt workflow and make all parts of an organisation run slower. But if hybrid working is to succeed, it’s crucial that all employees have immediate access to the same pool of high quality, centralised company data.

Over the past year, businesses have made massive strides in ensuring remote workers have greater access to company data, but many on-site personnel have sadly been left behind. Only 38% of frontline workers think they use existing applications and software effectively, and that 86 per cent of employers think they need better tech-enabled insight. These workers can’t effectively work together if they don’t have access to the same information.

Working in a streamlined, integrated environment will reduce complexity and improve staff productivity. The Cloud, therefore, is an ideal location to store company data. Unburdened

by on-premise infrastructure, businesses can seamlessly move data across their business and share with employees, customers and partners regardless of time or location. Furthermore, storing data in the cloud also helps prepare a company for the future. Emerging technologies like AI and machine learning require an immense amount of information and compute power, but integrated data helps a company adopt and feed new technologies more quickly.

There’s security in simplicity

Improving access to data for remote and on-site workers will do much to bolster collaboration and productivity in the hybrid enterprise. But what about security? A hybrid workforce can be difficult to monitor and protect when they only spend a limited amount of time on the secure corporate network. An attack can come from anywhere – customer data can easily go amiss whenever its saved to an employee’s machine that they only occasionally bring into the office. Similarly, once malware gains a foothold in one part of the business (say, an employee’s work laptop), it’s much easier for it to move adjacently into other parts of the company network.

To combat this lack of data visibility, strong data management policies need to be put in place and enforced for everyone. This means staff know exactly what is available to them, and where it sits within the business. Extra precautions – such as multi-factor authentication, secure web gateways and zero-trust systems – should also be utilised to ensure only those who really need it have access to highly sensitive company data.

Alongside these policies, companies should also leverage cloud technologies that provide visibility across many different environments. It may seem counterintuitive to have all data accessible from a single system, but if implemented correctly the Cloud is a very secure platform. What’s more, the visibility it provides can give precious information on an attack in progress. Businesses may also want to invest in automation tools that help staff locate the data they need faster, alongside more traditional end-point defence tools, such as anti-virus and device posture.

A large-scale return to the office may be attractive for many businesses, but a hybrid model of working can be just as safe and successful. Companies should chart their own path out of lockdown, but it’s important not to forget the digital lessons of the pandemic. The Cloud when planned, implemented and managed correctly provides a secure but easily accessible environment that can augment operations and capitalise on recent productivity gains far into the future. People are a business’s most precious asset, so it’s crucial they can work on a platform that’s able to scale with their ideas and ambitions.