Even as the pandemic unfolded, physical workspaces have started to become obsolete with remote work growing in popularity. A U.S. Census Bureau data reveals that the number of people primarily working remotely grew from 5.7 percent in 2019 (roughly 9 million people) to 17.9 percent in 2021. An Accenture’s 2021 Future of Work survey shows how a whopping 83 percent of employees indicated preferences for hybrid work, while 63 percent of high-growth companies are already implementing hybrid work models to enhance workplace productivity and nurture a culture of flexibility and openness.

With companies world over implementing remote work policies, how well are you covered? Being able to work remotely is a great way to go if you have the right tools. That said, is investing in a comprehensive remote work platform on your radar?

Let’s help you figure it all out in our detailed guide on remote work software and its uses. 

IN THIS GUIDE

• Defining a remote work platform
• Common myths of a remote work software debunked
• Why is a remote work platform essential for today’s digital workforce?
• What are the benefits of a remote work software?
• What are the challenges involved in implementing a remote work software?
• How does a remote work software drive employee experience?
• Why should InfinCE be your go-to other remote work platforms?
• Conclusion

First things first, let’s explore a few myths that are typically associated when the topic of remote work is discussed. Let’s explore a few.

Defining a Remote Work Platform

A remote work platform is a digital tool or platform that allows individuals or teams to work and collaborate on projects, tasks, and assignments remotely from various locations. They are typically equipped with communication tools, task management, file sharing, and video conferencing.

Common Myths of a Remote Work Software Debunked

1. Remote work brings down productivity of employees: Well, this is a big no. A remote work software is equipped to handle virtual communication and collaboration tasks effectively without compromising on efficiency, thus playing a significant role in driving employee productivity. With optimized workflows cutting down on time-intensive processes, remote work tools help build agile teams that are ready to take on the challenges of a future-ready workplace. As the complexities of the modern workforce increase, the time is now to think about a comprehensive remote work platform that handles the a to z of communication, connectivity, and collaboration and helps employees adapt to the evolving needs of a dynamic business workplace.

2. Remote work can leave room for communication gaps: This is yet another misconception that often gets tagged with remote workplaces. A remote work platform helps remote teammates collaborate effortlessly through sharing files on the go over the cloud, manage projects efficiently, and track progress reports frequently by offering an integrated view of several linked workflows. This ensures that cross-functional teams stay well connected and are not working in isolated silos besides fostering an integrated working environment where team members can track project statuses, leads, define tasks, and set deadlines.

3. Remote work demotivates employees: With workplace demographics continuing to shift, the use of remote collaboration tools is on the rise and for good reason. Particularly fuelled by the growing demands to increase employee productivity and cut costs, remote work platforms act as a source of motivation by reshaping the very outlook of work.

Now that we have debunked some myths, let’s define the elements that constitute a remote work platform and understand the benefits it brings to the corporate table. Precisely, a remote work software entails a robust, technological version (aka a digital workplace) of a physical workspace, that encompasses all the technologies that both employers and employees use to get work done in today’s workplace. Ranging from HR applications, e-mail communication tools, core business applications to  instant messaging and enterprise social media tools and virtual assistants, a comprehensive remote work platform consists of a suite of several applications that are meant to transform the employee experience. 

Why is a Remote Work Platform Essential for Today’s Digital Workforce?

In today’s digital workplace, remote work platforms are essential for organizations to ensure seamless communication, collaboration, and project management. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote work platforms for many organizations. Remote work platforms provide a range of benefits to both employers and employees, including increased flexibility, reduced overhead costs, and improved work-life balance.

Remote work platforms enable employees to work collaboratively with their colleagues, thereby fostering teamwork and productivity. By using a remote work platform, employees can work on the same documents, share their ideas and collaborate on projects as if they were working in the same office.

What are the Benefits of a Remote Work Platform?

1. Greater employee retention and talent acquisition: A remote friendly work culture is a perk that any employee appreciates. Given that working remotely gives autonomy and flexibility to employees, there is a good chance that employees would opt for a lower paying job if they could work away from the office. Not just from the employee standpoint, employers also stand to gain with remote work as they get to hire top talent and indirectly save on business costs. 

2. Enhanced communication channels: Today’s digital workforce prefers modern communication channels that allows them to communicate on the go without having to gather in meetings that are all too time-consuming. 

3. Reduced costs: For employers in the digital age, investing in IT infrastructure and physical office workspaces may run into overhead costs in the long run. With fewer people in a physical office setup, organizations can cut down on their real estate footprint, reduce costs to run onsite business operations, including office space, equipment and travel reimbursement.

What are the Typical Challenges Involved in Implementing a Remote Work Software?

1. Steep learning curve: While a remote work software is composed of a bunch of applications serving distinct functions, it’s important for your remote work software to work as a unified platform that helps employees have a delightful employee experience. However, this comes with a certain trade-off. To make the most of remote work, it’s important for employees to be tech-savvy and invest time and energy on getting a grasp of multiple tools, no matter how simple they seem. 

2. Integration issues: It’s important to ensure that your technology teams work in cohesion with your infrastructure management teams to get through the traps of siloed implementations and disparate ownership. 

3. Data security and porting: While employees work with scores of data that gets exchanged across all remote work collaboration tools, it’s imperative to keep a tab on secure data sharing and porting. Switching and porting data between multiple apps leads to significant time losses. For instance, a typical day of a remote worker would involve attending a meeting over a video conference on a separate application while also writing an email via an email tool. So the need to maintain a unified view of data is important. 

How does a Remote Work Software Drive Employee Experience?

In addition to boosting productivity, remote work platforms also drive employee experience. These platforms help employees feel more connected to their colleagues and their organization, even when working remotely. Communication tools such as chat, video conferencing, and messaging platforms facilitate a sense of community and enable workers to build relationships with co-workers and managers.

Remote work software also contributes to work-life balance for employees. They allow workers to work from anywhere, anytime, thereby reducing the stress and time involved in commuting. Additionally, these platforms provide employees with greater autonomy, resulting in improved job satisfaction.

Remote work software is essential for organizations that want to stay competitive and provide the best experience for their employees. By using remote work software, businesses can empower their remote workforce to work collaboratively and productively, regardless of where they are in the world. Moreover, remote work platforms drive employee experience, enable work-life balance, and foster a sense of community among remote workers.

Must-Have Features of a Comprehensive Remote Work Software

We list some must-have features that should comprise an ideal remote work software. While investing in one, be sure to check on them.

1. Collaboration apps: Since collaboration is the lifeblood of remote work, your remote work platform needs to be fully equipped to facilitate video meetings, live chat, and bring up a comprehensive employee directory for quick lookup.

2. Productivity tools: Contextual tools that raise productivity such as spreadsheets, presentations, calendars, and calendars are an absolute must. 

3. Flexible integrations and mobile compatibility: Your remote work platform should be capable of unifying all your existing and future digital systems. This gives you an inherent edge because you are not only able to centralize the technology architecture but also indirectly increase enterprise-level flexibility. This helps businesses to scale up, or down, according to dynamic business needs.

4. Secure cloud file sharing: To support a workforce that’s spread across the globe, your remote work tool should be hosted on the cloud, facilitating employees to to work from any location and from any device, with just a basic connection to the internet. Besides being cloud-based, the tool should also have cloud storage to store all important business files and documents in order to make it easier for employees to access the latest versions of files, whether they are in the office or working from home.

Why should InfinCE be your go-to over other remote work platforms?

The following features make InfinCE truly beneficial for customers and offers them a competitive advantage over other remote work software. 

1. Comprehensive and customizable: InfinCE offers a comprehensive suite of tools and features to facilitate remote work across multiple departments in an organization. The platform can be customized to cater to specific business needs, ensuring a personalized and productive workflow.

2. Affordable and scalable: The pricing of InfinCE is transparent and budget-friendly, with no hidden costs or fees. The platform is scalable and can be adapted according to the size of the organization, making it accessible to small start-ups as well as large enterprises.

3. Secure and reliable: InfinCE is built with enterprise-grade security protocols to ensure data confidentiality and protection. The platform also ensures reliable access to data and applications with 99.9% uptime.

4. User-friendliness: InfinCE is designed to be user-friendly, with a user interface that is easy to navigate and understand. The platform is also compatible across multiple devices, making it convenient for users to work remotely from anywhere in the world.

5. Collaborative and efficient: InfinCE fosters collaboration among team members, making it easier to work together and achieve goals. The platform enables efficient project management, workflow automation, and streamlined communication among team members, resulting in improved productivity and efficiency.

Conclusion

As the modern workplace continues to evolve, and employee expectations shift, organizations that do not embrace the digital workplace risk falling behind. With InfinCE, you can experience seamless, integrated and intuitive collaboration with the perfect remote work software at play! Get in touch with us for a free demo, and we would be glad to chip in!

The necessities of Covid-19 made companies rethink their priorities regarding managing their workforce. As a result, remote work shifted from being a short-term quick fix to a  long-term solution for increased efficiency and productivity. And in the post-pandemic world, work has become more partially remote, aka hybrid, than fully remote.

Hybrid Work Defined

A hybrid workplace blends both virtual and on-site arrangements to give employees the flexibility of dividing their working hours between the office and home. As a result, the employees enjoy more autonomy and life-work balance while remaining more engaged and productive at work. 

So, Why is Hybrid Work Relevant?

A Salesforce post says, “today’s hybrid workplace would soon be called just “the workplace”. A survey of 278 executives by McKinsey revealed that the surveyees planned to reduce their office space by 30%, indicating an increased acceptance of remote work, be it partial or otherwise. Cloud technologies and the right online tools would enable your employees to access data, connect with their colleagues from anywhere, and get their work done in a networked environment. 

The McKinsey study “The postpandemic future of work: Hybrid, remote and what’s ahead” surveyed 100 executives across multiple industries and geographies say that 9 out of 10 companies would go for a blend of remote and on-site working. As work culture gets increasingly hybrid, companies need to ensure efficient online tools are in place to enable their employees to collaborate and communicate seamlessly to get their work done. Organizations need to enforce the specifics required for a mix of remote and on-site work on a permanent basis to keep their hybrid workforce productive. 

Read more: Tips in Building a Hybrid Workplace for the Future

Benefits of a Hybrid Workplace

A hybrid workplace brings quite a few benefits to the table. 

1. Flexibility at work leaves workers happy

Increased flexibility and reduced commute would help employees enjoy a better work-life balance.

2. Reduces operational costs

Hybrid workplace solutions reduce the cost of real estate and office supplies considerably. The money saved on rentals can be invested in technology, marketing, etc.

3. Increases productivity and efficiency

Working from the comfort of their homes and flexible working hours have proven to increase employee productivity and efficiency.

4. Boosts employee engagement

A hybrid working model boosts collaboration among your remote teams, thus keeping them more engaged at work. 

5. Offers location independence

A hybrid work model will essentially have a remote work infrastructure in place, enabling your workforce to work from anywhere in the world.

6. Enhances company culture

A blend of remote and on-site work would motivate your employees to remain more productive and engaged and proactively contribute toward the company’s goals and culture. On-site working days can hold face-to-face meetings and build interpersonal relationships among employees.  

Post-pandemic, companies are increasingly opting for a hybrid working model on a global scale. The Accenture study “The Future of Work: Productive Anywhere” says 83% of the 9326 employees surveyed agree that a hybrid working model would be optimal wherein they get to work remotely for at least one-quarter of their working hours. This calls for adopting smart digital workplace solutions marked by flexibility, scalability, and connectivity to stay efficient and competitive. As remote work evolves into hybrid work, companies must reimagine their digital workplaces to stay competitive. 

Read more: How Can Your Business Be Future-ready to Embrace the Flexible Work

How to Reimagine Your Digital Workplace to Nurture a Hybrid Work Culture?

1. Choose the right set of digital tools 

Your business needs the right set of digital tools and technologies to support hybrid work. You need to choose a smart digital workplace solution well-equipped with state-of-the-art communication, collaboration, and remote technology tools to connect your entire workforce to support a hybrid culture. The platform should enable a seamless and secure flow of data across multiple departments, thus connecting your geographically diverse employees. It should also have smart analytical tools like custom dashboards to get intelligent reports on the progress of projects. As the digital workplace comes integrated with all the tools required for your business operations, your employees needn’t waste their precious time switching from one app to another.

2. Connect employee experiences to business outcomes

Make sure that new technologies enhance employee experiences. Modern tools integrated into the digital platform should recognize your employees’ efforts. Care should be taken to put your employees at the center of the design so that your digital workplace solution transforms how people collaborate and communicate to get work done and meet business goals. Employee surveys help realize what your workforce actually needs to get their work done efficiently. Integrate productivity tools on your digital platform to boost employee performance. The architectural elements should be synced to delight the end users, viz., your employees, while serving to meet goals smarter and faster. Better employee experiences help boost business outcomes.

3. Create a great workplace experience

Your employees deserve a good on-site experience whenever they report to their physical offices. This is very important to make your hybrid working model succeed. Better on-site experiences lead to better in-person collaborations, which boosts better online collaborations among your employees. On-site events should support virtual events to delight your employees. Good on-site experiences make the office a place your employees would love to go.  

4. Build digital fluency

Digital fluency is vital to meet business goals as well as enriching employee experiences. You need to leverage technologies to offer training programs for all segments of your workforce to upskill them.   

In short, the pandemic and multiple lockdowns have caused companies to revisit their long-term business strategies and revamp their business processes to make them hybrid compatible. An April 2022 study of 800 business leaders, “At Work: The 2022 Workplace Trends Report,” says 77% of the companies surveyed have adopted a hybrid working model and that an “at will” hybrid policy has gained momentum. 

Read more: How to Keep Your Remote Teams Connected

To Conclude

You need the tech support of a smart digital workplace solution for your hybrid work model to succeed. This is where an efficient digital platform like InfinCE comes to your aid. InfinCE can support and improve the performances of your hybrid workforce in more ways than one. Here are a few:

1. InfinCE has efficient office and collaboration tools to help your remote teams collaborate efficiently, share files seamlessly, and improve their productivity.
2. It keeps your data private and safe on a secure, private virtual cloud.
3. The curated InfinCE application marketplace offers a multitude of both commercial and open-source business apps from multiple vendors to suit your unique business needs. 
4. Single sign-on access enables your geographically dispersed employees to have unified access to your data.
5. InfinCE offers seamless IT infrastructure management from one place to help you manage your information assets with ease and scalability.
6. It comes with a pool of varied collaboration tools to help your teams connect with each other as well as external contacts through live individual and group chats; secure file sharing; audio and video calls, etc.
7. Helps improve your business efficiency by simplifying your data analytics with the help of custom dashboards and tiles for enhanced visibility and productivity across all departments.

InfinCE is, thus, your one-stop technology solution that caters to anything and everything your hybrid workforce needs. Get in touch with our experts to know more.  

The COVID19 pandemic redefined the way people worked on a global scale! 

The McKinsey report “The Future of Work after Covid-19” says, “the pandemic accelerated existing trends in remote work, e-commerce, and automation with up to 25% more workers than previously estimated potentially needing to switch occupations”. 

Remote work necessitates companies to increasingly adopt digital workplaces to let their employees seamlessly access data from anywhere to get their work done. But how can you define if a digital workplace is effective, safe, and focused on the well-being of the employees? 

This article will take you through the top ways to monitor your digital workplace and keep it relevant!

Read more: How An Integrated Digital Workplace Solution Helps Mitigate Remote Work Hurdles

What Is A Digital Workplace And Why Do You Need A Digital Workplace Solution?

When your traditional or physical workplace turns digital, with everything you need for your work made available over the internet, it’s called a digital workplace. Digital workplaces are the smartest way to operate. But often digital workplaces give rise to security threats, clogged servers, misplaced data, and more such technology errors.

That’s when you need an apt digital solution, which eliminates all risks, and streamlines work digitally.

A digital workplace solution is a single platform that seamlessly integrates all the technologies required for getting work done, which include multiple apps, intranets, and portals. It consists of an all-encompassing, holistic set of multiple tools and environments needed for work made available on a single platform in an easily usable, logical, and productive manner. 

It is essentially a connected environment that provides employees access to all the data they need, independent of devices and geographical locations. Digitization of workplaces has enabled employees at all levels to communicate and collaborate in newer and more effective ways to form more productive relationships, thus serving to break down the silos at work and create employee experiences rooted in efficiency and growth.  

Remote work continues to be the preferred way of work for most employees post lockdown! 

The McKinsey study “What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries” says  “executives have indicated in surveys that hybrid models of remote work for some employees are here to stay. The virus has broken through cultural and technological barriers that prevented remote work in the past, setting in motion a structural shift in where work takes place, at least for some people”. 

Hybrid work allows employees to switch between work-from-home and the office depending on the demands their roles make on them. Remote work is here to stay, be it full-time or hybrid, a fact that has contributed heavily toward the increased adoption of digital workplace solutions. 

Digitization of business processes has caused companies to focus on leveraging technologies to increase employee efficiencies. Digital workplace solutions serve to streamline the internal operations of your business by segregating and analyzing vast volumes of data, and making it available at your employees’ fingertips, thus enabling them to work smarter and faster. 

Now, What’s Digital Wellbeing?

Digital wellbeing refers to the practice of leveraging data and technology to ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of your employees. Digital workplace solutions leverage technology and streamline data to help you attract and retain talent, increase productivity, and enhance employee experiences. Futuristic companies have come to realize that they should raise the levels of wellbeing of their digital employees to help the latter thrive in a stressful working environment. 

Read more: Driving Employee Engagement In Today’s Changing Work Culture!

A Few Strategies To Ensure The Wellbeing Of Digital Workplaces:

1. Limit screen time 

Digital workplace wellbeing focuses on reducing and optimizing screen time! 

A sample survey of 4000 respondents held in the UK found that 75% of the employees felt that reduced screen time would be good for their mental health.  

Streamlining the data, be it messages or emails, would save your employees from being bombarded with unnecessary data and reduce their screen time and stress levels. You need the service of a smart digital workplace solution to ensure this. 

A good digital workplace solution will make sure that the right data reaches the right people to avoid information overload. Effective collaboration apps can facilitate seamless communication and easy file sharing, thus serving to reduce their screen time. Employees need to access only the right data as and when they need it.

2. The personnel department must focus on human relations than human resources

Companies must cease to look at their employees as means to achieve economic success and consider them as ‘whole men and women’ rather than bundles of skills.  

Employee satisfaction and experience should be of utmost importance and their welfare, a primary concern to the leadership. Building employee welfare into the body of corporate policies would serve to create a sense of belongingness in the minds of the employees. The principle of the human relations approach focuses on making organizational members feel useful and vital to the company.  

Building custom dashboards on digital workplace platforms will let you keep tabs on your projects’ progress and employee performances,  thus enabling you to appreciate and reward good work. Sharing articles of motivation, events, quick games, and surveys through customized dashboards can help keep employees engaged and productive. Good employee experiences create a sense of belongingness and a feeling of being vital, leading to reduced attrition levels.

3. Create an environment of inclusion

Some employees might be wary of new technologies while certain others – like siloed teams – might see collaboration tools as a threat. It is imperative to ensure governance and compliance in place to train your employees at all levels in new technologies before deploying digital platforms. When diverse teams work together from different geographies in a digital working environment, it is the sense of inclusion that helps boost employee engagement. 

A digital workplace can be identified as an effective one only when it can be utilized by all. Thus, it needs to be simple and user-friendly, so that all employees can easily adapt to the new tools and technology. 

Read more: The Definitive Guide to Perfect Digital Workplace Solution

In Conclusion!

As mentioned above, digital workplaces are the smartest way forward for businesses. But it has its own drawbacks. However, these few glitches can easily be eliminated with the adoption of the right digital workplace solution. 

InfinCE makes a smart digital workplace partner that addresses the vital factors of engagement, diversity, inclusion, and belongingness among employees to help them meet the targets set much faster, in an employee-friendly environment designed to create great employee experiences.

With InfinCE, your employees can:

• Stay connected
• Work smart
• Make quick decisions
• Reduce work stress
• Maintain work-life balance well
• Stay engaged, motivated, and feel valued.

Know more about how InfinCE can drive employee wellbeing as well as improve efficiency in your organization. 

Sign Up for a Free Demo today!

Every workplace has its ecosystem. As a result, all of its aspects are constantly evolving. Employers today understandably want to establish a safe digital sanctuary for employees who have returned from the pandemic.

Because of the expanding technological adaptations, the digital workplace has limitless options. It contributes to a highly coordinated and running facility solely focused on providing a safe ecosystem and giving new experiences. Disruptive science, high-tech gear, and machine learning with AI are guiding workplaces toward a powerful digitalization that revolutionizes the way organizations operate.

A quick glance at the top digital workplace trends to expect in 2022.

Read more: Transform your Data Sharing Practices to Win Customer Trust?

1. Hybrid or Remote Work

Flexibility in how, where, and when individuals work is no longer a differentiator; it’s standard practice. Employers who do not provide flexibility will continue to see higher turnover, as employees seek roles in organizations that provide a value proposition more aligned with their objectives.

Organizations can benefit from data privacy with virtual private servers, robust firewalls, encryption/password-based access controls, concierge service, easy scalability, and reduced costs with InfinCE’s cloud architecture. Organizations may rapidly set up a business domain, website, mail server, and business apps without coding. Employees can gain access from anywhere using any device and continue from where they left off, presenting the organization with enhanced flexibility.

2. Four-Day Work Week is on the Way

According to LinkedIn’s Annual Big Ideas Report, industries will embrace the four-day workweek in 2022. This practice has already gained traction on a global scale, with organizations making the switch. (According to LinkedIn News, trial results reveal better employee well-being, work-life balance, and productivity.)

3. Employee Well-Being Prioritization

Organizations are increasingly concentrating on work-life balance, and employee mental health. This is likely to continue until 2022 especially as the epidemic causes more stress and burnout. Prioritizing employee well-being can also imply giving additional employee benefits, increased flexibility, and sign-on bonuses.

With InfinCE’s Collaboration Apps, employees can engage and connect, forming a professional bond that promotes teamwork and a sense of belonging, making way to a happier workplace experience.

Read more: How A Collaboration Software Can Improve Productivity

4. Focus on Centralized Communication

With teams dispersed across geographies and time zones, centralized communication will continue to surge to the top of the priority list to combat communication overload and miscommunication among team members. As a result, many large corporations are increasingly pursuing centralized communication platforms and improved work management.

With InfinCE, you can centrally oversee your complete IT infrastructure – server, storage, and staff. As well as create access controls for your files and apps using a single login, giving your organization superior insight over your authorized resources. In addition, you get to enable seamless business operations with InfinCE by accessing contacts with a click, live chats, one-on-one video calls, and frictionless video meetings.

5. Automation

Technological options include automated visitor management, capturing guest contact information, tracking and scanning visitors for COVID symptoms, recordkeeping, and even notifying hosts of visitors’ arrivals. According to a report published on fortunly.com, the total work hour completed by humans will decrease by 13% as they will be done by robots, or in simple terms, automated. As a result, automation will stay and govern the sectors in the future decade.

With InfinCE’s productivity tools, you can provide your employees with a plethora of ready-to-use productivity tools – documents, spreadsheets, and presentations – to manage business data in a variety of formats, securely share your documents with any person, team, department, or collaborators outside your organization via a simple link, and elevate your organization’s credibility and maintain a favorable brand image among your customers with personalized business email. Additionally, InfinCE provides custom dashboards driven by a selection of tiles. All this and more results in automating your workplace to a large extent.

Read more: All You Need to Know About Dashboards and Data Security

6. Shifting the emphasis from Roles to Skills

According to Gartner, in the post-pandemic era, the attention of employers will move from job roles that require a collection of “unconnected and disparate talents” to “specialized skills” catering to specific business demands and difficulties. This is mainly due to companies realizing that roles are more closely linked to a post in an organization’s hierarchical system. In contrast, talents are tailored directly to business goals and difficulties.

7. Geography and Location will be irrelevant

The sole benefit that the pandemic brought was the acceptability of remote jobs. The propagation of the virus led the globe to believe otherwise. As a result, even when businesses reopen, remote working is thriving and adopted by many organizations.

InfinCE allows your organization to benefit from hassle-free remote working, making distance unimportant. Get real-time insights into the CPU, memory, and storage utilization of your office and application servers’ OS, Files, and DB with Server and Storage Monitoring.  InfinCE allows you to automatically update these boundaries when they exceed their present capacity, ensuring optimal resource use at all times.

8. Employee Monitoring, Productivity, and Behavioral Analytics

Employers are increasingly investing in technologies geared to monitor and track their employees’ activity to increase productivity and efficiency. For example, platforms now enable firms to monitor employee behavior across email and technologies like Slack to gauge productivity.

With capabilities such as productivity tracking, reports, and behavior analytics, our platform, InfinCE offers you insights into your employees’ activities. Using this data, the organization can schedule further training for individuals who require it, boost productivity, and identify and control bottlenecks.

9. HR Transformation Using Technology and Data 

By 2022, more firms will have transformed their human resources departments by leveraging indirect sourcing and talent acquisition data analytics. HR professionals can also use data to determine why employees leave their companies and reduce turnover. In addition, people analytics or insights drawn from data related to worker talent are assisting companies in uncovering critical information about organizational performance and individual employee requirements. 

Custom Dashboards help increase business efficiency. InfinCE provides custom organization, department, team, and personal dashboards for increased visibility and efficiency.

InfinCE presents your organization with a growing library of tried-and-true business software solutions, some of which are free to use. In addition, this carefully curated InfinCE Marketplace offers your company a wide range of open-source and commercial business software alternatives from several software suppliers.

Read more: 5 Ways Today’s Workplace Has Transitioned Digitally

10. The Great Resignation will pursue

Employees are resigning in unprecedented numbers, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. As a result, many teams and organizations have made employee retention a primary goal. As a result, the “Great Resignation” will be present until 2022.  

How will these trends impact the workplace culture?

The realities of these trends will get piled on top of longer-term technology transformations, continuous DE&I journeys, and persistent disruptions and uncertainties. We believe these trends can hugely impact the workplace culture in the following ways: 

• Leaders will be proponents of conflict resolution. Their jobs will focus more on bringing things together than just being functional champions. 
• New-age technologies and breakthroughs that come faster than expected will emphasize the importance of having a digital mindset and transformation. We will need to be flexible and troubleshoot our current and future needs. Organizations will be made or broken by their ability to innovate. 
• Building new processes and practices to support the Hybrid workplace will be necessary. We will require a shift in both people’s and leaders’ mindsets. Managers who believe in one-on-one physical connections will need to adapt quickly because professional interactions will now be in virtual mode. 
• Organizations will have more feet on the ground and thinner central resources. The skills hired for locations will be sharper because they will need to establish their support systems. 
• Well-defined career prospects and progress will be a source of attraction and retention. People will start prioritizing training and upskilling to define their market value and existence. Every organization will need to prioritize workplace competence and performance. 
• Managing the new style of working and living puts strain on individuals. Managers must be more alert and respect this transition. As a result, engaging on a deeper level will benefit both.

InfinCE is capable of meeting your diverse needs in the best way possible. InfinCE provides everything you need to assist various digital office operations, from corporate chat tools to data management software. With InfinCE, your organization gets to enhance the workplace by offering a streamlined experience, cheaper costs, and effective deployment and change management.

Take an InfinCE Demo to explore the business gripping features for effective workplace management.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed enterprises to adopt different work from home policies to keep their business operational. Yet after a prolonged remote working routine, organizations are now facing new challenges to reopen their offices. Most of it is due to the mixed emotions of employees returning to the office. It brings rise to the concept of a hybrid workplace – an approach that combines remote work policies with the usual office work culture.

In a hybrid workplace, employees have the flexibility to choose from working remotely or from the office in line with their job requirements and preferences. Many big enterprises have already started planning the best model for their hybrid workforce and determining how it would benefit their business and the employees. In fact, a strategic approach is crucial when adopting a hybrid work culture as reports from Boston Business Journals highlight that employees would rather turn down their raise (up to $30,000) in favor of working remotely.

Read more: Shifting to a Digital Workplace? Here’s What You Need To Know!

Enterprises Need to Embrace the Change

Companies need to realize that employee expectations have drastically changed over the past 18 months of working remotely. If they look ahead to attract and retain employees moving forward, they need to carefully draft their hybrid work model to fit the needs of their employees as well as the business. It requires redesigning the work policies, culture, and offices for the hybrid workforce.

A recent survey from the shared workspaces provider, WeWork, says  “75% of employees would give up at least one workplace perk for the freedom to choose their work environment.” Also,  around 50% of employees would “prefer to spend three days a week or fewer in the office, and when they do go in, they want to be there 5 hours a day or less.”

According to Quendrida Whitmore, SVP and head of community at WeWork, “The pandemic spurred a seismic shift in how we think about work. Employees prefer the flexibility to work where they want — at least a few days a week — and most companies of all sizes embrace hybrid work models.” However, adopting the hybrid workplace culture goes way beyond just providing flexible work options to the employees. It involves a tactical approach to ensure optimal employee engagement and overall productivity.

Read more: What is Hybrid Cloud Identity and Why It Matters for Your Business

5 Tips to Ensure Hybrid Workplace Success

To restart, companies need to think about using technology to facilitate employee management and drive expected operational efficiency. The hybrid workplace is expected to stay, so you need to ensure that your organization is ready to adopt it right and navigate the challenges effectively. Here are five tips that will get your hybrid work environment going.

1. Create Proper Channels for Communication

One of the most common challenges in remote work is to ensure good communication lines for employees. A hybrid workplace will not be devoid of this problem either, so you need to make sure that you have well-defined channels for communication between different departments as well as remote and on-premise employees. A robust team management suite like InfinCE can be a godsend in this scenario.

InfinCE ensures that your employees can easily interact with the relevant people with multiple options for one-on-one and group communication. What’s more, InfinCE also makes it much simpler for your employees to access the required information and business data to perform their jobs more effectively.

2. Set the Company Expectations and Goals Upfront

When managing a hybrid workforce, you need to ensure that your teams are on the same page and moving forward as expected. In a flexible work environment, it can be challenging to make sure that everyone on the team knows the metrics and team goals they need to achieve. This can, in turn, affect the overall productivity of the company and lead to an exhausted workforce.

InfinCE provides a unified dashboard to announce company news and pass the information to all the teams in real-time to resolve such challenges. It ensures to keep your remote and in-office teams aligned with the company goals and timelines to deliver their best performance.

Read more: All You Need to Know About Dashboards and Data Security

3. Collect Feedback to Make the System Better

Managers and supervisors give regular feedback to their teams to ensure they address specific pain points and improve their performance. Similarly, collect feedback from employees on the hybrid work culture. It is important to ask how your employees feel about the hybrid work environment to improve the system and tweak the processes as required.

An all-in-one team collaboration platform like InfinCE helps everyone in the team stay on the same page with constant communication, feedback, performance transparency, and goal tracking abilities.

4. Provide the Required Training to Your Employees

You will need to reimagine what skills your employees need to ensure optimal output in a hybrid workplace. The success of your hybrid workplace approach will heavily rely on how familiar your employees are with using digital technologies for work management. It can range from the ability to make decisions to collaborating virtually within different departments.

You have to reassess the skills of your team and create training programs to address the gaps effectively. InfinCE facilitates collaborative and democratic training and development through easy access to top LMS platforms. Allowing seamless integration, InfinCE lets take advantage of effective tools that help drive a skillful workforce and productive workplace.

Read more: How Can Organizations Profit More from Collaboration Software?

5. Integrate the Hybrid Work Culture into Recruiting

A major advantage of having a hybrid workplace is that you get the flexibility to hire candidates from anywhere across the world. The flip side of it also implies that employees can consider job offers from anywhere and join companies that best fit their needs. However, it creates a challenge when recruiting in-demand skills. Hence, you need to define employee engagement and support thoughtfully to attract new employees.

It goes true for retaining current employees as well. If you fail to integrate the brand value in your hybrid workplace culture, employees may start to look out for other opportunities. InfinCE helps integrate top CRM systems to help ease the onboarding process as well as keep staff motivated and engaged.

Do Not Rush It

You need to accept whether you are ready for a hybrid workplace or not. It is essential to have open interactions with your employees to determine whether they are willing to return to the office or prefer remote work. Likewise, you also need to evaluate the workforce capacity and rank your decisions on that. If only a few employees want to return to the office, it would be wiser to rethink reopening and draft the right working plan to suit your business needs.

InfinCE is a promising digital workplace collaboration platform that can easily bridge the gap between work from home and work from the office. InfinCE can easily transform your IT infrastructure into a digital friendy ecosystem at minimal budgets, establishing a convenient hybrid workplace model. To know more about how to get started with InfinCE, reach out to our experts or sign up here.

There is no arguing the fact that digital transformation is the need of the hour for businesses to drive success. So once you have made that crucial decision to embark on the digital transformation journey, the next step would be to choose the right digital workplace software that would make the transition smoother. Read on to learn about the core competencies that you need to look out for when adopting a digital workplace solution for your company.

Read more: Why InfinCE is The Only True Digital Workplace Orchestration Platform Ever Created

The Essential Features of Digital Workplace Software

Selecting a digital workplace platform can be much more overwhelming than it may sound. There are a lot of digital workplace tools available out there, and most of them look quite the same at a glance. Nonetheless, you need to ensure that the digital workplace solution you choose fits your organizational requirements in the best way. Otherwise, it will not serve the purpose, not to mention lead to unnecessary costs for the company in training and learning features that you would never use.

At the same time, you should realize that using multiple workplace tools to manage different aspects of the company is not a worthy option either. That is because it will require you to spend more hours training your employees as well as buy multiple subscriptions to meet different needs. That is why choosing all-in-one digital workplace software like InfinCE is a more practical approach to fulfilling the varied demands of digital transformation. For one, it comes with all the essential features to meet day-to-day communication needs in an organization. Plus, you get advanced tools for project management, time tracking, task allocation, file sharing, data storage, and more.

Read more: 5 Common Remote Work Challenges Solved by InfinCE Digital Workplace Solution

Here is a look at some of the most important features that you must have in the digital workplace software that would help to get you started with your digital transformation strategy.

1. Modules to Facilitate Multiple Tasks

Studies have found that more than 60% of employees end up wasting around an hour toggling between different applications to perform their jobs. With an all-in-one digital workplace solution like InfinCE, your employees will not have to juggle between different software to, say, share documents and have a video conference. A platform that comes with modules for automating simple tasks, building project boards, and handling collaboration needs from a unified dashboard is the right remedy.

2. Seamless Integration

Shifting to a digital workplace culture means you will need to move the existing processes and operations to a digital environment. Therefore, you need to choose a digital solution that allows for a seamless integration with the CRM, accounting, and other essential systems you are using. This will ensure that all the tools you require for the day-to-day running of your business are strategically connected to help you achieve higher productivity.

3. Simplified Project Management

One of the most striking benefits of adopting an ultra-modern digital workplace solution like InfinCE is that it allows you to jump right into managing your workflows with its no-code environment. In other words, the learning curve is never steep with InfinCE and you can get started in no time to create as many workflows as you need for your company. There is also 24/7 concierge support available to help you deploy the right solutions you need.

Read more: 5 Ways InfinCE Custom Dashboards Can Boost Your Workplace Productivity

4. Pre-Built Application Suite

Reports say that a reliable and intuitive digital workplace software solution can boost employee satisfaction and retention rates significantly. This is also because of the vast pool of pre-built apps in all-in-one workplace platforms, which helps you to save time in finding the right tools to automate the running and planned workflows. With InfinCE, you can start from scratch, upgrade the existing apps, or integrate the current systems through a unified platform, no matter what the type of your business is.

5. Communication Solutions

Contextual conversations are the backbone of a successful business in a digital workplace environment. Ineffective communication can severely affect the ability of your employees to perform their jobs, which can, in turn, lead to poor collaboration and lost productivity. InfinCE bridges this gap by providing multiple types of communication tools to meet your organizational requirements. Be it a quick audio call, instant messaging, or a group video conference, you can do it all using the unified platform.

6. Smart Reporting

Building a successful digital transformation strategy relies on generating a variety of reports. This helps to track performance and focus on areas that need to be improved to deal with the issues that affect process efficiency. An all-in-one digital workplace platform gives you multiple reporting options with pivot tables, aging metrics, audit logs, and even custom reports to meet your varied requirements, which would help to identify problems and take the necessary action to address them in time.

Read more: How InfinCE Online Collaboration Tool Helps Achieve Your Business Goals

7. Security and Access

You should also look for a digital workplace solution that provides you flexible access control options. This is vital to ensure that your confidential business data does not fall into the wrong hands. InfinCE comes with improved data security features to ensure absolute privacy so that you can keep sensitive conversations under wraps. It allows you to make the most of secure virtual private servers, advanced firewalls, as well as encryption and password-based access controls to simplify enterprise-wide collaboration and communication.

8. Workflow Flexibility and Automation

Another great feature that all-in-one collaboration software gives you is the ability to switch from different boards and layouts to meet your workflow needs. You can also assign tasks to different team members using custom parameters and set the expectations and deadlines clearly upfront to make project management simpler. Setting up rules for recurring tasks for different categories and generating them automatically at regular intervals will save a lot of time in task distribution.

Apart from these, you should also make certain that the digital workplace software you choose allows you to connect with remote teams globally and supports portability. InfinCE is a cloud-based workplace solution, which not only gives you unmatched versatility but also expands your reach to acquire talent from around the world. It can be accessed from any device, while you can also scale the server capacity and storage space needs as your business grows.

Read more: 8 Ways Cloud Automation Significantly Improves Your Legacy IT Operations

Make the Move Now!

Once deemed as an ambitious goal for large enterprises, having a digital transformation strategy has become essential for every business to stay competitive in the market. As the world is moving hurriedly toward a digital-first culture, it is high time to adopt the best digital workplace software and equip your organization for the future. So wait no more!

Sign Up with InfinCE today or connect with our experts for more details.

The Core Benefits Of Using A Cloud Orchestration Tool Like InfinCE

How does InfinCE Cloud Orchestration Platform change the game for businesses in today’s remote working era? Learn more about cloud orchestration and InfinCE in this post. 

Significance Of Cloud Computing Today

Cloud computing is one of the most efficient and disruptive business technologies that is helping enterprises across the globe to drive success in their respective industries. It has been assisting businesses to push forward innovative approaches, improve operational efficiency, and reduce downtime. By leveraging the power of a vast network of managed remote servers over the internet, you can manage, store, and process important business data much more proficiently. With cloud orchestration in the picture, exploring the benefits of enterprise cloud can be further simplified.

Read more: 5 Ways an Integrated Cloud Platform is Beneficial for Your Small Business

What Is Cloud Orchestration?

Cloud orchestration refers to a comprehensive solution that supports and fortifies cloud computing services and operations. This is done with the help of a set of cloud orchestration tools, which ease managing interconnections and interactions over the network. Moreover, a cloud orchestration platform can also facilitate end-to-end automation of the multiple services that are used or are in the process of being deployed in the cloud architecture.

Understanding The Basics Of Cloud Orchestration

Experts in the cloud computing industry have highlighted the uncertainty around adopting the technology by businesses for a long time. However, enterprises that have embraced the cloud have found it quite promising in dealing with the changing customer behaviors and trends and the evolving market dynamics. With cloud orchestration tools like InfinCE, businesses can coordinate and arrange automated tasks, which will help consolidate the existing operations and workflow.

InfinCE cloud orchestration platform allows you to automate the processes required to manage connections and various public and private cloud workloads. With the help of the InfinCE cloud orchestration tool, you can also integrate different automated processes and tasks to create a unified workflow to address a specific business function.

Read more: Why InfinCE is The Only True Digital Workplace Orchestration Platform Ever Created 

Cloud orchestration also involves enforcing policies and ensuring that all the processes have the required permission to execute as needed or connect to the applicable workload. In that, the core tasks of a cloud orchestration platform are to start server workloads or provide for them, provision applicable data storage capacity, as well as manage Virtual Machines (VMs) by arranging the required resources, services, and workloads in the cloud.

What Makes Cloud Orchestration Essential For Businesses

Enterprises around the world are adopting microservices-based applications to ensure the smooth functioning of their day-to-day operations. These containerized applications are designed to communicate using APIs to perform their tasks. This has led to the rising demand for automating such applications across the cloud, whether deploying or managing them. However, this can be daunting without a proper approach to address the varied requirements across multiple clouds.

This is where cloud orchestration tools like InfinCE come to the rescue of enterprises. Using the InfinCE cloud orchestration platform, you can easily manage countless dependencies on the cloud environment with the help of policy-driven security as well as well-defined management capabilities. As more companies embrace hybrid cloud architecture these days, the InfinCE cloud orchestration tool helps enterprises fulfill the demands of both public and hybrid clouds.

Read more: 5 Features of InfinCE that will Transform The Way You Work

Cloud orchestration can be a vital asset for businesses today as it helps avoid the need for a dedicated IT team to manage the automation tasks. That translates to savings in terms of productivity as your workforce will be free to focus on more value-adding tasks or core business activities. Besides, cloud orchestration takes the chances of manual errors out of the picture while providing fast and reliable output. Orchestrating cloud operations also allows you to invest more time and resources in innovation, which can help you gain a competitive edge in the industry.

Differences Between Cloud Orchestration And Cloud Automation 

Both cloud automation and cloud orchestration tools allow you to address common challenges in managing enterprise cloud by automating various processes across domains and systems. In addition, both help you eliminate the roadblocks in automation by facilitating a cohesive and cloud-first strategy, which entails both private and public cloud components. The result is improved employee and customer experience. However, there is a subtle difference between cloud automation and cloud orchestration.

Read more: 8 Ways Cloud Automation Significantly Improves Your Legacy IT Operations 

Cloud orchestration is more like a superset of automation. It goes beyond the usual automation processes to further ease the coordination between the automated tasks in the cloud. On the contrary, cloud automation focuses on enabling the tasks at hand, such as initiating workloads or web servers, and ensuring that the same task can be repeated without manual intervention. In other words, a cloud orchestration platform allows you to manage the entire IT process automation through a single dashboard.

Nonetheless, it is crucial to understand that cloud automation and cloud orchestration work collaboratively. This way, they ensure that the applications and services deployed in the cloud are managed in a unified and functional environment that functions efficiently and adds to the cloud’s cost-efficiency. Even so, cloud orchestration is crucial to ensure the effective scaling of applications across public and private clouds.

Key Business Benefits of Cloud Orchestration

Cloud orchestration allows businesses to add enterprise-wide functions to their existing models, such as scalability, redundancy, and failover and fail-back. At the same time, it will enable you to manage dependencies and couple everything into a single package, which helps to reduce the overall IT burden. Moreover, cloud orchestration tools like InfinCE offer improved visibility into the resources and processes in your organization. This can help you prevent VM sprawl and track resource usage based on business units, departments, or even individual users.

With the help of a robust cloud orchestration platform like InfinCE, you can also enable automatic scaling for your distributed applications while ensuring that reliable disaster recovery measures are in effect. This will ensure business continuity and drive superior inter-service configuration. On top of that, the InfinCE cloud orchestration platform helps simplify automation across hybrid cloud environments while ensuring that the security protocols and enterprise policies are maintained in a dynamic environment.

White Paper: InfinCE digital workplace orchestration platform helps organizations implement an entirely new working environment and accurately replicate their employees’ changing work experience. How does InfinCE transform the workplace and add value to business owners and employees? Download our free white paper.

There is no doubt that cloud orchestration can reduce your overall operational costs. Meanwhile, it also helps accelerate the delivery of various services while automating coordination between workloads and the management of complex IT architectures. As it also eliminates provisioning errors and facilitates instant provisioning of the required services, cloud orchestration is the need of the hour for enterprises that want to ensure high-end configuration for superior business growth. Experience the potential of cloud orchestration with InfinCE, the only authentic and holistic digital workplace orchestration platform. 

Please chat with our expert to understand why InfinCE is the best fit for your business. 

How to Ensure Optimal Workforce Productivity in Uncertain Times

The COVID-19 outbreak may have forced many businesses to adopt remote work policies that they were unfamiliar with earlier. However, with the right productivity apps and collaboration tools at their disposal, such organizations found managing their remote teams much easier than they initially thought. As the world embraced work-from-home practices, a lot of new productivity tools also entered the marketplace. Nonetheless, where this made managing the remote workforce simpler for some, it created further confusion for others when it came to choosing the right remote work tool for their business.

For instance, InfinCE team management software offers all the essential remote work applications and productivity tools you need to make remote work seamless. In addition, InfinCE allows you to pick additional productivity apps and third-party tools from its curated app marketplace and integrate them quickly. All these features of InfinCE simplify team management. With InfinCE, you can improve operational efficiency and employee engagement by ensuring that your teams have all the tools needed to perform their jobs.

Read more: 5 Common Remote Work Challenges Solved by InfinCE Digital Workplace Solution 

Remote work challenges

Remote workplace culture brings many benefits to the company in the form of cost savings, while it benefits employees by letting them work from the comfort of their homes. But, yet again, the work-from-home approach is not devoid of challenges either. For example, managers find it very difficult to establish a personal connection with their employees and build trust without direct contact. Likewise, they do not have much insight into the daily work of their teams and are required to experiment with different practices to keep the processes going.

Read more: 5 Best Practices To Enable Seamless Communication For Your Remote Workforce

1. No face-to-face supervision

The lack of in-person interaction between managers and employees makes leaders presume that their teams are not working efficiently, especially when they do not achieve the expected results. Though the deficit could be because of many other metrics, managers are likely to think that employees did not meet their targets and failed to perform to their potential due to no face-to-face supervision.

2. Limited access to information

Often, remote teams have to put extra effort into finding the information they need to perform their jobs. Getting even simple answers from their colleagues can take an entire day if they are located in different time zones. At the same time, interpersonal issues and low motivation to collaborate can also create a significant obstacle to keep the teams functional.

3. Lack of office culture

Social isolation, loneliness, and remote working can be stressful and lead to operational inefficiencies in many different ways. For example, without the usual interactions in office settings, employees can feel disconnected and lose their sense of belonging. On the contrary, home distractions and personal responsibilities can also affect remote working practices and impact overall productivity.

Read more: 5 Tips To Effectively Manage Remote Teams During Challenging Times 

Five practical ways to manage remote workforce better

Different enterprises have come up with distinct methods to manage their remote teams and overcome the related challenges. While that is a great way to explore the potential of remote working for your company, there are a few ways to simplify the approach. Here are some tips that will help you to manage your remote workforce in these uncertain times.

1. Set out with a proper plan

Everything should start with a proper plan when it comes to business management. It is significant for creating a healthy remote work culture as well. Therefore, you need to determine the best approach for running the day-to-day operations and communicate effectively with your team.

2. Define the expectations

Clearly define the expectations to your teams, set the targets, and communicate the respective timelines for each target with your employees before the start of the project. This will avoid confusion and allow you to track the performance of your teams.

3. Monitor project progress

Tracking the project’s progress periodically will help you update your teams about what they need to do next. This will also help you ensure that everyone is playing their part as they are supposed to.

4. Keep your team motivated

Do not let social isolation or lack of face-to-face interaction sneak in to affect your team’s productivity and the company’s overall operational efficiency. Instead, use different communication channels to interact with your teams and keep them motivated to ensure that they work to their best potential.

5. Ensure seamless access to data 

You should make sure that your teams have all the data and information accessible at all times to perform their duties efficiently. This will ensure that all employees can complete the tasks without waiting for someone to share the files.

Employ the right productivity apps

This is the golden ticket to seeing success with remote working policies. From planning the process using project management software to providing access to files via cloud-sharing tools, you can tackle all the challenges in adopting a remote workplace culture with the right productivity solutions. With an all-in-one platform like InfinCE, you can combine all the productivity tools for effective communication, collaboration, and performance tracking in a single suite.

Read more: How InfinCE Simplifies Multi-app Management for IT Managers 

Here are some of the most critical productivity apps that you should have to manage remote teams efficiently.

• Project management software helps you plan and sync the different tasks assigned to your remote workforce.
• Instant messenger app ensures that you can communicate important information to your teams in real-time.
• Documents sharing tool facilitates seamless information exchange among your employees so that they can work anytime.
• Video conferencing solution resolves the gap of face-to-face meetings to some extent while allowing effective communication.
• Time tracking app allows you to monitor the performance of your teams and keep everyone motivated to get the job done.

InfinCE gives you all these productivity apps and collaboration tools in a single platform to make remote team management much simpler. Besides, when you have multiple remote desktop tools for different purposes, it can quickly become chaotic to stay on top of everything, not to mention having to bear considerable subscription costs. With all the productivity tools in one platform, InfinCE also helps you avoid juggling different apps to manage your remote teams. Contact us to learn more about InfinCE.