Many are attributing the growing prevalence of ransomware to the pandemic-driven shift to remote and hybrid work. But what do the current numbers tell us?

1) Ransomware attacks rose by 150% between 2019 and 2020.

Harvard Business Review recently reported on the 150% increase in cyberattacks from 2019 to 2020—ransomware in particular. And while it’s easy to brush aside attempted attacks as media hype, it’s important to remember that perpetrators judge the success of ransomware attacks by how much money they bring in. That’s where the real damage becomes evident. In 2020, the amounts paid by victims of these ransomware attacks increased by over 300% compared to 2019.

2) US companies paid out nearly $350 million in ransom money in 2020.

To translate those stark increases into dollars, a report titled Combating Ransomware from the Institute for Security and Technology found that in the US alone companies paid out close to $350 million last year. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. As the FBI notes in all of its materials on ransomware, each successful attack emboldens malicious actors. Those payments are confirmation that ransomware works and serve to increase the likelihood—and financial impact—of future attacks.

3) A ransomware attack is followed by a 19-day average downtime.

The true cost of a ransomware attack is far more than the ransom itself. Drawing on data from the cyber vulnerability company Coveware, security provider SafeAtLast reported that a ransomware attack led to an average downtime of nearly three weeks in Q3 2020. That lost productivity has serious effects on a company’s bottom line. In addition, the impact is growing. The current 19-day average represents a 57% year-on-year increase compared to the 12-day average that companies reported in the third quarter of 2019.

4) Over half (56%) of employers believe that employees adopted bad security practices while working remotely.

Among a laundry list of unsettling stats that trace a direct line between remote workers’ habits and serious security risks, CPO Magazine reported that a majority of employers were wringing their hands over their remote workforce. Furthermore, close to 40% of employees admitted to relaxing their standards as well as finding security workarounds. This also has implications for hybrid work, as work-from-home (WFH) employees could easily bring their lax security practices back into the office.

5) 54% of IT leaders are worried that their staff will threaten the hybrid work environment with infected devices.

It isn’t just questionable security practices that employees risk introducing into the hybrid workplace. The same Tessian “Back to Work: Security Behaviors Report” that CPO Magazine consulted found that IT leaders were concerned that the blurring lines between personal and professional devices would put compromised devices behind the firewall. Meanwhile, 40% of employees validated those concerns by saying they planned on using the same devices for office-based and remote work.

6) Close to one-third (30%) of firms have zero protection against malware for BYOD.

Despite these risks, many companies are under-equipped to deal with the threat of infiltration posed by compromised devices from remote and hybrid work. HSToday by the Government Technology & Services Coalition examined the “2021 BYOD Security Report” issued by cloud security specialist Bitglass and discovered that not even half (41%) of organizations were using some form of BYOD endpoint malware protection—with more than a quarter saying they weren’t using any at all.

7) Last year saw a 242% year-on-year increase in attacks on Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and collaboration tools.

What’s the Achilles heel of remote work and the biggest target for hackers? According to a blog by the digital platform security provider Irdeto, research by Kaspersky suggests that the most glaring point of exploitation is RDP vulnerabilities and lax RDP security. Between January and November 2020, 3.3 billion attacks of this kind were detected—and only time may tell how many went successfully undetected. We’ve written extensively about the security issues of RDP and how to avoid them, including our recent post “Protecting Against Ransomware by Addressing RDP Issues.”

8) In Q1 2021, RDP regained the top position as the most common attack vector.

Although RDP briefly took second place to e-mail phishing attacks during Q4 2020, Coveware reports that longstanding RDP vulnerabilities were once again the number-one vector for ransomware attacks in early 2021. Nearly half of all reported attacks took place through some compromise in RDP security.

9) Attackers launched 7.5 million external attacks on cloud accounts in Q2 2020.

In a big-picture look at the cyber threats facing the enterprise, Security Magazine found that cloud services—which have boomed as a result of remote work—had become an attractive target for ransomware attacks. Consequently, they deserved to be examined with the same scrutiny as RDP vulnerabilities. Along with paying close attention to configurations and the implementation of APIs on the user side, this means that IT teams need to choose cloud and SaaS providers who prioritize security.

10) Ransomware has grown more sophisticated, with a “sharper” point of attack.

It’s easy to get caught up in hard numbers and stats. But understanding the evolving nature of ransomware attacks is just as necessary for hardening your remote or hybrid work environment against them. The cybersecurity platform provider Axios says that the philosophy of ransomware “is now about creating a compromise and subsequent operational disruption.” As a result, its point of attack is “sharper.” With ransomware being deployed far more strategically, this means that lines of defense have to be strategic as well.

Cameyo both enables and safeguards the hybrid workplace

None of this suggests that companies should shy away from adopting remote and hybrid work models. It just means that they have to be very selective about the solutions they choose to support them.

Cameyo’s virtual application delivery platform was designed to empower the hybrid workforce while also providing the highest level of security against persistent ransomware threats like RDP vulnerabilities.

For instance, Cameyo Port Shield is a built-in feature that dynamically opens and closes RDP and HTTP(S) ports at the Windows Firewall level in response to secure, authenticated data traffic. That’s complemented by Cameyo NoVPN, which separates the user’s device from the corporate network by encrypting all traffic and delivering apps via a secure HTML5 browser. Features like these give IT teams the ability to embrace BYOD devices while still practicing a strict Zero Trust security model.

We’ve recently detailed how Cameyo enhances security while enabling remote and hybrid work, but there’s no substitute for firsthand experience. That’s why we offer a free, no-credit-card trial of our virtual application delivery platform that will have you up and running in a matter of minutes. You can also reach out to us at sales@cameyo.com or simply fill out a short online form to schedule a demo. Either way, you’ll see how Cameyo mitigates the risk of ransomware attacks and tightens RDP security as it streamlines your hybrid work environment.

The post Ransomware and Hybrid Work, by the Numbers appeared first on Cameyo.

Let’s take a look:

1) The move to hybrid work, permanently (TechRepublic) 

This is a really interesting article based on a recent presentation given by Cisco’s CIO Jacqui Guichelaar. The article recognizes upfront that Cisco – as a huge global technology company with a fair amount of remote work-friendly technology – started with a leg up on most companies when it came to making the shift to remote work. But even with that advantage, it was still complicated and they faced their fair share of challenges.

Within 10 days, the company had a remote workforce, she said. “We’re lucky in many ways, but one of the really great things was we had a killer network and we’re a big, collaborative company and had many of the programs already in place to help us to trigger things like VPNs and split-tunneling to manage traffic as the volume increased during remote work.”

But the quote above begs the question – what about the majority of companies that are NOT global networking technology giants, and don’t have all that technology and expertise in place? Also – it’s somewhat baffling that a company the size of Cisco turned to VPNs as part of their remote work solution. Sure, Cisco has a vested interest in promoting the use of VPNs. But we’ve seen time and again from the past year that VPNs simply do not scale, and they introduce a host of security issues. 

The article then dives into Cisco’s vision for permanent hybrid work moving forward. 

Now, Guichelaar is focusing on the move to a hybrid workforce. “We’ve all learned work is not where you are, it’s what you do. We will not be going back to the office.” Everyone should have the right to make the personal choice about what works best for them–within the guidelines of the company, she said.

Surveys Cisco has done have revealed that 83% of employees want a hybrid model and that 98% of future meetings are expected to include at least one remote participant. Those who worked in a hybrid fashion during the pandemic had better mental health, Guichelaar said. This means having to “level the playing field” to make sure everyone feels included and has the same level of technology in their homes.

This is exactly where Virtual Application Delivery comes in. By giving every employee access to all of the business-critical applications they need to be productive, organizations can help level the playing field. They can also ultra-securely support the overwhelming demand from a majority of their people to work remotely or in a hybrid model.  

Read the full article on TechRepublic here. 

2) Videoconferencing challenge looming (TECHnalysis Research)

Speaking of Cisco (which owns WebEx), this article from analyst Bob O’Donnell at TECHnalysis discuss the various issues that organizations may face when trying to utilize videoconferencing for the newly-hybrid workplace. 

A big part of the challenge stems from the fact that a hybrid work model—in which time is regularly split between the office and home (or other remote locations)—is going to be the future for most organizations, at least for the next several years. What that means—as Cisco wisely pointed out at its recent Webex Suite launch (see “Cisco Extends Webex to Suite of Offerings”) is that roughly 98% of future meetings will include at least one participant that’s not located in the room. That, in turn, implies that 100% of potential meeting rooms need to be equipped to handle those remote members.

Some may argue that we’ve all grown accustomed to looking at our own individual screens during meetings, so it’s not really a requirement that every meeting room have a full videoconferencing unit built in. But O’Donnell points out the the videoconferencing hardware is only one of the potential issues. He goes on to discusss the high cost of videoconferencing and the difficulty of standarizing on one platform when we’ve grown accustomed to having to use multiple platforms depending on who scheduled the meeting. And finally, he brings up the issue of being prepared for the massive increase in video traffic on your organization’s networks. 

O’Donnell is an incredibly well-respected tech analyst who shoots straight and doesn’t over-hype things. This is a really straight-forward and clear breakdown of the issues that most organizations need to think about and prepare for, regardless of what their hybrid strategy looks like. 

Read the complete article on eWeek here. 

3) Lessons from One Law Firm’s Pre-Pandemic Shift to Hybrid Work (Harvard Business Review)

Before you think to yourself that the lessons from a law firm don’t apply to your organization, take a look at this article. Yes, the focus is a Califronia law firm (Hanson Bridgett) that started their move to a hybrid workplace before the pandemic – but the lessons are universal. 

Hanson Bridgett’s leadership didn’t foresee the crisis, but they had been looking to reduce fixed costs and spend the savings in creative ways to become more competitive. Now that people are putting their masks aside, the firm already has answers to many of the questions businesses are confronting.

In January 2018, Hanson Bridgett’s San Francisco headquarters occupied three floors at 425 Market Street. The lease on that space cost the firm $1.6 million per floor per year. Looking to free up budget, David Longinotti, then head of the firm’s real estate and construction section, began examining triggers in the company’s lease, including a negotiated option to give up one of the firm’s three floors. He formed a working group that called themselves “the breakout artists,” a cross-section of senior partners, new associates, and everyone in between in the firm’s real estate practice, to pilot various working modalities. Some lawyers would share offices with others, rotating office time with work-from-home time. Others would work mainly from home, reserving desks at the office (hoteling) when they felt they needed them.

The article highlights that, despite significant cultural resistance to the hybrid work experiment, productivity rose. But people’s perceptions of the hybrid model were still somewhat negative. They did an internal survey to see how people were feeling:

The responses to that survey showed the discomfort some employees felt at the idea of not having a desk to call their own, as well as their anxiety that by not being physically present in the office, their influence might wane and their careers might suffer. There was also some suspicion that people working from home would not be pulling their weight. Yet the consensus was ultimately that this was the right thing to do for most employees and the firm. To mitigate any discomfort, leaders held regular town hall meetings and provided clear and transparent communication.

From here, the article goes into a more in-depth breakdown of the steps the organization took throughout the remainder of the experiment, and how the experiment ultimately landed them in a place where they could increase productivity while saving an incredible amount of money. Unlike so many articles that pontificate on whether or not a hybrid workplace is a good idea or not – this article gets into the specific tests and steps that were taken to get from point A to point B successfully. There is a lot that can be translated to ANY organization, and I highly recommend the read. 

Read the full HBR article here. 

4) Hybrid work doesn’t have to destroy productivity. Here are 3 ways to make it work (Fast Company)

You’ve got to love an article that comes right out the gate with a super clear overview and premise:

The majority of the workforce has been working remotely for almost two years. Not only have they figured out how to make it work, but many of them also want it to stay that way. The reasons are wide-ranging, but typically include fewer distractions, saving time, and enhanced well-being.

The article then goes into three areas that every organization needs to address to help make hybrid work as successful as possible:

1. Address incorrect assumptions about organizational dynamics
2. Employee engagement means committing to new norms
3. Worker engagement tips

The last section has a handful of really simple, easy-to-implement tips that can help increase employee engagement in a hybrid model. Things like:

Have a daily (or weekly), 15-minute virtual “stand up” meeting. Everyone joins a virtual meeting where a manager or team leader gives important updates and team members ask pressing questions. The goal is to get everyone on the same page and prioritize tasks, but then let everyone get back to work. 

This is a quick read with some easy to follow advice, which is definitely worth 8 minutes of your time.

Read the Fast Company article here. 

5) The 3 Hybrid Work Challenges Driving Employee Fatigue (Gartner)

I’m mixing it up with this last one and instead of highlighting an article and it’s learnings, I thought I’d bring attention to a webinar I came across that I thought would be beneficial. Only July 20th Gartner is hosting this webinar to help organizations address the issue of employee fatigue:

Discussion Topics:

• Determine if your current strategies exacerbate the 3 key employee fatigue drivers
• Empower employees and managers to co-create new patterns of flexible work
• Safeguard employees’ mental health and well-being by reducing the risks of overwork

One thing that stood out to me about this webinar is that it’s not just about the technology and how we can enable hybrid work – it’s also about the human aspect of hwlping to make sure your employees are adapting to this new normal in a healthy way. I’m looking forward to joining the webinar to learn more about what the world’s largest analyst firm has to say on the topic.

Register for this free webinar here. 

Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you aback here again next Friday. 

The post This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work – June 25th Edition appeared first on Cameyo.

Let’s dive into the news:

1) Tech companies are looking at more flexible work models when offices reopen (TechCrunch)

The first reason I think this article is worth a read is that it provides a great overview of how some of the world’s largest companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Salesforce) are currently approaching the hybrid work future. But before that summary, TechCrunch’s Ron Miller sums up the perpetual state of change nicely:

Finding that right balance between fully remote and however a given company defines hybrid — like Apple, some days in the office and some days at home — is never going to be easy, and there will never be a one size fits all answer. In fact, it’s probably going to be fluid moving forward.

And, as a startup that has always been remote-first (even prior to the pandemic), I took particular interest in this section of the article that cites data on how startups (vs. the large companies) are approaching remote & hybrid work:

Most startups I speak to don’t foresee an office-centric approach, with many taking a remote-first approach. Andreessen Horowitz recently surveyed 226 startups in its portfolio and found that two-thirds of portfolio companies are looking at a similar hybrid approach as their larger counterparts. In fact, 87 were thinking about 1-2 days a week, with 64 looking at no office at all, only gathering for company off-sites. By contrast, just 18 said that they wouldn’t allow any work from home.

This shouldn’t be surprising at all. Even if you remove all of the arguments about how much time remote work gives back to employees by eliminating commutes, etc., remote work presents another massive benefit to startups – the ability to conserve cash by not wasting it on extremely costly office space. Especially for venture-backed startups, this is a big benefit in terms of extending their pre-profitability runway. In fact, what I find surprising is the fact that 18 startups said they wouldn’t allow ANY working from home. 

I definitely recommend giving the full article a read. Check it out here. 

2) The psychology behind why some leaders are resisting a hybrid work model (Fortune)

This article was written by a behavioral scientist, so rather than just talking about how companies are planning to handle hybrid work, it digs into the underlying psychology to shed some light on why some executives are resistant to this change. I don’t want to spoil any of that insight, so you should definitely click through to read the article – but I did want to share the article’s opener. It tees things up really well, but it’s also a treasure trove of links out to tons of great surveys, reports, and data:

Because of strong employee resistance and turnover, Google recently backtracked from its plan to make all employees return to the office and allowed many to work remotely. Apple’s plan to force its staff back to the office has caused many to leave the company and led to substantial internal opposition.

Why are these and so many other leaders of major companies compelling employees to return to the office? They must know about the extensive, in-depth surveys from early spring 2021 that asked thousands of employees about their preferences on returning to the office after the pandemic. 

All of the surveys revealed strong preferences for working from home post-pandemic at least half the time for over three-quarters of all respondents. A quarter to a third of all respondents desired full-time remote work permanently. Between 40% and 55% of respondents said they’d quit without permanent remote options for at least half the workweek; of these, many would leave if not permitted fully remote work.

Again, that’s just the opener – from there the article digs into the meat of why leaders are reluctant to change, despite the evidence that it’s what their people want, and that it’s good for their business. 

Check out the full article here. 

3) Apple and Google want to force remote workers back into cubicles. That friction could lead to a job exodus (San Francisco Chronicle)

And sticking with the theme of “workers REALLY don’t want to go back to the office full time”, this article warns of the coming employee exodus many companies will face if they’re not willing to be flexible. As referenced int he previous article, there have been a ton of studies about the employee preference for remote work, but this article references an interesting study that also highlights that people would rather work remotely than get a raise:

One questionnaire run by Blind, a company that lets employees talk about their companies anonymously, found that of more than 3,000 workers surveyed, many of them at tech companies, more than half would prefer to stay working remotely rather than see a $30,000 annual uptick in their income.

But the real gem of the article are the quotes from Darren Murph, Head of Remote at GitLab. GitLab has been fully-remote since their inception and now have hundreds of employees all over the world who have always been remote. GitLab – and Murph in particular – have become the face of what remote work success can and should look like. And I think Murph perfectly sums up the transition that the world is currently going through:

“The friction that you feel is the transfer of power in a way that we have never seen in our lifetimes,” Murph said. GitLab has a mailing address in San Francisco but has been 100% remote since before the pandemic. Murph said workers pushing back against returning to in-person work after the pandemic largely proved offices don’t necessarily mean increased productivity.

“Layered on top of that is this universal awakening that the way we’ve always done things doesn’t necessarily have to be the way we do it going forward,” Murph said.

And the final kicker is Murph’s quote about physical office spaces:

Business leaders are “trying to go back into an incredibly costly, inanimate object that we just proved had little to no impact on productivity,” he said, referring to offices. “This is a global permission slip to do something different.”

Check out the full article here.

4) What a decade of distributed work has taught us about the future (TechRadar)

One thing I always think about is how quickly many companies seem to be forgetting about the lessons learned over the past 18 months. And this article stood out to me because it aims to give some context not just to the lessons of the past year or so, but how these recent lessons tie into ongoing learnings that have become more evident over the last decade. 

The conclusion of this article in particular does a good job of summarizing what orgs need to succeed based on these learnings. 

The bottom line is that whatever a company’s chosen operational path, from hybrid to digital by design, it’s crucial that decision makers have clarity on their core cultural priorities and needs before making tactical changes and investments. Companies with a clear mission and purpose, an invested leadership team, and a willingness to let go of parts of the past which do not serve them, will thrive and usher in the new future of work.

You can read the full article here.

5) Citrix Warns on Challenges of Hybrid Work (VMblog)

And closing out with one final article that highlights a new report, this one talks about a new survey from Citrix. Notably, though, this article raises a warning flag about the challenges of hybrid work, despite the fact that 90% of employees have indicated their preference for it:

Research from Citrix Systems, Inc., shows that more than 90 percent of employees prefer flexible work, and 82 percent of companies plan to embrace hybrid models to accommodate it and capitalize on the benefits it can drive. But the transition is not without risk.

While appealing on the surface, hybrid work models have the potential to create a new digital divide that, if left unchecked, will quickly establish two classes of workers and infuse the workplace with inequity and bias. To successfully make the leap, companies will need to implement technologies and new work policies that create an equitable environment, empowering both remote and in-office employees to equally engage and collaborate in a transparent and efficient way and make meaningful contributions that fuel innovation and business growth.

Check out the complete article here. 

Here’s hoping you find these articles as interesting and informative as we did – and if not, hey, there’s always next week! See you back here next Friday. 

The post This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work – June 11th Edition appeared first on Cameyo.

While it’s clear that Remote Work is clearly the more dominant topic by far (at least in volume of coverage), here are a few things to note:

• The volume of Hybrid Work articles nearly doubled from February to March, while Remote Work articles increased by only 10% during that time
• Halfway through April, Hybrid Work is on pace to grow another 50% over the March volume
• On the other hand, the volume of Remote Work coverage is currently on pace for a 20% reduction in coverage compared to March

In summary, press coverage of Remote Work – while still dominant – is trending down 20% while Hybrid Work coverage is increasing 50% MoM. From my perspective, these numbers are interesting, but don’t tell the whole story. As someone who tracks the press coverage of these two topics daily, the quality of the articles about Hybrid Work is definitely much higher right now (as is reflected by the fact that all 5 stories below are primarily about Hybrid, not Remote). So even though Remote Work is still getting more coverage, it seems like much of the coverage is repetitive and losing steam, while Hybrid is clearly gaining steam. I’d give it 3 more months before mentions/coverage of Hybrid Work outgrows Remote Work.

Alright, now to the main show. Here are the top five articles we thought you’d be interested in this week. 

1) Return to the Office Poses New Challenges, Opportunities for CIOs (Wall Street Journal)

In addition to having some good examples of how companies like Atlassian and PepsiCo plan to handle their returns to the office, this article gets into several interesting thought exercises about Hybrid Work. I thought this was particularly interesting:

Even though the efforts aren’t uniform, chief information officers are rethinking the tech and processes that have guided their companies over the past year of remote work. Some believe physical offices will be reserved for employees whose life circumstances don’t allow them to work remotely, as well as for face-to-face client meetings. Tasks that require individual concentration would be handled from home.

I think this perfectly sums up the intricacies of Hybrid Work, and the fact that it will not be the same for everyone. Some may go into the office more often simply because their circumstances/environment at home aren’t productive. Others will go in only when they need to collaborate and will stay home when they need to focus. It may be an oversimplification, but sometimes a simple policy that people can follow (like “Come into the office whenever you want OR need to”) is better than a complicated one.  

Read the full article in the WSJ here. 

2) 4 things you need to know about the future of hybrid and remote work (Business Insider)

If you’re only going to click through to one of these articles, make it this one. It does a great job of summarizing four key trends that I 

1. Remote work is leading to burnout.

2. Prioritizing camaraderie and communication can improve remote-work culture.

3. The rise of remote work also means the rise of the virtual headquarters.

4. Employers are debating the type of work that makes the most sense for their workforce.

It’s a quick read, but worth it for a high-level overview of these trends. Read the full article in Business Insider here.

3) Study: 64% of employees are willing to pay for access to office space to support hybrid work (Tech Republic) 

Alright, I’ll just come out and say it – I don’t believe the headline stat of this article at all. Why? It came from a study conducted by WeWork, who has a vested interest in the narrative that employees are willing to pay for shared office spaces themselves. BUT, there’s another stat that came out of this survey that is very interesting:

75% of employees would be willing to give up at least one benefit or perk—including healthcare coverage, cash bonuses and paid time off—for the freedom to choose their work environment.

If this stat is to be believed, that’s a pretty amazing indication of how strongly people feel about wanting the freedom to work from anywhere (WFx). There are a ton of stats in this report, mostly dealing with employees’ perception of Hybrid Work as more important than traditional benefits. 

Read the full article in Tech Republic here.

4) Hurry, Time Is Running Out To Lock In The Benefits Of Remote Work (Forbes) 

One topic that I don’t see getting much attention (at leat in the business & technology press) is the fact that a lot of people are dealing with varying levels of anxiety about going back to “normal.” It’s not just that we don’t want to put real clothes on again – it’s that many have realized that they are much more productive, and have a more balanced life, when able to work remotely. 

But I’m also anxious: not about the vaccine, but about the rush to “go back” to the way things were pre-Covid and blow the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity the pandemic created to rethink how, where and when we work. The big question for business leaders should be this: Do we really want to go back?

The article then goes on to provide leaders with a very interesting set of questions they should ask themselves to make sure that they don’t throw out all of the lessons learned during the pandemic:

1) In what ways did Covid-19 change your relationship with clients or customers? 

2) How well is remote work working for your knowledge workers?

3) Have you done what’s needed to “liquify” your talent and institutionalize “agile”?

Read the full article in Forbes here. 

5) This is How IBM and Slack are Approaching Hybrid Work (Fast Company)

This article was written by the Chief Human Resources Officer at IBM and the head of the Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack to help companies make the transition to the future of work. This article has a lot of great stats from a new study that IBM and Future Forum did together, so I suggest clicking through for all those interesting data points. And it’s always interesting to hear from two large companies how they’re blueprinting their transition to hybrid work, as well. 

But I also wanted to point out these first two paragraphs, which may be the most succinct way I’ve seen to summarize the pending shift to Hybrid Work:

The past year of remote work has shown us very little about what the future looks like. That’s because our working model simply switched from one extreme to another. In the pre-pandemic world, many companies operated from one defined norm: Work happens primarily in an office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. During the pandemic, most companies replaced that with a new universal norm: We can’t go to the office, so work happens primarily at home. The future of work for many companies is at neither end of this spectrum. It’s in the middle.

New Future Forum data shows that the majority of knowledge workers globally expect a hybrid future. According to the data, only 17% of workers want a return to full-time in-office work, while 20% want to continue working remotely full time. A majority, 63%, want a mixture of the two.

Read the full article in Fast Company here. 

Thanks for joining us again (or for the first time!) this week, and check back next Friday for a fresh batch of interesting articles. And for more technical posts on the Digital Workspace tools available to companies as they make the shift to Hybrid & Remote Work, check out the rest of our blog here. 

The post This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work – April 16th Edition appeared first on Cameyo.

So rather than simply rounding up the best remote work articles and posts of the week that we think you shouldn’t miss, we’ll now be incorporating the top hybrid work stories we come across each week, too. We hope you find this useful, and as always, leave a comment below and let us know which topic(s) you’d like to see us post more about. 

With that, here are the top remote and hybrid work stories of the week that we think are worth your time to read:

1) The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work—Are We Ready? (Microsoft)

If you’ve been wondering why hybrid work is such a hot topic, Microsoft lays it out quite clearly right up front:

With over 40 percent of the global workforce considering leaving their employer this year, a thoughtful approach to hybrid work will be critical for attracting and retaining diverse talent.

So with that in mind, this report from Microsoft is a stellar resource in terms of hard data around the future of the office. How good is the data? Check out the methodology:

the 2021 Work Trend Index outlines findings from a study of more than 30,000 people in 31 countries and an analysis of trillions of productivity and labor signals across Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn. It also includes perspectives from experts who have spent decades studying collaboration, social capital, and space design at work for decades.

There is a TON of good stuff in this report’s synopsis post, and the full report is even better, but we’ll just highlight this one group of stats:

Employees want the best of both worlds: over 70 percent of workers want flexible remote work options to continue, while over 65 percent are craving more in-person time with their teams. To prepare, 66 percent of business decision makers are considering redesigning physical spaces to better accommodate hybrid work environments. The data is clear: extreme flexibility and hybrid work will define the post-pandemic workplace.

If you only read one thing this week – go checkout the Microsoft 2021 Work Trend Index here. 

2) The Fluid Office – Rise of the Hybrid Work Environment (Norwest Venture Partners) 

This was a really interesting one because the data presented began with Norwest Venture Partners’ annual benchmark survey of all of their portfolio companies, which yielded plenty of interesting data on it’s own – but then they decided to expand the survey to an additional 1,000 enterprise employees. So they first share this initial data set:

We learned that most of our companies are adopting a flexible remote working model, at least for 2021. In addition, approximately 70% of our respondents plan to increase their remote workforce long term, though only 8% plan to shift entirely to remote working. In the near term, most of our companies will adopt a hybrid approach. 

And then they dig in much deeper after the additional 1,000 respondents to focus on 4 big trends that they’re seeing:

1. Most employees like the flexibility of a hybrid workplace, but believe that their companies may not be ready

2. Office spaces still serve a great purpose, even in a remote-work-friendly arrangement

3. Remote employees still crave connectivity and well-being-focused support

4. In a hybrid work environment, collaboration requires extra effort

Check out the full report from Norwest here: The Fluid Office – Rise of the Hybrid Work Environment

3) 1 In 3 Remote Workers May Quit If Required To Return To The Office Full Time, Survey Finds (Robert Half International)

We’ve seen a lot of data about people’s preference for remote work and the flexibility it enables, but this survey from Robert Half International – the world’s largest staffing firm – drops a huge stat. Over one-third of professionals – 34% – indicated that they would quit their existing jobs if told they needed to return to an office full time. BUT, the data also shows that not everyone wants to stay fully remote, either. This truly gets to the crux of the hybrid work argument here:

What Workers Want
Nearly half of all employees surveyed (49%) said they prefer a hybrid work arrangement, where they can divide time between the office and another location. Even if given the opportunity to be fully remote, professionals expressed the following concerns in doing so:

1. Relationships with coworkers could suffer: 28%

2. Decreased productivity while at home: 26%

3. Fewer career advancement opportunities due to a lack of visibility: 20%

And if you’re a sucker for an infographic like us, here’s one I expect to see a lot of people referencing in slide decks about the shift to hybrid work from remote work:

Check out the full announcement from Robert Half here.

4) JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon annual letter: How Wall Street will remote work, for better or worse (CNBC)

This article stood out to me because it does a great job of illustrating that even though many business leaders are recognizing that the way we work has forever changed, and even though they’re making massive changes to their businesses as a result – it doesn’t mean they like it. JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon certainly falls into that camp. Here’s the CNBC recap of this article:

• In his closely read annual letter to shareholders, Jamie Dimon says he expects no more than 10% of JPMorgan employees to permanently work from home.
• But he did say remote work trends facilitated by Zoom and Cisco, and accelerated by Covid-19, are here to stay and the bank’s real estate will be reduced.
• Dimon is particularly worried about how work from home could negatively affect new employees, slow down decision making, and impede company creativity.

Despite his concern about the impact remote & hybrid work will have on the company culture, the building of teams, and the training of new people, Dimon still revealed a major piece of news that really drives home the hybrid work movement:

Dimon said JPMorgan will “quickly” move to a more open seating arrangement and digital technology will be used to manage seating and conference rooms. He estimated that for every 100 employees, the bank will need seats for 60, on average. “This will significantly reduce our need for real estate,” he wrote.

That’s a big reduction in the amount of real estate that JPMorgan will need, and that’s coming from a CEO who has been very hesitant to the shift to remote work & hybrid work. And if you think about the number of small-to-medium size businesses who could similarly shed real estate costs and dramatically change their company’s financial situation, this will continue to be a very attractive option. See the full CNBC article here. 

5) Tech leaders form Digital Workspace Ecosystem Alliance (VirtualizationHowTo)

Okay, this one’s a shameless plug – but I promise it’sa. relevant one. One Tuesday we – along with 9 other companies – announced the launch of the Digital Workspace Ecosystem Alliance (DWEA). The term “Digital Workspace” has been co-opted by thousands of technology providers, all of which try to define the Digital Workspace in a way that skews the definition towards the particular technology they deliver. This causes confusion for IT buyers and delays their ability to create and deploy a cohesive Digital Workspace strategy. 

The DWEA aims to simplify the navigation of the ecosystem of solutions so that organizations can identify and select only the technologies that address their particular requirements, rather than saddling them with the cost and complexity of products & capabilities they don’t need. 

Here’s what VirtualizationHowTo had to say about the Alliance:

All too often really great technology vendors work in the same industry or business sector and never collaborate on a common purpose to further the common good. The obvious reason for this is competitive differences. However, when businesses are able to set aside these competitive differences and come together to achieve a common goal, it can lead to tremendous benefits for everyone involved. 

It is great to see successful technology leaders working together for the greater good to promote a better understanding of the often convoluted and confusing solutions and technologies in the realm of Digital Workspaces. I applaud Cameyo for its efforts to form the Digital Workspace Ecosystem Alliance. It will be great to see the continued positive effects from the Alliance as they help to provide clarity to IT buyers and promote a better understanding of the evolving technology landscape making up the Digital Workspace.

For more coverage of our announcement, check out our News Room to read articles from Computerworld, VMblog, IT Business Edge, eChannelNEWS, ChannelBuzz, and more. 

Thanks for catching up on this week’s hybrid & remote work news with us, and please consider sharing this post if you think your followers & networks would find it interesting. 

The post This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work – April 9th Edition appeared first on Cameyo.