The result is that people have a bit more flexibility to enjoy time with their families and friends while still being more productive, just by nature of having the freedom to shift their schedules as needed to optimize their time. 

Flexibility is a word we’ve been hearing and seeing a lot recently, and you’ll see the trend continue through this week’s news. So with that, let’s take a look at this week’s top five stories about remote & hybrid work:

1) Forcing employees to return to the office? Prepare to face the consequences (Fortune)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I love an article that starts with a good, no-BS opener. 

“Employees do not have to be together in an office five days a week to do their jobs well.”

Such a simple statement, but one that apparently still needs to be repeated as many companies are pursuing the path of eliminating remote work and forcing people back into the office. 

As this Fortune article highlights, though, the organizations considering this approach should be very wary of how it will be received. 

“We’ve all read or heard about the “Great Resignation,” where employees are quitting their jobs at an unprecedented rate for more favorable work situations, or simply taking some time off. According to a recent report by Monster.com, as many as 95% of employees are considering changing jobs.”

“Of those looking for new jobs, half of people currently working remotely say if their current company does not offer remote work options long term, they’ll look for a job at a company that does.”

So what insights does the article share in terms of keeping people happy and productive? 

•  Employees will be more fulfilled when faced with fewer trade-offs
• A hybrid workplace will help retain and recruit top talent
• Maintain culture outside of the office

The article has a lot of good stats, and it gives some good food for thought for any execs thinking about “canceling” remote and hybrid work policies. Check out the full article here. 

2) Flexible Work Is Not a New Concept, It’s Just Evolving (Entrepreneur) 

There’s that magic word again – flexible. 

“Now, with the possibility of a return to the office on the horizon, but with nearly two-thirds of US workers wanting to remain working from home (according to Gallup), organizations need to develop long-term hybrid work strategies that meet the needs of both employees and businesses. 

In determining these approaches, leaders should keep one concept at or near the top of the priority list: flexibility.”

And here’s the thing I appreciated the most about this article: It actually addresses the fact that the concept and practice of remote work are NOT new, and has been around for a long time pre-pandemic. 

“Remote work is no longer an added benefit, but a requirement for a happy and productive workforce, and we actually have ample precedents to draw upon; a number of industries have, over decades, enjoyed the benefits of flexible work.”

This article provides a really good, concise history lesson on flexible work, and how this isn’t just something to be done out of necessity – it should be adopted simply because it works better and has great benefits to the organization and its people as a whole. 

Read the full article here. 

3) Google Calendar adds RSVP options for attending events virtually (The Verge)

It’s one thing to track the various policies that companies are adopting around remote & hybrid work. But another great indicator of whether or not a trend is here to stay is to take a look at whether or not companies are actively developing and rolling out new technologies to enable those new trends. 

To that end, Google is the latest to announce some new functionality that is specifically targeted at better enabling the hybrid workspace:

“ To accommodate hybrid workplaces, Google plans to expand RSVP options over the next few weeks to let users say whether they’ll attend an event virtually in Google Calendar invites.

Virtual attendees will specify their status through a new drop-down menu that is viewable by the host and other guests in the event details. The company hopes that listing how people plan to attend an event will help organizers know what to expect, and presumably accommodate attendees who won’t physically be in the room.”

To learn more about the new functionality coming to your Google Calendar soon, check out the full article from The Verge here.

4) Slack rolls out new features aimed at a digital-first way of working (TechRepublic) 

Sticking with the theme of new product capabilities and how they indicate just how big the shift to hybrid work is, check out this news from Slack:

“Slack unveiled a series of features Wednesday designed for a digital-first way of working. 

Slack Huddles—described as a “lightweight,” audio-first way of communicating. Huddles is designed to let users create and share video, voice and screen recordings more easily. Users can record and upload short videos or voice clips with screen sharing that others can watch and respond to either synchronously or asynchronously.

Slack Atlas—an enterprise directory to connect to colleagues. Slack Atlas enhances profiles with dynamic information that includes a company’s organizational structure, employee start dates and custom fields. It integrates with systems including Workday, so profile data automatically populates and is always up to date. 

Scheduled Send—the ability to schedule when a user wants to send messages. Instead of having daily meetings, Scheduled Send is designed to let someone record their ideas and contribute to the conversation. When a recording is shared in Slack, anyone can watch on their own time.”

All of these new features are not only aimed at enabling hybrid work, but they’re also primarily aimed at enabling efficient asynchronous work, which is very interesting. GitLab has been preaching the benefits of “async” for years.

To learn more about the new features, check out the full article here. 

5) Videoconferencing Challenge Looming (Bob O’Donnell, TECHnalysis Research)

If you don’t already follow analyst Bob O’Donnell on LinkedIn, do yourself a favor and do so now. You can easily do this by going to the full LinkedIn article here, then clicking “Subscribe” in the upper right. 

In this article, Bob brings his typical in-depth analysis to the topic of videoconferencing. Do yourself a favor and read the whole article, but this passage in particular stuck out to me:

“While some might argue that the concerns I’ve raised may not be as big an issue as I’ve made them out to be, remember that video-based meetings are an essential part of the whole hybrid work model. If companies can’t successfully support large numbers of these meetings, the entire hybrid work model falls apart. We survived through the pandemic because, as frustrating as they might occasionally have been, video-based calls worked and allowed us to collaborate remotely. If the infrastructure to enable these calls isn’t widely and robustly available in the office, then the hybrid work model will fail—miserably so—and organizations will have little choice but to make hard decisions about their work environments and work policies.”

Now, beyond Bob’s excellent analysis, I was also captivated by some of the comments on his article (another benefit of this being posted on LinkedIn – an actively commenting user base). For example, this comment from Geroge Anders:

“ I’ve worked in a split-geo world for the past four years. That’s meant many hybrid meetings even in the Before Times. Typically, meeting-runners in NY or Mountain View CA would invite a few extra participants from San Francisco, London or other locations.

The good news is that even with existing technology, it all pretty much works. We don’t quite get the easy back and forth of having everyone in the same room. But meeting-runners are pretty good at inviting feedback and fresh ideas from the remote-location people periodically. And there’s an art to claiming the speaker’s chair from a remote location — in an instant — when you need it.

Still, what’s sufficient for a project-update meeting isn’t going to be good enough for a full-strength ideation meeting — or for genuine team-bonding. And getting meeting etiquette right will be a constant work in progress.”

Check out the full LinkedIn article (and the comments) here.

The post This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work – July 9th Edition 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.

For now we’re going to avoid posting and discussing any of those articles largely because there’s usually not much substance behind the click-bait title. It’s common to see contrarian articles pop up once any topic reaches a fever pitch, and we suspect that’s what’s happening with hybrid work coverage. If that changes in the future, we’ll bring that to your attention and discuss it. 

For now, though, most press coverage about hybrid work seems to contradict the doom-and-gloom naysayers. Let’s dig in. 

1) Home-office, HQ, hybrid or work-from-anywhere? This is what businesses are planning (World Economic Forum)

Like most posts from the World Economic Forum, this article is jam-packed with stats, charts, and graphs. If you’re looking to have some great data at the ready for presentations or blog posts, this is a post worth bookmarking for that reason alone. But one of the points the article makes caught my eye in particular:

The reinvention of the office and a new hybrid work model could address social gaps and provide a more inclusive recovery for all.

Salesforce’s Gavin Patterson suggests that the reinvention of office culture is poised to make bigger social waves, “This isn’t just about the future of work. This is about the next evolution of business culture and of society – business helping to build a resilient platform for positive change and growth.”

What are some concrete examples of that “positive change” that hybrid & remote work is brining around? 

Many workers have made big wins from remote work such as savings on transport, better work-life balance and more autonomy. Managers have had to trust their staff more, and zoom calls have been a great leveller – removing barriers for those unable to attend in person. Remote working was highly requested (but often refused) by disabled people before the pandemic; online working now offers a much more inclusive experience.

The article goes on to talk about how the future of work is accelerating the development of inclusive tech, is helping with the mental health of employees, and many other benefits. It’s a great, data-driven read, so check out the full article here.

2) Hybrid or Remote Work? These Two Data-Driven Activities Will Help You Decide (Inc.)

Sticking with the “data-driven article” theme, I came across this article from Inc. columnist Rebecca Hinds who has been crushing it with some of the best articles on prepping for hybrid work in the past couple of months. Per usual, Hinds dives right in and gets to the point in her opener:

Many companies are basing their hybrid or remote work strategy on instinct. Yet it’s dangerous to let your intuitions or–worse–biases drive your strategy. The companies that will thrive as they transition to new hybrid and remote work models will adopt a data-driven approach. As a leader, here’s how to use data, not your gut, to make important decisions about your remote or hybrid work strategy moving forward.

Hinds then outlines three concrete ways you can harness data to inform the right hybrid work strategy for your organization. At a high level, these include:

• Conduct an organizational network analysis
• Understand your company’s work graph
• Embrace a data-driven perspective

The “work graph” is a particularly fascinating idea, and Hinds goes into detail about how this approach is utilized at Asana. This helped put the work graph in context, and you’ll really start to think about how this could be applied to your organization. 

Read the full article here. 

3) Deutsche Bank Unveils Hybrid Model for Post-Pandemic Work Return (Bloomberg)

It wouldn’t be a TWIH&RW post if we didn’t include at least one article about yet another large company outlining their plans for hybrid work. This week, it’s Deutsche Bank.

[Deutsche Bank] Chief Financial Officer James von Moltke said a range of 40 to 60% of working from home makes sense.

“We need to find the right balance which will make all of us together more efficient and effective,” according to the memo. “To support new ways of working we will make targeted investments in our real estate and upgrade our digital infrastructure to facilitate increased collaboration.”

That “real estate” mention caught my eye in particular. This is something I’ve always been fascinated with – the massive amount that companies pay in real estate. Obviously for a company like Deutsche that expense is less of a factor than it is for a startup, but as this article shows – it is indeed still a factor, even for large multinational orgs. 

Deutsche Bank has repeatedly highlighted it wants to cut costs by reducing office space as the pandemic has shown that increased work-from-home arrangements don’t lower productivity. The lender expects to achieve “further savings” from an accelerated “rationalization of its real estate portfolio.” 

Read the full article here. 

4) ‘No-one knows the right answer’: Digiday Research shows return-to-office strategies are in flux (Digiday)

Always a sucker for a good survey, this one caught my eye. I also love the blunt headline – “no-one knows the right answer.” Refreshing. 

One section that I thought was particularly interesting discussed the data about how much respondees misjudged the return to work:

The report also highlighted people badly misjudged how quickly things would return to normal. For a previous poll in January, 38% of the same number of respondents said they expected to do in-person meetings within three months. But when surveyed in April, fewer than 20% had actually done so. Meanwhile, 20% of respondents said in January that they expected to attend in-person conferences in three months’ time, whereas in reality only 4% ended up doing so.

There’s a lot of good stuff in here, and some fun data that goes beyond the typical remote work survey – so check out the full article here. 

5) Getting People Back To The Office: 5 Critical Factors For Hybrid Work (Forbes)

This article provides a really good overview of factors that organizations need to think about as they plan their strategies moving forward. But before we highlight those, this section stood out to me. It talks about how “none of us are unscathed” by the events of the past 18 months – something I think we all need to be mindful of as we deal with our colleagues:

None of us is unscathed and the ‘return’ will be stressful, no matter where you’ve been working. According to Gallup, in April 2020, a high of 70% of people reported they were ‘always’ or ‘sometimes’ working from home, and this percentage leveled off to an overall average of 56% by February 2021. But some have never left: Front line and healthcare workers remind us not everyone has been home. In addition, those who work in labs, warehouses or manufacturing have likely been toiling away in places other than their kitchen tables. Regardless of the location of our work however, the landscape of the workplace has changed.

As for the 5 critical factors, at a high level the article covers:

• The Tension Between Individual and Organizational Needs
• The Tension Between Short Term and Longer Term
• The Question of Control
• The Need for Connection
• Compel, Don’t Cajole

We read a LOT of these articles offering advice, and I found this to be a truly unique take on the steps an org should consider. Check out the full article here. 

Thanks again for joining us for this week’s roundup, and we look forward to seeing you back here next week!

The post This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work – June 4th Edition appeared first on Cameyo.

Interestingly, coverage of “remote work” was still 3x that of “hybrid work” coverage last month. But the volume of remote work stories did drop considerably from March to April, while the volume of hybrid work stories continues to increase month-over-month. As the world inches its way closer to “normal” and businesses make the transition from “talking about” their future of work plans to actually implementing them, I suspect that the volume of hybrid work stories will quickly outpace the remote work-focused articles. Time will tell. But for now, let’s dig into some of this week’s best hybrid & remote work stories:

1) The “VDI Like a Pro” State of EUC 2021 Report (VDI Like a Pro)

If you’re not already familiar with the VDI Like a Pro report, it’s the largest independent survey and report done in the End User Computing (EUC) market each year. This year over 1,600 IT decision makers took the survey, a new record, showing just how much remote & hybrid work has catapulted the importance of these technologies. The best part – you can download and access the entire report for free. 

One of the most interesting trends called out in this year’s report is the shift from Virtual Desktops to Virtual Application Delivery. In 2020, the same report showed that only 5.9% of organizations relied on Virtual App Delivery (VAD) instead of Virtual Desktops. In 2021, the number of organizations relying on VAD over VDI skyrocketed to 32.4%. Now, that alone is a crazy interesting growth stat. BUT…

Even more interesting is what was revealed when the survey asked about people’s plans moving forward. Of the 67% of orgs who currently use Virtual Desktops (instead of Virtual App Delivery), 17% said they will be shifting to Virtual App Delivery. Adding that 17% to the current 32.4% would make it a near 50/50 split between organizations using Virtual Apps vs. Virtual Desktops. 

For the past 5 years, pundits continue to say “20XX is the year of VDI.” But as organizations have to deploy these technologies at scale to enable mass remote & hybrid work, the reality is that 80% of people don’t need or want a full virtual desktop to do their jobs. As a result, 2021 may end up being the year that Virtual App Delivery leapfrogs Virtual Desktops instead. 

Want to learn more? Check out this post for additional context about the shift from Virtual Desktops to Virtual Apps. 

2) The 1 Rule You Need to Follow to Succeed With a Hybrid Work Model (Inc.)

There’s no shortage of punditry on what organizations need to do to succeed with hybrid & remote work. But this article stood out to me for its simple, astute adaptation of the decades-old 60-30-10 rule. If you’re not familiar with it, the 60-30-10 rule states:

• 60 percent of the variance in team performance is attributed to the way a team is designed; 

• 30 percent of the variance in team performance is attributed to the quality of team launches; and 

• only 10 percent is attributed to how well the leader coaches the team. 

The article is incredibly refreshing in its simplicity and its actionable advice. And it conclusion sums things up nicely:

Many leaders I speak to say that they are flying blind as they adopt new hybrid work arrangements. But really, we have years of research fueling this new era of hybrid work. The approaches will look different than they have in the past, but, at the core, the hallmarks of effective teamwork remain largely unchanged. Decades of research suggest that team design, launches, and coaching–prioritized in that order–will define the effective hybrid teams of the future.

3) Hybrid work brings happiness as well as higher productivity (SiliconANGLE)

Legendary technology analyst (and just legitimately nice guy) Zeus Kerravala wrote a great guest column for SiliconANGLE this week. The article is jam-packed with great stats from the Avaya “Life and Work Beyond 2020” study, so it’s definitely worth clicking through to read the whole article for the data alone. 

But my favorite part of the post is when Zeus goes beyond the data and just lays out his advice to execs (bold added by me for emphasis):

My advice to information technology and business leaders is that if you can’t trust workers to do their jobs remotely, then you either have the wrong managers or the wrong workers. If productivity suffers, then address it, but workers need to be given the chance to fail before endless monitoring is implemented.

Nevertheless, people are feeling mostly optimistic about the future work and have a renewed focus on their wellbeing. Organizations with a hybrid work model — offering a choice of working from home and at the office—are likely to have happier, more productive employees. The same goes for organizations that equip their employees with the right technologies and connectivity to work remotely. Employees feel inspired and more confident as a result.

As evident from the data, those who are most satisfied with the current state of their work life have employers that trust, respect and empower them. For organizations, the employee experience will be a main focus as hybrid work models evolve. Organizations that provide a consistent experience for everyone, regardless of where they work, will have the happiest employees.

So much good stuff in this article. The need to trust your employees. The need to empower them with the right technology. The need to ensure that everyone has a seamless, consistent experience regardless of where they need to work. Couldn’t agree more. 

Do yourself a favor and read the full article here. 

4) More than 25 million non-tech jobs expected to become WFH (TechRepublic) 

There’s a fairly common misconception that high-tech jobs are the only ones that will be able to remain remote after the pandemic. But this article delves into a new study from Upwork that shows that nearly 40% of all jobs will be able to remain remote. 

The report, aptly titled “Not Just Tech”, goes a step further to highlight that remote freelancers could have a massive opportunity in this new climate, with over 25M such remote jobs expected. 

“Not Just Tech” shows how remote freelancers may have major opportunities in this new climate — 25.7 million jobs like this, or 37% of roles, are available in industries, such as accommodation, food services, agriculture, construction, mining, utilities, transportation and warehousing. Even in jobs that have been considered hands-on, such as construction, 10% of workers, or 1.2 million jobs, are in professional services — in other words, able to be remote. Furthermore, these kinds of employers are increasingly communicating with remote workers: A whopping 80% of the biggest non-tech companies Upwork works with have increased spending in web, mobile, software development, sales and marketing and customer service.

Check out the article here, and dig into the data from the full report here. 

5) Microsoft details its Zero Trust security strategy for the hybrid work era (OnMSFT)

Let’s close out this week’s top stories with a focus on one of our favorite topics here at Cameyo – security. This week, Microsoft did it’s part to help highlight the absolute critical nature of enhanced security for the hybrid work environment. As OnMSFT reports:

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed how many of us work, Microsoft has detailed today its new Zero Security strategy to prepare for the new hybrid work era. This new environment where some employees work remotely is the source of new security threats for companies, and one of the core pillars of Microsoft’s Zero Trust strategy is to establish strong authentication methods for employees.

Here at Cameyo, we built our entire platform from the ground up with a Zero Trust security model at the core. For a deeper dive on Zero Trust security, check out this post. And for a breakdown of Cameyo’s security approach, check this out. 

Thanks for joining us this week, and we’ll see you back here next Friday!

The post This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work – May 14th Edition appeared first on Cameyo.

With that – let’s dive in!

1) Survey: Working Parents Will Quit Without Remote Work (Forbes)

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen multiple surveys that show significant numbers of people are prepared to quit their jobs if their employers won’t allow them to continue to work from home – or at the very least split time between home and the office – after the pandemic. This survey focused on how parents feel about the subject, with a somewhat surprising result. A whopping 62% of parents said they would quit their jobs if they couldn’t continue to work remotely:

FlexJobs surveyed more than 1,100 parents with children 18 or younger living at home.

As before the pandemic, working parents cite increased productivity as a benefit of remote work (51%). Presumably, these working parents have found ways to make their environment set them up for success. Brie Weiler Reynolds, career development manager and coach at FlexJobs and Remote.co adds: “These professionals work best when they work for companies that trust them, allow them to work where, when, and how they work best, and understand that processes and results are often more important than location.”

In thinking of the future after the pandemic, FlexJobs found 61% of parents say they want to work remotely full-time, while 37% prefer hybrid. Additionally, 62% of working parents say they would quit their current job if they can’t continue remote work.

Read the full article here.

2) Rejecting hybrid work will cost employers, survey finds (TechTarget) 

This article caught my eye because it has a ton of really big, compelling stats. $1 trillion spent in equipment and labor to shift to home offices? WOW. And while the stats are eye-popping, it’s worth sticking around for the actual analysis provided by the article, which delves into the total cost employers could face if they reject hybrid work:

In total, this pandemic-driven shift to home offices amounted, both in equipment costs and labor, to 0.7% of GDP, nearly $1 trillion. This is “about the same amount that the government spent on defense in 2020,” said Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University and one of the authors of a working paper based on a survey of 30,000 Americans, titled “Why Working from Home Will Stick.”

But this new world of work comes with significant risks for employers. Work from home is so popular that job seekers may take the same job with a 5% to 10% pay cut if it allows a WFH option, Bloom said.

The paper estimates that 20% of full-time workdays will be from the home post-pandemic, compared with 5% before the pandemic. Employers who reject hybrid work may face problems. 

“My broad advice for firms is the labor market is heating up, and pretty soon we are going to be back in the war-for-talent era,” Bloom said in an email. “This will mean firms not offering a couple of days a week WFH will have to compensate their employees with significantly higher pay to stop them quitting.”

“If firms really hate WFH, they can pay their employees 8% more to keep them — but if they don’t, they should expect to see rising quit rates,” Bloom said.

Read the full article here. 

3) The new negotiation over job benefits and perks in post-Covid hybrid work (CNBC)

This article is based on a really interesting survey presented by the Harvard Busines School that shows just how stark the difference is between what PEOPLE want and what COMPANIES want when it comes to the future of work:

The tensions are evident in a recent Harvard Business School study of 1,500 remote workers. Just 18% of employees want to go back to the office full-time; 27% want to work permanently remote; and 61% want a combination of both. Meanwhile, about 70% of employers want people back in the office, citing worries about company culture, Neeley said. 

Which leads to the meat of the article, which is what this data means to the future of job negotiations:

Decisions about work from home policies should be decided at the upper levels to prevent friction between managers and employees, says Neeley, though another Harvard Business School remote work expert holds a different view, saying teams are best placed to make decisions, not C-suites or individuals.

For companies with stricter rules, workers can also use past experience to negotiate a more accommodating schedule, says Paul Wolfe, senior vice president of human resources at Indeed. 

“If you work at a company with more rigid rules, have a conversation with the manager, back it up with data,” says Wolfe. “If you’re a strong performer that’s a good thing to bring up as part of your negotiations.” 

Harrington says workers should initiate that conversation and be proactive, and he urges workers to be honest and direct with their managers and treat it like conversation versus an ultimatum. 

Some companies may allow remote work but require in-office participation for onboarding or quarterly meetings, an initiative Joblist incorporated from the get-go. The company maintains a San Francisco office yet most workers are remote Harrington said, adding that in-person is good for relationship building and long-term planning. Companies should survey their workers to gauge feedback.

“I don’t think employees should give up anything,” Tohyama says. “I think this is the way of the future.”

Read the full article here.

4) The Future Forum 

Okay, so this next one isn’t an article I read this week, but I’m going to break the rules a bit and talk about a super interesting resource I came across. It’s called the Future Forum, and one thing that’s interesting is that I feel like I should’ve stumbled across this much sooner. Future Forum is a consortium formed by Slack and their partners, and it’s focus is to help question the way work has always been done and help reimagine what work can become. From their site:

The sudden move to remote work provides the opportunity to question decades of orthodoxy, to reimagine culture and norms, and leverage technology to create a better way to work.

Future Forum enables leaders to reimagine work through data and dialogue, to create a people-centric and digital-first future of work. We believe that competitive advantage in this century comes down to people. How you attract and retain diverse talent, how you align them against common purpose that engages them fully, and how you enable them to act with agility to achieve great things. We believe that sharing of insights, thoughtful deliberations, and mutual dissatisfaction with the status quo will help us all lead a revolution to a better way to work.

There’s so much good data on this site, including their blog and the quarterly report they’re issuing. Ever since we launched the Digital Workspace Ecosystem Alliance earlier this month, I’ve developed an all new appreciation for what can be accomplished when you harness the power of a bunch of like-minded organizations and individuals who are all committed to something bigger than themselves. Future Forum is a great example of this, and I’m very impressed with what they’ve put together so far. 

Learn more about the Future Forum here. 

5) Want to Be a Smart Leader in the Hybrid Work Age? Start by Doing These 4 Things Daily (Inc.)

As we’ve discussed a lot in the past, the shift to hybrid & remote work is far bigger than just a technology conversation. One of the things we all need to keep in mind is the impact this shift is having on our people and our companies’ cultures. This article in Inc. does a great job of providing a simple framework that leaders should keep in mind every day to help keep things in check and to make sure that their most valuable assets – their people and teams – are being taken care of. Here’s the quick list, but it’s definitely worth clicking through for the quick read on how to apply these:

1. Provide career mobility options

2. Protect employees from remote-work burnout

3. Create a culture of recognition

4. Promote trust by getting your people involved in the business

Read the full article here. 

Thanks for joining us for another This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work, and let us know in the comments below what you’re been reading on these topics as well! 

The post This Week in Hybrid & Remote Work – April 30th 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.

Just don’t forget – hybrid workspaces will increase the need for digital workspace tools that ensure your people have a seamless, productive experience no matter where they’re working that day. 

With that in mind, let’s dig into this week’s stories. 

1) The office of the future is about people not places (ZDNet)

This article caught my attention because it went beyond the stats about how many organizations are planning to keep remote and hybrid work after the pandemic, and instead talks about how this will increase the importance of human interaction when we have it. It’s not about wasting people’s time and the company’s money by forcing everyone into an office every day – but it IS about maximizing the time that people DO get to spend together.

“There is something magic about human interaction in the room that, however clever Zoom is, you can’t replicate,” says Coby. “I think we’re going to end up with a situation where people come into work for things that are team-building.”

I also loved this section where they talk about how the pandemic has, in many cases, helped us all become a bit more human and sympathetic with our co-workers:

“Things happen that you’ve just simply got to deal with – and everybody will see that, and is OK with it. And in many ways, it’s made people more human because everybody genuinely wants to help people who’ve got particular pressures on them. I think that’s really important,” he says.

2) Remote work 1 year later: The pandemic sent tech workers home — when and how will they return? (GeekWire)

This article provides a great recap of the remote & hybrid work plans of some of the largest companies in the world, so if you’re looking for the latest and greatest on that front, it’s a good read for that reason alone. But this piece jumped out at me, and I realize I’ve seen this being discussed more and more recently:

Pay cuts and more: The Wall Street Journal took a look at another year ahead of remote work and decisions being weighed in corporate board rooms, such as whether the salaries of employees who have left high-cost cities should be reduced. Tax concerns have come into play for migrating employees at companies such as Facebook and Lyft, and Microsoft previously announced that benefits and pay could be impacted by the company’s compensation scale by location.

Let’s just go on the record now and say that this is an idea that will backfire spectacularly for the companies that implement it. The idea of telling your people that they’re going to get paid less for the same job, for bringing the same value to the company as they did before, just because they’ve chosen to move to a less expensive location – that’s not a winning strategy, to put it politely. There are thousands of companies now willing to hire your best employees and allow them to work remotely, so don’t give your a people reason to go looking. 

There’s a lot more that’s worth reading in this article, and lots of good stats, but the topic of reducing pay for newly-remote workers is a topic I’m going to keep an eye on. 

3) Under pressure, IT workers brace for more complexity (CIO Dive)

There’s no doubt that IT has been under immense pressure for the past year. This article does a great job summarizing the impact that pressure is having on IT. 

• Eight in 10 technologists say their job became more complex during 2020, a consequence of quick innovation and a sprawling technology stack, according to a report from AppDynamics. The report included interviews with 1,050 global IT professionals.
• The increase in complexity took a toll on IT pros; 89% of technologists say they feel “immense” pressure at work. Upholding IT through a pandemic, 84% of technologists found difficulty switching off from work.
• In 2021, after most organizations increased their reliance on digital platforms to operate, three-quarters of technologists say IT became more complex as a result of their response to the pandemic.

We see a lot of this with new prospects we speak with here at Cameyo. IT desperately needs to simplify systems, but they can’t do so at the expense of security, their people’s productivity, or the bottom line. All the more reason to evaluate digital workspace solutions on simplicity, security, experience, and cost-effectiveness. 

BTW – this article is a good reminder to drop your IT people a nice note and show them your appreciation for all they do. 

4) Read urbanism expert Richard Florida’s response on how big cities will thrive during the new era of remote work (BusinessInsider) 

This one is outside of the usual tech-specific articles we usually include, so I won’t spend a bunch of time on it, but it’s an interesting read. If nothing else, here’s one big bonus of the so-called “exodus” from big cities:

The silver lining for places like New York and San Francisco is that the pandemic is making real estate more affordable to this group of people.

5) The Phases of Remote Adaptation (wrkfrce)

Okay, this one is from Jan. 28th, but I just stumbled across it and it’s absolutely worth the exception. We (like everyone else talking about remote work and hybrid work) quote Darren Murph of GitLab a lot. But there’s a reason for this. I think this article is the most crisp, clear breakdown of the stages every organization can expect to go through when adopting remote and hybrid work:

The amount of disruption is generally tied to two maturity factors: culture and tools.

To better understand this, we’re using this page to detail the phases of remote adaptation.

• Phase 1: Skeuomorph
• Phase 2: Functional
• Phase 3: Asynchronous
• Phase 4: Intentionality

I also appreciate that Murph is always focused on helping organizations understand that this is a transition – the shift to remote work does not and cannot “happen overnight.” 

It’s important to frame one’s transition to remote in terms of phases, as opposed to an all-or-nothing approach. Breaking adaptation down into smaller chunks creates less overwhelm. The goal for any suddenly remote company should be to graduate from one phase to another in a sustainable and efficient manner, instead of what will otherwise feel like a massive leap from nothing to mastery. This is iteration in practice.

Despite the 4 phases he outlines above, the article is still a fairly quick read. You can treat it as a killer primer/overview, or you can really dig in by working through the many videos, handbooks, and other resources the articles links out to. Trust me – bookmark this one. 

Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you back here next week! As always, if you’re looking for guidance on how to simplify and secure your people’s access to all of their business-critical applications for remote and hybrid work, book a quick demo and we’ll show you how Cameyo’s secure virtual application delivery platform can help in 20 minutes or less. 

The post This Week in Remote Work – March 5th Edition appeared first on Cameyo.

1) Ransomware threats to watch for in 2021 include crimeware-as-a-service (TechRepublic)

If you follow the topic of remote work technology, you’ve no doubt seen tons of articles in the past 9 months about the dramatic increase in ransomware targeting remote workers. This week Blackberry’s research team introduced a new report that recaps the security threats of 2020, provides expert advice on what to expect in 2021, and a 5-step recommendation. 

Ransomware has become an increasingly virulent threat targeting businesses, government agencies, schools, and even individuals. As ransomware attacks gained greater traction and variety in 2020, so too will they bring about more developments in 2021. A report released Wednesday by BlackBerry highlights several trends to watch for in the year ahead.

For BlackBerry’s “2021 Threat Report,” researchers and security professionals at the company were asked to offer their cybersecurity predictions for the upcoming year. In response, they advice organizations and users to stay vigilant to the following threats as 2021 progresses.

This is the first time I’ve seen reference to the term “crimeware-as-a-service”, which is a very apt moniker. Be sure to scroll to the end of the article for the 5-step recommendation from the Blackberry researchers. And check out our primer on zero trust security for remote work here. 

2) What Everybody Thinks About VPN but Nobody Talks About (Security Boulevard) 

I know, I know – it may seem like we bash on VPNs a lot. Don’t get us wrong, there’s a time and a place for VPNs. But enabling secure remote work at scale is not that place, which is confirmed by yet another report – this one from the folks at Cybersecurity Insiders:

The 2021 VPN Risk Report is based on a survey of cybersecurity professionals—with more than half of respondents at the director level and above—who offered insight into their remote access environments, how and where users are connecting, the challenges they’re facing, including the rise in VPN vulnerabilities, and whether zero trust will begin to play a role in their remote access strategy.

Their answers revealed that IT leaders have been in a real bind. They need to provide remote access to applications in the data center and cloud, but the technology they’ve relied upon for decades is exposing them to risk—and they know it. Here are some of the report’s key findings:

Companies are aware of VPN risks, but they’re using them anyway.

VPNs have been used for remote access for nearly 30 years and they remain practically ubiquitous. In the survey, 93 percent of respondents reported that they are leveraging VPN services. Even so, 94 percent are aware that VPNs are vulnerable to cybercrime, with attackers targeting remote workers as they try to get access to business resources through the VPN. It would have been hard to miss the countless articles about VPN exploits in 2020, and the news of almost 500 known VPN vulnerabilities listed on the CVE database.

Check out the full article for all of the sobering stats. And check out our post from Brandon Lee on why it’s time to move beyond VPNs when it comes to securing remote work. 

3) The remote workforce is redefining mission-critical apps (TechTarget)

This is a greaet piece from Kerry Doyle at SearchITOperations about how the shift to remote work now requires that IT teams be ready to support legacy business and mobile tools as mission-critical applications. It drives home the fact that, when supporting remote work at scale, you have to now think of applications as mission-critical, just like your underlying infrastructure. 

Organizations of all sizes have long relied on the term mission-critical to designate key compute, storage and networking resources as essential or top priority. These systems must operate continuously, and at a high-performance level, to ensure that a company achieves its goals. As businesses rely heavily on remote workplaces due to pandemic restrictions, they must recognize that applications require that same high level of performance integrity.

There’s also a great section on the steps to take to support mission-critical apps. And what do you know, VPNs get a shout out (as the article calls out the need to assess the viability of VPNs, and looking at other solutions):

From the outset, assess VPN infrastructure viability, and consider adopting new tools to initiate or expand remote workplace access. For example, cloud-based enterprise application access defines which authorized remote users or devices can access an internal application, as well as limit network exposure.

There are some great analyst stats peppered throughout this piece that really drive home the straetgic importance of secure application delivery to your remote and/or hybrid workforce. 

4) How top companies are embracing a ‘virtual first’ approach to workplace culture during the pandemic (Fortune) 

Changing gears a bit, we came across this great article about how more companies are adopting a “virtual first” approach to workplace culture. And while all of the technology aspects of supporting remote work are important, the question about building and maintaining a strong company culture when many are remote is a very important one. The article share insight’s from Fortune’s “Reimagine Work Summit” and specifically a panel discussion titled “Building the Future of Culture and Communication.”

Dropbox’s efforts have been about “recogniz[ing] the importance of bringing people together for key interpersonal moments,” Simpson said. “We’ve created a set of really flexible practices that we’ve written up and shared in our ‘Virtual First’ toolkit—frameworks and guardrails for how to communicate with your teammates. I think it really helps create an inclusive environment.”

Check out the full article for some really interesting insight from leaders of four large companies who are all approaching remote work culture in different ways – but who all agree that “virtual first” is the future.

5) What does the future look like for mobile technologies in a stay-at-home world? (ZDNet)

Okay, this one really got me thinking.  The always-prescient Tom Foremski introduces a really good question about the impact of remote work on our need for/depence on our fancy mobile devices:

The entire world is vastly less mobile than it was pre-COVID-19 and this will continue to be true into the future. So why do we need super-expensive mobile technologies? We don’t need them as much as we did.

I’ll admit, I clutched my device a little tighter while reading this article and initially thought “but, of course we still need our devices!” – until I realized I was reading the article on my phone while seated at my desk, with two larger monitors right there in front of me. It certainly got me thinking. 

And what future for mobile phones? Working from home makes having a cell phone awkward. I still have to carry it about, or I have to keep running over to it to make sure I haven’t missed anything, and I keep putting it down somewhere that’s not easy to find. I certainly don’t need the latest digital phone if I’m not going to be out and about for 10 hours a day.

A mobile phone is not that useful when you aren’t that mobile.

Tom goes deeper to discuss how a reduced dependence on mobile devices could help with the current international tensions around the production of chips. Lots of good stuff in this article – I highly recommend checking it out as an interesting thought exercise in how the shift to remote work is changing many areas of our lives. 

Thanks again for reading, and join us back here next Friday for the next weekly roundup. 

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