The next world of hybrid work is a three-part video series that examines the nature of the hybrid office, and the challenges—and advantages—associated with it. Featuring experts from Cisco Systems and Compugen and hosted by IT World Canada’s Jim Love, the series helps explore the challenges and the opportunities facing us all in the new era of work.
The series features Salman Alibhai, Compugen’s security solutions lead for advanced solutions, Jason Evans, national collaboration sales strategy manager for Compugen and Courtney Elling, Canada hybrid works specialist for Cisco.
The series tackles all of the subjects that business leaders need to consider today when thinking about enabling the new hybrid office. Topics such as how to encourage employees to return to the office, or why an office is still a vital business space. The best practices for making office work efficient and easy. How a modern hybrid office needs a modern, simplified and secure IT infrastructure. How the foundations of the IT infrastructure can advance environmental sustainability.
The “work from home” transformation
Episode one entitled The New World of Hybrid Work addresses the lightning move to work from home and what that change brought both the good and bad. In addition, it addresses how businesses must now address both the new capabilities and the expectations that employees have regarding technology and their work experience.
“Now, we have lots of tools, lots of policies and all these are distributed location by location. It’s very difficult to manage and to give a good experience to the users as well as to run the business,” explained Alibhai. “It was good because we did this whole thing overnight, but now, different vendor products are there and nobody thought of the security controls as an overall strategy.”
The panel also looks at the softer, more human side of the situation, and considers how companies must now adopt new management strategies to keep workers not just engaged but mentally healthy. Everything about the new normal involves changing perceptions, and Elling, Alibhai and Evans offer up insights that will go a long way to shifting businesses’ perceptions on how they can best operate.
Enabling and managing the new world of hybrid work
“I firmly believe in the magic of the office,” said Elling, “I think every organization needs to ask themselves, ‘Why do I want my team back in the office?’ That question sets the stage for Return to the Office – Magnet vs Mandate, where the panel dives in-depth into the nature of hybrid work, and how to manage it. The panel considers the role of management in leading the charge back to the office, the physical design of the modern hybrid office, the way people will interact in the office and the upgrades and approaches needed to keep the IT infrastructure, the office and the entire business, secure.
The Future of the Hybrid Office – Experience and Purpose
The video series concludes with the third episode as it wraps up the discussion with a look to the future and the panelists sharing their thoughts about the meaning of work, the evolution of the workplace, the benefits of a collaborative environment, and how the office can reduce a company’s carbon footprint.
“The office has to be welcoming, comfortable. It can’t be just a gray box where you have to sit on a church pew for an eight-hour day,” explained Evans. “It’s about providing a better quality of life for people coming into the office. They might not recognize it, but they know it’s there.”
