Effective collaboration is essential to success. The ability for teams to complete projects in a timely and effective manner is the difference between winning and losing in the marketplace. And collaboration is undergoing a veritable trial by fire as workers move out of the office and become remote workers.
Moving to a primarily remote and virtual workforce has presented some huge changes to how collaboration is done. It is no longer possible to run down the hall to ask questions, get clarifications, or converse organically to solve a problem. The digital employee collaboration experience must step in and deliver.
However, to provide the optimal remote collaboration solution, two fundamentally different sets of requirements must be met. HR teams demand collaboration platforms that enable workers to be at least as productive remotely as they are in the office while enjoying a positive employee experience. IT teams demand a platform that is secure, is simple to use, performs at scale, and delivers the collaboration tools and information that workers need to get things done.
Older remote access technologies can’t meet the challenges of remote collaboration at scale. Some, such as VPNs, have very real security problems. Other legacy solutions can’t support all the needed apps or provide secure data delivery. And, of course, many of the older products are not easy to use, increase worker frustration, and can become barriers, not enhancers, to productivity.
Meeting the twin goals that both IT and HR teams have for a collaboration platform requires a solution conceived with those requirements in mind. It is why many firms are choosing and deploying modern digital workspace platforms.
The digital workspace supports HR’s requirements for collaboration by ensuring that remote workers can have access to all the applications and datasets in their home that they had in the office. Workers will have the same digital environment they know and have become proficient with. They will utilize the same collaboration tools. This ensures that the digital employee experience is still a positive one and that frustrations are eliminated. There is also the positive benefit that accrues as employees believe the organization is doing its best to empower them. A positive employee frame of mind helps HR teams meet retention and job satisfaction KPIs.
For IT teams, the digital workspace solves numerous problems around remote collaboration. This starts with the ability to securely provide all the necessary information and datasets that the team needs to support their collaboration. Using a digital workspace to make the data available, yet keep it located in the data center, is a huge advantage. This approach not only reduces cyber-risk, but it also ensures compliance. This is critically important, since the move to remote work has greatly increased the attack surface and opened new vulnerabilities when legacy remote access solutions are used.
Digital workspaces also simplify the remote use of any application on any device. Employees truly appreciate the ability to use their device of choice. And there is no need for groups to use different collaboration software or interrupt their work. From a digital perspective, the tools, data, and apps that were used for collaboration in the past are still there going forward. And adding new tools or apps is greatly simplified and quick.
Digital workspace solutions are the answer to the different requirements that IT and HR have for next-generation collaboration activities. Ensuring that workers have everything they need within a compelling user experience helps HR teams support organizational success. Providing a secure remote collaboration environment for all data and apps, along with support for all the worker’s devices, showcases IT’s commitment to the workers and the organization. Digital workspaces are the right solution for enabling IT and HR teamwork to deliver better collaboration capabilities that foster organizational success.
