There is a growing groundswell in support of workers returning to their offices. Remote work has been a boon during the pandemic, but the nuances of working as teams in offices are sorely missed, both by management and employees.
However, the imminent return of workers to company-provided workplaces will not mean the return to the pre-pandemic devices used by employees. Remote work will continue, at least some of the time, for many employees. Digital platforms have proved themselves indispensable during the pandemic, and their benefits of improving the ability to get work done will persist afterwards. That will continue to mean that location should not be pertinent to the ability to get things done efficiently, because the pandemic-induced experience of having large chunks of the workforce working from home has demonstrated that outcomes are more important than location.
Digital workspaces must be designed to focus on enabling workers and not simply to provide remote access. The best of them do this in several ways, including:
- Application execution and delivery focus: Putting the focus on enabling work and productivity rather than where work is done requires a digital workspace that is designed to simplify and automate application and information delivery to the greatest extent possible. In addition, the platform must be able to support the most demanding data- or compute-intensive applications at high performance levels.
- Next-generation collaboration tools: After months of remote work, employees are aware of the limitations inherent in the current generation of collaboration tools. Next-generation digital workspaces will be collaboration-focused, providing enhanced capabilities within the platform and deep integration with third-party solutions that show great promise.
- Intelligent data delivery to employees: One of the most important attributes of a best-in-class digital platform is that data discovery and access are not the user’s responsibility but instead products of a solution that can proactively deliver information using automated tools. This eliminates many mundane and repetitive tasks that employees find onerous.
- Automation and machine learning to reduce repetitive tasks: The impact of AI and machine learning cannot be overstated. And the ability to harness these technologies to improve efficiency, reduce low-value tasks, and empower employees will contribute greatly to purchasing decisions. Ensuring that the digital workspace is using these technologies is essential, since they can impact a large percentage of a firm’s employees.
Citrix is a leader in providing the next-generation digital workspace that provides these essential foundational capabilities. In addition, the company has built important partnerships that will facilitate going back to work. For example, Citrix and HPE are teaming up on the integration of HPE’s digital employee health monitoring solutions to make returning to the office safer. Citrix is also partnering with Upwork to improve interactions with gig workers. These are just some of the actions Citrix is taking to meet the new and emerging challenges of facilitating a return to work and moving beyond a location-based approach to employee digital infrastructure.
Citrix’s strategy fits the long-term work trends perfectly. Its workspace product is moving beyond a focus on access and application delivery to an intelligent solution that can extract relevant actions, understand them, and present them to employees in a seamless and useful manner. This enables a substantial improvement in employee productivity and efficiency. One manifestation of this change is the use of a substantial portion of the screen to deliver a powerful notification feed.
The remote barrier has fallen, but the ultimate success of work-anywhere policies will demand dramatic improvements in how a digital workspace enables the employee. The Citrix Digital Workspace meets these challenges and many more.
