Working arrangements, especially when it comes to location, is something hotly discussed right now; with good reason. But let’s not all get caught up in the right/wrong of whatever direction someone or an organisation are taking.
Let’s just step back a second – this isn’t a new issue, it’s just right now – we have an almost perfect storm of situation and ability.
We have had a situation that has been thrust upon us, globally, which needed decisive action. The ability is available in technology for us to provide options as to how we try and retain the liberty we’ve worked so hard to build.
I’ve my own personal experience and this definitely informs how I help others achieve flexibility.
I’ve played and worked in tech since my mid-teens; one thing that was apparent – despite the lack of ‘mobility’ back then I could work on a computer wherever it was plugged in and if it was connected to a network I could manage other connected computers. Put this in context of my own upbringing; dad repaired cars, mum served children lunch at school, my uncle fitted industrial heating systems, my aunt looked after children and my grandparents were mechanics or nurses.
They all needed to be in a specific location to provide their service or do their job. Aged 18 I was managing web and database servers sat miles away in data centres…
Fast forward a few years and all I used are devices that connect me to the Internet (and cloud services), this allowed me to work near exclusively from home, much like a lot of us have experienced over the past 18 months. Of course, when needed I would visit the team or a customer but the majority (90%) of my time was at home – so nearly identical scenario in terms of working practices.
This way of working has had a massively positive impact on my life and I’ve loved the fact others around me have been able to benefit from this. The teams I worked with were able to work like this too, assuming their customer that didn’t ‘require’ them to be at a specific location. They had the flexibility to balance their job around life and vice versa; what mattered was delivery or results.
I’m not naive to think it’s not without its downsides though, you need discipline not to get sucked in and work all hours. You need to engineer breaks, create water cooler chat, almost over-engineer being ‘present’ and connected with disperse teams – it can be hard (I’ve had to learn some lessons along the way myself!) but it’s not impossible.
What is true – you need to be able to conduct yourself, get your job done and provide satisfactory output, if that cannot be done, then hybrid working; giving people choice, has to be available.
Exclusively working from home though, is not for everyone. And nor is being unnecessarily and exclusively tied to an office.
A survey conducted with 31,092 full-time employed or self-employed workers by Edelman Data x Intelligence found that 73% of employees want remote work options to stay, whilst 67% long for more in-person work or collaboration post-pandemic.
Enter hybrid working.
So what have I done about it at Grey Triangle?
I’ve decided to have a physical office away from home – which was a bit mind-bending after so many years. But I needed my own flexibility and also to be able to demonstrate I was committed to providing my team flexibility. Maybe they work from home, maybe they come here, maybe we fund a flexible working space for them near to where they live – it’s about providing flexibility and we have the ability to make this very real, technology has enabled and empowered us.
So for those that join the team, you’ll be given the flexibility to work where you want. The only caveat will be customer requirements or requests.
As a start-up it’s easy for me to get away with almost zero physical infrastructure – everything we need is cloud-hosted. That isn’t everyone’s experience – especially if you’ve got a business that’s grown over many years and has the baggage (technical debt) of growth, contraction, mergers and acquisition.
So how does this help your organisation?
Having been immersed in technology for quite some time, we’ve been using and implementing tools that enable flexible working since the time at which these technologies were created, never mind becoming commonplace in everyday conversation!
Software-defined-data-centre (SDDC), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), IaaS (Infrastructure), PaaS (Platforms), SaaS (Software), virtual applications, this is what we live and breathe. The terms may not mean a lot to you right now but let’s run through some of the benefits
- Use an existing laptop to access a high performing desktop hosted in a datacentre, ramp up the performance as you need it for complex processing. (VDI)
- Take a server from your office or data centre and transform it into a system that can be accessed anywhere, with the right security controls and scalability to your business demands. (SDDC and IaaS)
- Refactor an application to utilise cloud-based services and understand how exactly how data is processed and can be better managed by your teams. (PaaS and SaaS)
- Empower your IT team by creating common standards for IT delivery, application rationalisation and minimise configuration drift leading to fewer errors and increased stability. (SDDC, IaaS, VDI and virtual applications)
The technology that enables this is readily available, and stable, you’re probably now using some of it as a reaction to the events over the last 18 months but have you brought your entire organisation inline? Are you thinking about the total business and how it benefits from the use of technology in all aspects of how you conduct yourself?
Innovation is possible, the tools are available, flexibility is the key and cloud services offer this as a key tenet of their offering.
Grey Triangle offers flexibility to its own teams and responds to customer challenges to enable the same benefits. Speak to our team to discuss how we can help you stay ahead of the curve and implement a flexible, scalable, secure hybrid working solution.