By Dixit Roy Mahidhara, Regional Director, Citrix India
During these uncertain times, organizations across the world have found one thing to be certain – the need for businesses to anticipate potential disruptions and constantly reimagine the future of work. The past year has tested every business in ways unimagined before. And the one constant that has propelled them through it has been technology. Technology has changed the way we work, communicate, commute, and live.
We know that the world is evolving as we speak, and rather rapidly. As businesses continue to race towards an ambiguous yet alluring future, they can be sure that it will be driven on the back of robust technology. In honour of the recently observed National Technology Day, here are some ways that technology has enabled businesses to strive and survive in these challenging times –
1. Helping with employee engagement
Employee engagement has always been crucial to any organization’s success, but more so now when almost all the workforce is remote. Technology has made this endeavour much more tractable. Technology, through digital workspaces, has also been instrumental in providing seamless access to enterprise applications in easy-to-consume, task-based feeds. This has, in turn, proved to be a key strategic advantage for engaging the entire work force, anywhere, anytime.
2. Enabling the future of work with hybrid working models
Work models, especially in this digital era, must be transformed to foster human-machine collaboration. The new future of work is all about enabling new skills and worker experiences, delivering an intelligent, secure, dynamic environment, and supporting hybrid-working models. Technology has been a key enabler in ensuring lesser complexities and greater dynamism into businesses, for leaders and employees alike.
3. Facilitating team building and collaboration
The ability of teams to work together seamlessly is crucial for the success of any business. Technology, although used before for collaboration, is now being harnessed to connect people in smarter ways. Collaborative digital tools helped businesses enable real-time conversations that almost mirrored the face-to-face ones at the office. The right technology enables employees to create the space they need to experiment, and that certainly has had a positive impact on team collaboration.
4. Aiding leadership through Artificial Intelligence
New age technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) are transforming the business landscape and have opened the doors to new and more accurate ways of working. In the times we live in, to envision AI being explored in a leadership context isn’t too much of a leap. AI has equipped business leaders with hard evidence, possible outcomes, and predictions, which has helped them to make informed, well thought out, data-driven decisions, which have come in handy while maneuvering through the current crisis.
5. Better leveraging talent across geographies
The pandemic has made a distributed model of work possible. Thanks to the flexible work and digital workspace technology, companies have been able to tap into a talent pool that had opted out because traditional models centred around work hubs that didn’t fit their lifestyle or obligations, and create the space they need to work and succeed, wherever they happen to be. Through technology, businesses have now been able to go beyond metros and other large cities and attract talent that cuts across geographies.
Technology has provided organizations with a golden opportunity to promote flexible workstyles, emphasize skills-based hiring, and redefine themselves, putting employees at the core of their business. We cannot ignore how empowering technology has been across sectors, especially amidst the challenges that the past year has thrown at us. Afterall, the technology that businesses pick and how they choose to implement it will ultimately decide how effectively they navigate through the crisis.
