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hybrid working

Majority of UK businesses still ill-equipped for a hybrid working future according to new survey

960 640 Stuart O'Brien
UK businesses are firmly committed to a flexible working future but the majority are still in the planning stage of their hybrid working projects, according to a new industry survey of contact centre industry professionals.

102 UK Contact Centre Directors and Managers took part in the online “How successfully has your contact centre embraced hybrid working?” market study conducted by Pitch Market Surveys in partnership with the Welsh Contact Centre Forum, homeworking specialist Sensée, and insight and action platform provider SuccessKPI.

Survey responses were collected between November 3rd and December 19th 2022 and participants came from a broad range of different industries. Around a half (49%) of people responding work in large contact centres with 100 or more seats.

Return to the office?

Almost four-fifths of respondents (78%) said that, by November/December 2022, fewer than a quarter of their organisations contact centre advisers had returned to the office full time post lockdown. Two-thirds (66%) believe that 50% or more of their advisers will be working from home (at least part of the time) by the end of 2023.

Various hybrid models

The most popular hybrid working business model today is flexible working between the home and office where EMPLOYEES decide where they work on any given day(37% of respondents). Other models used include flexible working between the home and office where BUSINESSES decide where they work on any given day, ‘set days at home and set days in the office’ and ‘(either) 100% from home or 100% from the office’.

Issues and benefits associated with WFH/hybrid

Pastoral Care (68%) and Communicating Effectively (66%) are the two issues cited most often by respondents as key hybrid working issues – with the main benefits being Happier and More Productive Employees (72%), Lower Carbon Footprint (61%), Additional Business Continuity (52%) and Traditional Recruitment Barriers Removed (45%).

Performance of WFH vs office teams

The majority of respondents say that the performance of their homeworking teams is comparable to that of office-based teams against all the criteria given within the questionnaire (including attrition, absenteeism, productivity, customer experience, and quality of service). For EVERY criteria given (apart from Average Handle Time), there is a greater chance of homeworker team performance being better than that of comparable office-based teams.

While most people agree that it is easier to recruit homeworkers than office-based workers, very few say that it is easier to monitor their work quality, manage their performance, or train them.

Are Managers ready for the challenge?

Under half (48%) of respondents think that their organisations have given Managers and Supervisors sufficient training and advice to manage, train and support their work-from-home teams.

Live adviser vs digitally-delivered customer service

When asked about technology channels used, 95% of respondents cite voice, 94% email, and two-thirds (67%) webchat. 89% of respondents say that customer contacts are mainly handled today by live operators. Looking forward, just 40% of respondents believe that the majority of their customer contacts will be handled by digital channels (i.e. not by a ‘live adviser’ phone call) by 2025.

WFH and self-scheduling hours

79% of contact centre professionals agree with the statement that their organisation ‘gives employees the opportunity to work flexibly so they can enjoy a better work life balance’. But 71% say that they cant yet give contact centre employees the freedom and flexibility to self-select their own work schedules.

WFH/hybrid technology

82% of respondents say that they have enhanced IT or Information Security in order to enable home-based working.

“Three years ago, few businesses viewed full or part time homeworking as a viable solution for the majority of their people. The Covid lockdown changed that picture completely.  Employees today are increasingly demanding a greater say in how and where they work while businesses are seeing the long term benefits of homeworking – not for everybody in every situation but, nevertheless, for a sizeable number of people. The challenge is now on to make home and hybrid working effective – which will often require businesses to adopt a new mindset to how they recruit, train, schedule, technologically-equip, look after and manage their people.” said Simon Hunter, Chief Commercial Officer, Sensée.

Business intelligence to support a post-pandemic mindset

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

The ‘management versus employee’ battle on WFH continues – but have managers recognised why hybrid working has become such a problem?  Without face-to-face interaction, remote workers have far less trust in the information provided by distant colleagues – or distant business partners/ suppliers/ customers.  And that is leading to a breakdown in relationships across the board.

Furthermore, the pandemic has exacerbated differences in working attitudes: for every ambitious individual wanting to make a fast impact on the business before moving on to the next challenge, there is another taking the quiet quitting approach, coasting along doing just enough to get by.  How do the former engage the latter or monitor their progress to ensure key tasks are done – especially when they have zero trust in the business information currently available? The stand-off will be both inevitable and painful – especially given the continued challenge to recruit talent.

Peter Ruffley, CEO of Zizo, discusses how fast analytics projects that deliver rapid business insight are now urgently required to rebuild trust – and not just in data.

Lost Trust

Hybrid working has thrown up many operational challenges for businesses but one of the biggest issues – and one that is radically undermining business performance – is an endemic lack of trust associated with remote employees. Without face-to-face contact, companies are discovering that individuals simply do not have the same level of faith in the information presented. Untrusted information has zero value to any business.

Individuals instinctively trust information more when colleagues are physically present to support and field questions about it, but not so much when those same colleagues are remote. Information shared in a meeting room has far more credibility than screen shares on Zoom. And that is creating real problems – undermining relationships between colleagues and raising questions of trust between business partners.

How can businesses monitor and manage business relationships if they cannot trust the, typically outdated, performance information being provided? How can managers inspire less engaged colleagues to perform if most of the discussion is an argument about data accuracy? Resentment is building – and the hybrid working problem is far deeper than debates about the number of mandated days in the office.

Given the escalating economic challenges faced globally and the associated need to be far more agile and responsive, no company can afford to be hamstrung by this lack of trust, the business implications could be devastating.

Information Frustration

This issue is particularly painful for those organisations still struggling with weekly and monthly reporting cycles. The less they trust the information presented, the more individuals are demanding it. They want more information, with greater frequency and significantly improved business relevance. The need for data they can use, rapidly, to achieve measurable improvements, is clear.

Individuals are also frustrated that businesses cannot provide the same level of information available as standard within the online consumer market. If an eCommerce provider can show complete order history at any time, with the option to drill down for all the detail, why should the working environment be any different? Why are managers compelled to wait weeks for summary information that, more often than not, fails to provide the insight they require?

Of course, the demand for fast access to trusted information is nothing new. What has changed is the attitude and expectation.  Ambitious individuals want to make their mark quickly.  They don’t want to be constrained by limited access to untrusted data that will inevitably delay the essential improvements in process or customer experience: how would that look on the CV? Plus, of course, every business needs quick wins and a way to achieve incremental digital transformation – and that means taking a very different approach to data analytics projects.

Instant Analytics

The new mantra is not just fast change and confidence in tangible deliverables but: can this be done now? ‘Is the data in place to support this objective?’ is the most important question to ask – and answer. This model is nothing like the ‘build it and they will come’ approach of data warehouse projects that spent years collating data resources before the business even had a chance to verify the relevance of what was being collected, let alone determine whether the information could support business change. Instant data analytics projects must be able to answer the data question within days, assessing whether the data is of high enough quality and completeness to answer the business question.

Any instant analytics project starts with the first step in the data lifecycle (collect, combine, context, change) to determine what information is in place today, what valuable insight can be immediately leveraged and whether that supports the outlined priority business goal. If not – the project can be immediately reviewed, and steps put in place to collect the right data. Cost and time have been minimal and essential knowledge has been gained about the existing data. On paper, a fast fail is also a success, because it is a win to identify the business processes not in place to achieve the outlined goals, as the business can now begin to collect the required information resources.

If the data is already collected it can be the foundation to rapidly achieve the desired goal, combining sources and adding context to unlock essential insight. Critically, this is an iterative process that builds incremental value: a project should deliver within three months and provide a platform for the next iteration.

Business Driven

The other fundamental change is that instant data analytics projects are business, not IT-driven. A business user understands the relevant data – and how it can drive change. A successful instant analytics project is about identifying a process that can be digitally transformed very quickly to deliver quantifiable value to the business, or utilising data to win more customers – and engaging with individuals across the business to ensure this is a fixable problem.

For example, a traditional project would have focused on improving the performance of the entire production line – taking years to achieve any change. An instant data analytics project, in contrast, looks for a very quick win – for example by moving a test process from the end of the production line to immediately after the stage when the failure could happen. This highlights any problems as they occur, allowing immediate remediation and response. The result is a small, fast win that builds confidence in data and encourages further incremental development at other stages of the process.

Plus of course, the process transforms trust – trust in data, colleagues and business partners. Whether it is providing a supplier with on-demand access to a KPI dashboard, allowing the company to click through for detailed information or giving managers immediate access to sales information, rather than waiting for the weekly spreadsheet debate, small, business-driven information wins create a step change in data perception and trust.

Conclusion

Businesses are rapidly recognising the implications of the loss of trust. The breakdown in relationships between colleagues and business partners is not just due to the lack of face-to-face interaction but the implicit concerns regarding the information they are sharing. Without immediate, accurate data insights that are trusted by everybody, how will any business respond with the speed and confidence required to succeed in the current economic environment?

UK businesses experience up to five security incidents each year

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

Attackers are seizing on vulnerabilities in hybrid working environments, creating more work – and also larger budgets – for security teams, despite organisations accelerating digital transformation projects.

The latest State of Security Report from Infblox, which surveyed 100 UK respondents in IT and cybersecurity roles in the UK as part of its global sample, discovered that the recent surge in remote work has changed the corporate landscape significantly.

In fact 64% of UK organisations have accelerated digital transformation projects in order to support remote workers since 2020. This is higher than the global (52%) average.  

  As part of this shift just under half (49%) of organisations have increased customer portal support for remote engagement and 43% have added resources to their networks and data basis. Given that over a third (34%) have close their physical offices for good, this investment may prove to be a strong strategic move.  

Cybersecurity still causing headaches   

An increased digital footprint inevitably brings increased digital risk and the reality of a hybrid workforce is causing headaches for IT teams and business leaders. The data reveals that the loss of direct security controls and network visibility has half (50%) of UK companies more concerned about data leakage than anything else. Almost as many (45%) are worried remote worker connections will come under attack.    

It appears that organisations have good reason to worry, given the report found that 61% experienced up to five security incidents in the last year. However, there is some good news: 66% report that these incidents did not result in a breach. This may be because 73% were able to detect and respond to a security incident within 24 hours.   

Of the 44% reporting a breach, insecure WiFi access (47%) was the biggest cause. The data also suggests that UK workers are continuing to fall for phishing scams. In fact 4 in 5 (82%) breaches reported in the last 12 months were caused by this attack method. Phishing usually signals the need for or failure of employee and customer security awareness training that require technological backstops  

Defense in depth   

Infoblox’s report discovered that the majority of organisations are investing heavily in security tools to protect their hybrid environments. In fact, 59% of respondents saw bigger budgets in 2021 and 64% anticipate an increase in 2022.   

Many are turning to defense-in-depth strategies, using everything from data encryption and network security to cloud access security brokers and threat intelligence services to defend their expanded attack surface. As part of this, almost half of organisations (47%) are relying on DNS (Domain Name System) to block back traffic.    

“The pandemic shutdowns over the past two years have reshaped how companies around the world operate,” said Anthony James, VP of Product Marketing at Infoblox. “Cloud-first networks and corresponding security controls went from nice-to-have features to business mainstays as organisations sent office workers to work from home. To address the spike in cyberattacks, security teams are turning to DNS security and zero trust models like SASE for a more proactive approach to protecting corporate data and remote devices.”  

The full report is available for download here.  

Technology ‘increases employee inclusion’ in hybrid work

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In a world where 60% of employees say a hybrid work model is their ideal work arrangement, only three in ten (30%) strongly agree that their organisation provides them with the necessary technology to collaborate equally and inclusively from anywhere.

That’s according to Jabra’s 2022 edition of the Hybrid Ways of Working Global Report, carried out amongst 2,800 knowledge workers across six countries worldwide to understand the employee sentiments and motivations in this hybrid working era.

The future of work is virtual-first. With hundreds of millions of people collaborating on Teams, Zoom, and other unified communications platforms every day, these digital environments are the new standard for how we connect to one another. In fact, many employees have only ever met some of their colleagues on these platforms. Because of this, it is critical that leaders do all they can to get the most out of the virtual workspace, so employees can create more human and authentic relationships with their colleagues.

Professional audio technology impacts meeting inclusivity

Jabra’s research found that users of professional audio devices reported feeling more included in virtual meetings than those using either consumer audio devices or the microphones and speakers built into their laptops. In fact, users of professional headsets globally were 11% less likely to feel left out of the conversation in virtual meetings than consumer device or built-in audio users. Similarly, professional headset users were 14% less likely to report not being able to hear what’s being said in the meeting than built-in users and 12% less likely than consumer device users.

At present, only 29% of workers are using professional audio devices. As 87% of all meetings are either fully virtual or hybrid, with only 13% happening fully in person, it’s crucial that employees are able to make the most of them with purpose-built technologies. A lack of proper technology may make relationship-building in these virtual environments more tenuous and difficult than it needs to be.

Organisations that prioritise meeting equity have higher hybrid meeting engagement

Since the start of the pandemic and alongside the rise of hybrid work, the term “meeting equity” has entered the discussion to explore how organisations can create equitable virtual environments. In a traditional meeting room, every meeting participant has a place at the table and has equal opportunity to contribute to the meeting. However, a hybrid meeting setting consists of both physical and virtual meeting participants, so true meeting equity becomes harder to achieve.

Luckily, the research finds that organisations that take active steps towards achieving greater meeting equity are likely to increase engagement in hybrid meetings. In fact, 48% of hybrid workers say that their organisation priorities meeting equity, resulting in 53% saying they’re just as engaged in hybrid meetings as face-to-face meetings. This is compared to only 34% of full-time in-office workers who say that their level of engagement in hybrid meetings matches that of face-to-face meetings; amongst in-office workers, 32% feel their organisation prioritises meeting equity. Leaders need to take decisive steps to address meeting equity, regardless of the primary type of work model their organisation practices.

Video increases inclusion and productivity in virtual environments

Roughly half of all employees (49%) consider their office to be their laptop, headset, and wherever they can get a strong internet connection. But the research found a key location-agnostic way to impact an employees’ wellbeing and productivity levels: video. Sixty-two percent of employees say they feel more included and present in meetings when everyone attending has their camera turned on.

Similarly, 53% feel they can collaborate more productively on video calls than on audio-only calls. This is likely why 68% of employees say that standardised professional video cameras would help everyone participate equally in hybrid meetings. Moving forward, leaders have an urgent need to look into the best technology to inclusively connect all employees and business partners no matter where they’re working. This will be an essential part of achieving greater meeting equity and succeeding in the hybrid future.

Holger Reisinger, SVP at Jabra, said: “The way we work has changed forever and the current state of knowledge work requires access to digital platforms and technologies to be successful. As such, leaders need to prioritise the employee experience and ensure that they can thrive in virtual meetings regardless of location. It starts with identifying technologies that will enable both in-office and remote employees to collaborate on an equal playing field, so employees can seamlessly move between these places without feeling left out, unheard, or distracted. Only then will employees truly be able to work a flexible arrangement on their own terms and have a stronger emotional connection to both their digital and physical workspace.”

To download a copy of the full research report, visit: https://www.jabra.co.uk/hybridwork/2022