Andrew Carr, Managing Director, Camwood
While hybrid working is no longer a ground-breaking concept, it’s a marked shift from the old office-based, 9-5 structure that dominated for years. Accordingly, many financial organisations are still figuring out how best to make hybrid work, work.
It is, after all, the will of the people. More than two-thirds of employees in the finance sector now say a hybrid schedule is “fundamental” to whether or not they look for a new job. Having grown accustomed to the convenience and flexibility hybrid work brings, the majority want it to be the norm moving forward.
To retain talent at a time when it matters most, more and more businesses are pivoting to these flexible, hybrid work models. Now, over three-quarters of UK employers are offering a mix of office-based and remote working through formal or informal arrangements. But how can these organisations ensure that they design and implement the right hybrid working policy for them – and make it stick?
Finding the best balance
Hybrid and flexible working models look set to stay. In fact, more than 70 companies have begun a four-day working week trial in the UK to decipher its impact on wellbeing and productivity. In a similar move, we at Camwood have implemented the Flexi3 programme, which gives full time employees the opportunity to finish at 15:00 one day per week, which represents our commitment to upholding employee wellbeing.
Now, organisations need to place employee experience at the forefront. Ever since the initiation of the Great Resignation in 2021, employees demand a better work-life balance, and will search for the right organisation to provide that flexibility.
Attracting the right talent to the business is however just one facet of the challenge for financial organisations. With skilled specialists at a premium, the other is keeping the best people from moving on, while also balancing inclusion, productivity and interaction. While many factors are at play when it comes to success in this area, including culture and leadership, user experience is also a critical offering, particularly the technologies delivered to enable role fulfilment.
Looking long-term
Hybrid working models need to be tweaked to suit the organisation’s operations, there’s no set template. While it was a concept that was deployed by some organisations pre-pandemic, it has become much more widespread following the initial requirement for employees to work remotely under Covid-19 government restrictions in 2020. Remote models have since made way for a hybrid reality.
For many businesses, it’s perhaps too early for them to establish a long-term working strategy, and it’s likely to remain an open question for some time as lessons continue to be learnt. Much of the focus during the first lockdown was ensuring that employees could securely connect to corporate systems, with demand rising for unified communications and cloud to allow for engagement away from the office.
With video conferencing systems established and two-factor authentications implemented, now is the time to take a fresh look at the current model and whether it’s optimised for providing the best employee experience. This means looking beyond the technology setup and analysing employee satisfaction. Much of the narrative is pointing towards a hybrid approach, whereby employees spend a few days of the working week in an organisational or flexible meeting space, as the one suited to most people.
By having a balance of home and office working, organisations can ensure they protect the health and wellbeing of staff, allowing them to feel the benefit of in-person collaboration while also retaining flexibility afforded by home working. This however requires scrutiny to ensure employees are able to deliver excellence to customers, regardless of where they are based.
Considering applications
Applications are often perceived as a responsibility of the IT department as opposed to an asset of the business, and it’s critical that any issues are addressed and rectified. The method of application delivery is vital to the success of new working models such as hybrid. For example, modern and legacy applications can rely on different platforms such as Microsoft Configuration Manager, a traditional on-premise solution, or Microsoft Endpoint Manager/Intune, a cloud-based platform.
Regardless of the delivery model chosen, standardisation is critical across application engineering and the method of end-user delivery. Failing to priortise this can risk a reduction in user productivity and cause an increase in service team overheads associated with problems in application management.
The solution is MSIX. This technology, designed for Windows applications, is a universal package format that supports desktop, mobile and other Windows devices. While applying application engineering to MSIX has previously presented problems, Windows 11 has now allowed for a simplified approach to either converting or packaging applications.
Retaining and attracting staff
Keeping key staff and bringing in the right talent has become harder than ever for all organisations, not least in the finance sector. Employees are no longer content with simply being employed to do a job; they want an experience delivered by technology. In a world where people are using intuitive applications on mobile and tablet devices every day, it’s little surprise that they now expect the same from their workplace. The reality is that organisations can deliver on these expectations, they just need to leverage the right technology to deliver the best user experience in a hybrid world. Those that do will get ahead of competitors and bring the most talented people into the business.
