The year 2020 changed work forever. Covid-19 fast tracked the move from the traditional office based work model to a more flexible arrangement offering a balance of office and home working.

According to a report produced by Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, 73% of employees surveyed expressed a desire for flexible office/home working post pandemic, and 66% of businesses said they were considering redesigning physical office layouts to better accommodate hybrid working environments.

Now, let’s be honest – no one really knows what the future will bring. But it should be safe to predict that for the immediate future, hybrid working is the new norm – so here are some tips to get the best out this new world:

1. Equip your team to succeed, not just mentally but also physically

When we talk about hybrid working, we typically reach for the heavy hitting terms – ‘Cloud’, ‘Hybrid’, ‘Platform’; but let’s not underestimate the difference a decent chair and computer screen can make to your employee’s productivity whist working from home.

2. Empower your staff with the best tools to do their job

It’s only too easy to declare Teams Video calls the new go-to golden standard for anything and everything business related. However, ‘zoom’ fatigue is real – ignore it at your peril!
The most successful teams use a combination of tools to get the best out of their time and creativity. Teams is great, but let’s not discard Outlook, CRM systems, online proposal tools, efficient accounting systems to name but a few..

3. Be Flexible

Your staff have gone the extra mile for you when first lockdown happened. They continued to work from home in questionable working conditions, they worked days and evenings, they made it all happen..
So is it really a problem if your best employee asks for 25 minutes at 3pm to pick their daughter up from school?

4. Teach Time Management

As patronising as this may sound, your team may need some time management guidance from you. They were asked to do something different overnight and working from home is different – research finds that the majority of staff interviewed take fewer breaks and often skip lunch in order to keep up with the back-to-back video calls.
There is less and less reflection time left in the day and this time is arguably more important than sitting in the background of certain video calls (the kind where you say the initial hello, then mute yourself for 45 minutes and then say “have a nice day, byeee”).

5. Use an IT platform fit for purpose

It’s time to stop thinking of ‘remote’ and ‘office’ working environments – this way of thinking is so eighties!
Why should your teams have to work differently whilst at home or the office? Its not like you ask your staff to do a different job at home, is it?
Your team is craving for a simple IT platform that just works – at home, in the office, at the airport or on the train.

During the 2020/2021 pandemic lockdowns, Purple Matrix assisted well over a hundred businesses to make the transition to hybrid working using some or all of these technologies:

• Azure Virtual Desktop
• Microsoft 365 (Email, Sharepoint, One Drive)
• Azure Compute (Virtual Machines, Web services, Databases)
• Conditional Access security (security policies, including multi factor authentication)
• Mobile Device and App management (MDM and MAM)
• Cyber threat detection and response (EDR, XDR)

We can offer several IT platforms that will allow for seamless home and office working –  why not get in touch to discuss your current infrastructure, your specific requirements and let us help and guide you to a more harmonise hybrid environment.

Purple Matrix is a Microsoft Gold Partner with 21 years of experience in cyber security and cloud technologies.
If your organisation would benefit from working with an out-of-the-box thinking IT company then get in touch!