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Key Takeaways from 4 Poly Roundtables in Australia

Key Takeaways from 4 Poly Roundtables in Australia

In July, September, and November 2019, key IT decision-makers from leading organisations across Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Perth came together to share insights on the evolving workplace dynamics. We have gathered the main discussion points that emerged from the breakfast series.

Credit: Poly

By Andy Hurt, ANZ Managing Director, Poly

How the Experience Economy will impact your IT team

As the capabilities of workplace and personal technology have aligned, workers have chosen their preferred devices and services. For employers, the best course can be to accept these preferences and allow workers to complete tasks using the tools best suited to how they work.

This challenge is compounded by the need to support four generations in the one workplace, from Millennials who have lengthy experience with their chosen tools, through to Boomers who expect guidance and support from their employer. IT leaders also face a further challenge thanks to the growing use of freelancers, as these ‘gig economy’ workers require the same level of access to systems and tools as full-time employees. Add to this, each of these groups has heightened expectations of mobility and remote support, all of which must be delivered in a secure environment.

We live in an ‘experience economy’ and failing to cater to all these considerations can diminish the overall employee experience (EX), leading to disengaged workers, lower productivity, and increased attrition.

In July, September, and November 2019, Poly gathered a group of key IT decision makers from leading organisations across Australia for a series of Poly Experience Breakfast roundtables to discuss evolving workplace dynamics, and the implications for IT in supporting EX. These findings are discussed in the report The ‘Experience’ Economy – How it will impact your IT team, developed by Poly and Ecosystm.

While attendees agreed workers should be enabled to work in the way best suited to them, bringing this to life requires significant planning and investment. The first step is to create a strategy encompassing different working methods in a secure and seamless way, based on the following considerations.

The need for a mobile first strategy

With many workers having chosen which services and devices they prefer, employers are embracing these choices, leading to a proliferation of mobile technology in the workplace. As a result, workplace planners are adopting Mobile First strategies, which make the needs of mobile employees and gig economy workers the default consideration. This means ensuring apps and tools are suitable for smaller screens, as well as providing workers with access to high-speed communication at any location.

Cloud collaboration for a modern workforce

Having a highly mobile workforce presents additional challenges due to the physical dislocation of staff, which in turn puts pressure on employers to provide tools enabling effective remote collaboration.  A new breed of powerful yet easy-to-use cloud collaboration apps have emerged that bring workers together in an effortless manner, ensuring workers can collaborate in sessions regardless of location. These can also be integrated with other productivity tools to create seamless workflows.

Experience and collaboration in the office

While workers might want to work from anywhere, this doesn’t entirely supplant the benefits of interpersonal interaction in a physical workplace. But while many employers have adopted open plan environments to encourage comingling, these do not always provide the privacy and appropriate audio environments required to support efficiency.

Poor workspace design can lead to distraction and lost productivity, and create a bad experience for workers - especially in contact centres, where the right work environment is critical to staff retention. Employers must create collaborative spaces to support engaged and productive workers, with the right spread of environments to suit specific needs.

Conclusion

Those organisations that strive to create the best possible EX soon realise the needs of workers are as individual as the workers themselves. Meeting the needs of modern workers requires balancing many different requirements, and making smart investments in technology and workspace design.

At Poly, we bring together decades of experience in workplace communications and collaboration from Plantronics and Polycom, to create powerful and flexible solutions that meet the evolving expectations of workers, today and into the future.

To learn more download the Experience Economy report.

 

About Poly

Plantronics and Polycom are now Poly, the global communications company that powers authentic human connection and collaboration. Their comprehensive set of smart endpoints span personal and group communication, with a full range of headsets, desk and conference phones, and video collaboration solutions. Bringing the world closer. One to one. One to many. Many to many.

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Tags mobile technologyemployee experienceEXexperience economymodern workforcemobile first strategyCloud collaboration

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