Remote working programmes have typically relied more upon employee aspirations and IT enablers rather than forthright management of the change whereby remote working targets have not been achieved consistently throughout the organisation. Holistica is an industry expert in workspace transformation.
- Successful remote working projects require a coordinated implementation effort between IT, Human Resources & Real Estate functions to holistically achieve remote working targets, otherwise results will be compromised.
- The company’s remote working ambitions are often established in the business case as part of the project initiation process with the functional leads bought into the targets and planning. Then IT proceeds with all research for “best in class” products, the procurement, installation and testing for ramping up the backend services (i.e. VPN, authentication, encryption); the rollout of standardized hardware for the staff (i.e. laptops, headsets, screens) to complete the IT enablement.
- Generic communications are then prepared by HR and issued to the organisation promoting the remote working without having considered the necessity to enshrine the change into the companies policies as part of a structured change.
- Then the remote working project team start to look at the statistics of remote working, only to find disappointment as the uptake in the services falls far behind the projections and conclude after some initial investigation that uptake is driven almost exclusively by employee aspirations for home working rather than managements drive to reduce the real estate footprint and associated costs.
- Without the relevant change management, the myths of remote working are inadequately addressed:
- The team dynamic is inefficient or broken through remote working.
- It’s impossible to brainstorm over a videoconference.
- All the important decisions are taken in the office, face to face & not through videoconferencing.
- Office presence is seen as a strength for future promotions.
- Physical presence is preferred to virtual presence by practically all our management.
- Position is unrelated to remote working.
- Gender is unrelated to remote working.
- To manage the transition effectively from the entire workforce arriving in the office each day to have a percentage working remotely, a forthright approach to the change is required as well as a remote working policy, established & communicated effectively to the workforce.
- Holistica is an industry expert on space management and has an assessment tool to benchmark remote working progress which can be leveraged through a brief interaction, furthermore with Holistica’s project experiences it is possible to draw-up plans inclusive of IT, change management & HR quickly & deploy the relevant metrics to accelerate your remote working ambitions.