This month marks the one-year anniversary of remote work. With the rapid turn to remote work and the complete transformation of the professional landscape this time last year, companies had to rapidly shift work patterns almost overnight.

In many companies, business leaders had to introduce new technology to keep teams connected and aligned even when physically apart.

Now, following the announcement of the roadmap to easing lockdown restrictions, organisations face an even greater obstacle.

They must adapt the lessons of the past year into a new way of operating in order to succeed—all while keeping their workforce, and themselves, motivated and protected. How can businesses thrive in the year ahead?

Simplify employee workflows by connecting your technology tools together

Technology has been a reliable resource throughout the current crisis and will remain vital in tackling the challenges to come. However, amidst the race to stay connected across tools, workers switch between 10 apps 25 times per day—fragmenting communication and reducing efficiency.

With ‘tool overload’ damaging team alignment and productivity, businesses must evaluate their current tech stack and find a platform that connects and streamlines these multiple products into one unified experience for employees.

This helps teams cut through the chaos of finding a different solution for every problem. Further still, by prioritising a wide range of integrations with must-have function-specific apps, a connected platform helps organisations move faster and coordinate work effectively.

For example, one of our customers Okta, a leading identity management platform, leverages our Openpath integration to automatically grant employees building access after they complete a successful health screening with Envoy Protect.

This helps administrative staff ensure that only approved employees can access their buildings. Upon the return to the office, the integration will support the same functionality for visitors as well, giving guests a seamless and welcoming entry experience.

A single platform that is utilised across the organisation and integrates with every department’s existing tools will help improve team alignment. So what should organisations have in mind when selecting this tool?

Prepare for hybrid work by listening to employee needs

Ready or not, the future of work is likely to be hybrid, where employees spend some time in the office and some time working from other locations like homes and coffee shops. In fact, according to our recent study, an overwhelming majority of employees (90 per cent) miss the workplace and 94 per cent want to spend at least one day a week in their office.

It is imperative that organisations seize the opportunity to prepare for the future workplace by listening and understanding these new employee preferences. Businesses that offer flexibility to employees will experience higher engagement and, ultimately, increased employee retention.

Recent surveys indicate that workers are willing to seek out new opportunities at organisations that have a company culture that prioritises these issues.

Amidst a pandemic, an office buzzing with co-workers may not yet be a possibility, but how can businesses prepare for a safe return to the workplace?

Companies must seek out a solution that is specifically designed to help them to adjust their workplace during COVID-19 and beyond. The key to this is technology that seamlessly keeps the office environment safe, without sacrificing the experience for everyone coming through your door.

Automate the office to promote an easy—and safe—return

Ditch the pen and paper sign-in sheets and implement a tool that does the work for you. With a digital platform that integrates employee registration and visitor management, you can simply automate check-in processes to manage everyone coming through the door.

Unlike stacks of paper or manual logging of information, digital platforms are easier to manage, more secure, and offer better options to maintain privacy. Without the need for face-to-face interactions on these digital platforms, you can even offer remote reception—this way you can remove communal touchpoints that could increase the spreading of the virus.

To help companies manage these changes to their workspace and ensure employees feel comfortable working from the office, use desk sharing software. This helps the organisation to set up desks that meet social distancing requirements in the office layout.

In addition, this provides employees with the flexibility to choose where to sit depending on what they need to get done that day—whether collaborating with a team on a project or requiring a quiet space for heads-down work—and easily find and book the desk on the platform.

Paving the way to the future of work

With teams working remotely or distributed across the office and home, the experience of work and a focus on culture have become more important. Today’s mission-critical apps are tied to company culture. Establishing a digitally-enabled culture that responds to employee wants will not only engage current teams but outshine competitors in the fight for talent.

Deploy technology that supports alternative types of working, while communicating best practices and ideal use cases, to increase utilisation and improve the effectiveness of workplace technologies.

Underpinning business success is the technology that helps teams collaborate safely and securely—putting the employees’ needs first and ensuring that the tool stack is integrated into the company culture.

Get it right, and your organisation will set the standard for the new working normal and thrive, not only in 2021 but beyond.

Matt Harris is Head of Workplace & Technology at Envoy.