A practical guide for an elastic digital workplace

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The COVID-19 pandemic has initiated an undeniable call to action for leaders worldwide to now rapidly assess these fast-changing developments, and the ensuing impact on their people, their customers and their organizations.

Our thought leadership series, Managing the human and business impact of coronavirus, offers expert perspectives from our leaders that provide insight paired with tangible actions to both address the now—and what’s next.

Our first report, Productivity in uncertain times through the elastic digital workplace, provides a practical guide of actions businesses should take now to minimize business disruption and protect their employees in the face of a crisis.

We advise our clients to take quick and decisive action—drawing on what we ourselves are doing as a company:

• Within 24 hours — Assess the organization’s technology and its ability to scale for use by all people. Review your communications plan and how it should be supported from within.
• Within 72 hours — Identify how to use existing technologies more effectively.
• Within 5 days — Develop a leadership and culture awareness and change plan. Encourage people to adopt technologies that will connect them to their team members and leaders in this new environment.
• Within 2 weeks — Rapidly modernize and grow collaboration and workforce engagement plans. Focus on home and broader networking, security, upgrading other tools and capabilities, and helping people learn and embrace new ways of working with each other.

Productivity in uncertain times

During uncertain times, leaders must prepare for the short-term while developing new capabilities and ways of working that will enable longer-term changes to how they operate.

Six key dimensions to the elastic digital workplace enable organizations (ours included) to quickly scale and dynamically adapt to changing business needs based on global and local conditions.  

To prepare for the future of online work, it’s helpful to familiarize yourself with these dimensions, which represent a new workplace reality:

1. Culture and adoption. Provide the technology and guidance for working remotely.
2. Elastic collaboration. Rapidly deploy collaboration tools across the organization and build bridges with customers, partners and suppliers.
3. Virtual work environment. Evaluate communications networks, accelerate device deployment, and use virtual and digital technologies to support increased demand for using mobile devices.
4. Seamless networking. Create reliable, and secure, remote network connections to employees’ homes, as well as integration with customers and partners.
5. Distributed continuity. Enhance business continuity plans to account for a smaller workforce, travel restrictions and large-scale remote working environments.
6. Adaptive security. Enable new workplace practices that take a practical and common-sense approach to network security.

Be prepared to evolve and adapt and continue to build a successful career in uncertain times—and beyond.

We’re continuing to innovate and do work that’s reinventing the future. Find your fit with our team.

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