By Paige Erickson, EMEA MD, Workfront

During the first stage of the lockdown in the spring, almost half of Brits worked remotely, causing businesses to completely rethink their working structures. Employees too have re-examined the traditional working day and now as many as 72 per cent of UK employees want to continue working from home, at least part-time. They state that working remotely helps them increase productivity and offers a better work-life balance. This sentiment from workers coupled with strong financial motivation for companies to continue to support distributed workforces, it seems unlikely we’ll ever return to the office in exactly the same form as before Covid-19.

In fact, for many, the office nine-to-five is already in the past. Instead, the pandemic has accelerated the trend of “nomadic work”, where a healthy percentage of employees can work from absolutely anywhere. This helps workers find the balance that works for them, whether that’s sometimes in the office, a couple of days from home or even working while travelling.

Covid-19 has proved that where we work isn’t as important as we thought. Instead it is how we work, and the outcome of that work, that’s critical.

A moment of shock-change for business

The pandemic has thrown companies into a moment of shock-change, as they have had to determine nearly overnight how to support a now-remote workforce. How, when and where we work changed, making maintaining productivity on the right work in this new environment incredibly difficult.

Realigning on what it means to be productive – and how to measure that productivity – is now essential for companies. The notion of a structured, on-premisis workday where activity could be observed and continually calibrated is a thing of the past. And yet, in order to navigate the current and future state to positive business outcomes, this new distributed workforce must function as an interdependent web that consistently generates not just output, but focused and strategic outcomes.

We need more than just communication tools

For some businesses the move to remote working was a new concept, and they experienced a sudden, greater dependency on technologies they had not typically used before. Zoom, Teams and Slack have become defining tools amid the pandemic, with many individuals using them both to continue business operations and socialise with colleagues they otherwise could not see physically. It was a fast and simple way to connect colleagues who were suddenly working in isolation.

When the pandemic struck, the question most leaders focused on was simply: “how do we keep everyone talking?” And while that was an important first step, the fact that the workforce could communicate didn’t necessarily mean they had the support they needed to engage fully in the right work.

Strategic work needs more than just communication, it requires constant connection between the day-to-day work (wherever it happens), and the prioritised objectives of the business.

Paige Erickson,

Keep working towards the same outcome

Present and future work requires that companies meet employees where they are, with the right processes and technologies to support them in becoming, and staying, engaged with both each other, and on work aligned to strategic objectives.

Collaboration technologies have seen a huge surge in uptake as leaders look for ways to keep their newly nomadic workforce productive. And while most collaboration tools can help teams coordinate and complete tasks and projects, without broader connectivity to systems, teams and departments across the rest of the business their impact is limited.

Tasks and projects themselves do not exist on islands. They require budget and personnel data from financial and human capital management systems to properly allocate and manage resources. Many projects require compliance oversight from legal and regulatory departments. Work also happens in specialised applications such as Jira, ServiceNow and Adobe.

Unless collaboration tools can integrate with the data, and processes happening in those and other applications, work stays siloed, and employees and leaders have limited context and visibility into why and how work is – or is not – progressing toward the right outcomes.

Work management engages your team, wherever they are

Work management practices and platforms are fundamentally different to collaboration applications. Instead of focusing solely on connecting people and teams, they are designed to connect strategy to delivery. This shift in approach absolutely requires that nomadic workers are outfitted with the right communication and collaboration support, and then goes several steps further.

Enterprise work management platforms also integrate work and data across people, systems and departments, providing context and connection for frontline workers, and visibility and navigation for leaders. Wherever they’re working, each person has what they need to do their best work, and the assurance that their work is making an essential contribution to a larger whole.   

Harness the creative spark of your nomadic workforce

The pandemic meant businesses had to take a deep look at the way they work and operate to support their workforce from home. Now that we know nomadic working is here to stay, organisations must think beyond just the digital systems they need to get staff talking. It’s time to rethink the best way to build a truly nomadic working structure for your enterprise.

We’re in a time of workplace transition. ERP systems previously transformed how enterprises manage corporate resources and CRM solutions helped businesses find value in customer data. Now, work management platforms are set to transform how companies manage work — including nomadic workers — to become creative forces and give enterprises a competitive advantage.