Future workforce, surge capacity hinges on data visibility

Boomi ANZ managing director Nicholas Lambrou. Source: Supplied.

Many Australian businesses thought they’d weathered the worst COVID-19 had to throw at them. But with new cases emerging and the future still uncertain, local companies are starting to accept that working remotely or flexibly is not a temporary fix, but fundamental.

Recent research conducted by Censuswide found 77 per cent of Australian business leaders are looking to maintain work from home policies, even when the pandemic is over.

Consider Atlassian. Just last month it announced it will allow employees to work from wherever they like, indefinitely, joining other tech giants that have made similar announcements.

While the technology industry is all too familiar with digital capabilities, this is still a significant shift in mindset given the overwhelming focus on short-term, band-aid solutions that dominated early response efforts, or the aspiration of ‘returning to business as usual’ that has dominated boardrooms more recently.

Much less attention was given to employees’ living arrangements, whether they even had a dedicated space at home in which they could work, if family dynamics would even allow them to work, or the mental health impacts of working in sudden isolation.

According to Work Safe Australia, all the considerations that shaped a traditional workplace extend to staff working remotely or from home. Employers still have a duty of care to ensure the health and safety of remote workers, and provide access to resources wherever additional support is needed.

As we look to a future defined by flexible working arrangements, it is critical that while employees remain out of sight, they aren’t left out of mind.

This is particularly critical when considering the need to rapidly deploy surge capacity to meet unforeseen demand or customer needs while overcoming the technology challenges of providing employee access to business-critical systems, applications, and data – while effectively onboarding these new workers completely remotely.

In the office, the silos between business units and operational arms generated inefficiencies and unnecessary duplication, often leading to mistakes that cause customer dissatisfaction or run afoul of regulators. In this physical environment, workers can typically overcome these challenges by collaborating on the spot so that everyone remains on the same page.

Now with employees working remotely, however, disparate data systems are becoming a greater issue than ever before.

To manage this, the systems and processes that were historically segregated between siloed departments, technology infrastructures, clouds and employees need to be unified so that business leaders can understand their entire business before trying to drive decisions – such as identifying the need to deploy surge capacity.

Streamline surge capacity

Through a 360-degree view of their digital assets, Australian companies can respond far more effectively to unexpected conditions. Consider how rapidly Coles had to hire 5,000 new employees to deal with the unprecedented rush on its stores that left shelves across the nation bare.

Not only did these new workers have to be quickly inducted and brought up-to-date with procedures and safety protocols, more than 36,000 resumes had to be reviewed to find them.

Even more challenging, however, is onboarding workers who will ultimately only ever work remotely. In order to deal with a surge in demand, for example, consumer-facing businesses such as Telstra and Westpac had to very quickly add thousands of call centre operators to aid customers flooding their support channels.

These customers were facing some of the most difficult times of their lives. True workforce agility lies in the ability to rapidly on-board these critical frontline workers to support customers in their time of need.

An eye into the future

Manual procedures straddling multiple departments would delay their introduction and impact customer satisfaction.

Further delaying their start are the processes to have each employee set up on the multiple platforms they will need, along with the necessary log ins and training required to use them effectively.

By replacing physical forms with online forms, as an Australian University recently did, not only is the need to physically handle the forms removed, but workflow automation can ensure the forms are immediately lodged with the required departments, greatly streamlining the entire process, reducing the risk of error, and ensuring the business is ready for whatever comes next.

Bringing together technology assets to unlock the data they contain equips businesses with accurate information to make better decisions in real-time, reduces the risk of error, and ensures the workforce is ready for whatever comes next.

It’s not about going back to business-as-usual; the real challenge now is to modernise operations with an eye into the future.

The workplace of years gone by was defined by the four walls of the office; the workplace of today is defined by the tools available to workers anywhere, and how quickly their organisations can support them to work safely through an agile framework.

Nicholas Lambrou is Managing Director Australia and New Zealand at Boomi, a Dell Technologies business