As more businesses strive to adopt flexible working, already accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, adapting your business model, and equipping your workforce with the means to seamlessly operate virtually is essential. For the sake of business continuity and to maintain high employee productivity, using software tailored to virtual working can help colleagues work in tandem and establish effective lines of communication.
When preparing for the transition to virtual working, either part-time or full-time, you will need to recognise the digitisation needs of your business, including those that apply to both internal and customer-facing processes. This initial discovery exercise will help thoroughly assess all aspects of the employee and customer journey and aid the decision-making process when commissioning the use of new technologies.
For example, how will team leaders live-track employee progress? How can colleagues alert each other on the development of shared tasks? How can client documents and contracts be housed under one digital roof? How will clients provide wet signatures?
Keith Tully of Real Business Rescue discusses the essential role of innovative technology in the shift to virtual working. Keith is an insolvency expert and plays a key role in providing business debt help to companies in financial distress due to Covid-19.
When news of the pandemic arrived ashore, businesses across the country were suddenly required to show great flexibility as they were instructed to host entire workforces away from fixed office sites with extremely limited notice. Public health guidance that instructed employees to work from home resulted in the technological capacity of businesses to be rigorously tested and activated disaster recovery plans for the unprecedented turn of events.
According to a report conducted by McKinsey on ‘How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point—and transformed business forever’, ‘companies have accelerated the digitisation of their customer and supply-chain interactions and of their internal operations by three to four years. Covid-19 sped up the adoption of technology and provided businesses with the ideal opportunity to increase their investment in software and communication platforms.
The report found that ‘most respondents recognise technology’s strategic importance as a critical component of the business, not just a source of cost efficiencies.’ Upgrading digital technology helped reduce operating costs and provided businesses with the financial incentive required to invest in talent to spearhead technological innovation.
By expanding technological boundaries and rolling out virtual working, businesses were able to recruit talent from across the country and deliver a service unrestricted by geographical location. Such investment has the power to increase revenue and provide a host of opportunities previously unavailable to businesses.
In addition to technology, providing employees with long-term support and guidance while working from home or in an alternative remote working setting can help improve employee retention rates. According to the EY ‘2021 Work Reimagined Employee Survey’, over 50% of employees surveyed from around the world would consider leaving their job post-COVID-19 pandemic if they are not afforded some form of flexibility in where and when they work.
If employers wish to implement working from home temporarily or permanently, they should consider health and safety elements to confirm that this style of working can be carried out safely and practically over the long term. Extending mental health support can also aid employees throughout the transition and help maximise opportunities.
The pandemic paved a way for flexible working across sectors that traditionally strayed away from this working style as it went against the norm. As the global work-from-home experiment reaped both financial and operational benefits for employers and granted increased flexibility to employees, an ideal middle ground was established.
The McKinsey report, ‘The Covid 19 recovery plan will be digital: a plan for the first 90 days’ established a four-step plan to accelerate the digital capabilities of businesses to keep pace.
As new technologies are introduced into the marketplace, customers are likely to naturally shape their expectations around this. For example, the pandemic led to the closure of offices, resulting in face-to-face meetings being hosted virtually which sliced out travel costs and commute time.
This mode of communication is likely to remain an offering for key businesses post-Covid-19 due to the cost and time efficiency for clients. By using this as a trigger to modernise services and increase operational agility, businesses can better serve customers.
As Real Business Rescue, part of Begbies Traynor Group, rollout hybrid working following a period of full-time working from home instigated by the Covid-19 lockdown, we look at how the team integrated Virtual Cabinet into their daily work management.
The Real Business Rescue team depend on Virtual Cabinet to host confidential case files and provide access to the wider team. This not only reduces the number of billable hours spent on an individual case but also erases typical pressure points, such as problematic document hosting or sparse audit trails.
Would your workplace benefit from a Document Management System to improve communication and efficiency in a hybrid-working world? Why not book your free demo of Virtual Cabinet today?