Pro tips to embrace the hybrid work model

Wasn’t it a bit overwhelming to experience that everything in real suddenly went remote? Your favorite weekend hangout spot was closed down, and your social life hit a steady decline when your office sent you home to work from there. In the blink of an eye, the whole world became little chat windows on your computer screen.

With a huge chunk of workforce opting to work from home, the streets that were once bustling with peak office-time commuters now became silent and the once lone houses are now buzzing with life. This gave rise to a new work model called the Hybrid Work Model. With a little of office and a lot of home as the setting to get your work done, the hybrid work model has become the talk of town, especially after the eventful advent of the novel coronavirus.

What is hybrid work model?

As the name suggests, hybrid work model enables the employees to work from wherever they want to and at their own convenient time. For instance, while some employees could choose to work from home, others can opt to work in the office. Simultaneously, there can be a different set of employees who can choose to come to the office occasionally and, on the remaining days, work remotely. Rather than the place of work, hybrid work model focuses on the quality of work along with the comfort and safety of the employee.

Even before the pandemic wreaked havoc, many huge corporates, including Google and Facebook, had embraced the hybrid work model. Surveys conducted by various organizations throw light on the fact that both companies and the workforce tend to have a liking for this change in the work culture.

Benefits of hybrid work model

Most of the industry surveys conducted to analyze the impacts of hybrid work culture model indicate that enterprises have largely benefitted by shifting the work culture. Let us take a look at some of the perks of shifting to a hybrid workspace culture.

• • Cost-cutting — When a majority of the workforce is away from the office, working remotely, the money spent to maintain and operate the office space will dwindle down by a fair amount. You may choose to shift to a smaller office space, saving up a considerable amount in terms of rent. There will even be a huge drop in the amount spent to purchase office stationery as well as snacks and water supply. This amount saved can be invested to fulfill the long-pending demands for device procurement, purchasing the latest technologies and so on.
  • Increased productivity — As the employees are provided with the freedom to choose their location and time of work, they tend to utilize their time better and hence give out the best possible results, boosting up productivity and company revenue. They can also work whenever they feel the most productive, which might be unearthly hours or the conventional 9 to 5 office hours. Being able to work from a cabin in the woods or inside a beachfront apartment is an employee’s dream. Haven’t you dreamt of such a cool working spot? Most of you would answer it with a definite yes!

• Employee satisfaction — Entrusted with a flexible work location and timing leave a positive impact on the employees. They can fully concentrate on their work without any interruptions of the normal office environment. They can also work with required time offs. A ten-minute power nap can do you enough good in the midst of a hectic day of meeting deadlines.
• Improved work-life balance — Working from home helps employees to save commute time. They no longer need to squeeze themselves into buses and trains swarming with people commuting in the peak office hour traffic. Also, this saved time can be judiciously utilized by the employees for leisure activities and engagements with family and friends.

Concerns and solutions

Even though this whole idea of hybrid work model might look fantastic, it does come with its own risks and concerns. The significant group to give out a panic reaction to this trend are the IT admins.

When the workforce goes out of sight, there definitely is a scope for concerns regarding device and data security and employee management. With the rapidly changing work environment, IT admins are forced to adapt techniques to effectively and securely manage a large chunk of the remote workforce. However, the traditional data security and device management tactics are outdated and are not competent enough to be proven useful in the current scenario. Admins need to equip themselves with brand new tools and technologies or find other methods to securely and conveniently manage their remote devices and data.

The easiest solution is to outsource the IT services to external partners to meet the rising demands. Still, the concerns remain. What if the partner company is not able to deliver the desired results? Is it safe to give all the crucial data to an outsider? and so on.

What if you come across a tool that is easy to use and helps you address these concerns all by yourself? Yes, you heard it right. With Hexnode Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), such a tool is no more a utopian concept.

Let us now analyze some of the real concerns associated with the hybrid work model and how Hexnode (UEM) turns out to be the best available solution in the marketplace to address them.

• • Managing workforce and devices — With the workforce shifting away from traditional office spaces, it is normal to have genuine concerns about how to manage the employees and the devices, which are used to perform the tasks. Whilst they worked in the office, it was easy for the admins to keep track of as well as troubleshoot the devices as per arising requirements. Hexnode UEM has built-in device deployment features, which include Zero-touch deployment and pre-configuration methods. It also has specialized features to automatically update apps and OS, enable quick troubleshooting through remote view and control, remotely delete and disenroll non-compliant devices and so on.

• Monitor employee productivity — When all the work happened at the office, it was comparatively easy to monitor how efficiently your employees were working. But with employees spreading across the country and sometimes in a different continent, keeping a check on how employees utilize their work time is difficult. Hexnode UEM helps restrict devices to essential apps and functions remotely view, control and track location of the devices to make sure that employees do not use the device for non-work-related things during office hours. You can remotely track and view the employee device screen. Web content filtering helps limit employee access to unproductive websites and ensures safe web browsing.
• Data security — We all know that no enterprise can compromise on data security. Zero Trust Security is a security concept that has come up in the wake of hybrid work culture. Here, a possible breach is assumed and each request made by the user is verified as if the requests are made by an external entity, which is outside the company network. This concept is as simple as Gmail asking you for an OTP each time you try to sign into a new device. Hexnod UEM, for ensuring data securing, can facilitate in remotely implementing various restrictions and granular control on your devices. Other security features include passcode protection, blacklisting and whitelisting of websites, enforcing device encryption, enabling and disabling certain features that may lead to data breach, etc.
• Device security — Another issue that would give an adrenaline rush to the IT admin is the concerns related to device security. What if something happens to the devices issued to the employees by the office? What if someone tries to access it, or worst case, steal it from the owner? Hexnode UEM has all these risks sorted too. With its unique Lost Mode feature, admins can lock down the missing device with a custom message and contact number, helping the finders to return the device. Once the lost mode is activated, no information inside the device can be accessed. Another relevant feature from Hexnode is the Remote Ring feature by which you can locate a misplaced device, as the device sound will be played even while on mute. There are options to wipe off data or lock the missing device. Admins can also remotely change the owner and device ownership, clear passwords and power of the device, which are few among the many security features provided by Hexnode.

Takeaway

Hybrid work model is an emerging work culture, and enterprises sooner or later need to adapt to this change. As we embrace the change, we need to take precautions so as to get maximum productivity without compromising security. Hexnode UEM can be a one-stop solution to wade off all the hybrid work concerns.