Editorial

HYBRID WORK ENVIRONMENTS: WHEN YOUR TEAM IS RELUCTANT TO RETURN TO THE OFFICE

Published on:

March 9, 2022

Fallout from COVID-19? The landscape hasn’t just changed, it’s almost as if it’s been dynamited and reconstructed, and dispersed teams, necessitated by the virus, are becoming the norm. Like it or not we are now in the hybrid work era, and the term “everywhere enterprise” seems to apply to almost every business and organization. The digital transformation, accelerated by the pandemic, seems to continue apace with no signs of slowing down.

Global organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry conducted a survey of 570 professionals across the USA earlier this year, and almost 75 percent of survey respondents told Korn Ferry they feel “a return to the office will be negative for their mental health.”

Fallout from COVID-19? The landscape hasn’t just changed, it’s almost as if it’s been dynamited and reconstructed, and dispersed teams, necessitated by the virus, are becoming the norm. Like it or not we are now in the hybrid work era, and the term “everywhere enterprise” seems to apply to almost every business and organization. The digital transformation, accelerated by the pandemic, seems to continue apace with no signs of slowing down.

What was originally implemented to decrease our exposure to COVID-19 has proven to be the desired situation for millions of workers who found out they no longer had to spend at least an hour commuting to and from work, who found more time to cook meals at home (and didn’t have to buy lunch and coffee every day), who had more time to spend with their children and their significant others…

In many cases, working from home turned out to be nothing less than a gift to anyone looking for a better work-life balance; there was a lot more work, of course, but a lot more life came with it. Some of us got a lot more sleep (and we needed it). And even employees who are willing to return to offices only want to do so, on average, about two days per week.

At this point just about every company has at least a significant percentage of its staff working from home, from a Starbucks, in a beach house…even if you’re an SME, it makes sense in the current environment to become an “everywhere enterprise,” and it starts with your phone system. The industry’s best? Vodia. It’s feature rich, integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams and turns any mobile phone, laptop, tablet or PC into a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) client your employees can use anywhere. You can move your phone system to the cloud, without having to duplicate your IT infrastructure, and enable seamless collaboration amongst your entire team, regardless of how dispersed they are.

  • With the Vodia phone system, all calls to employee office extensions are routed to their mobile devices (callers only see the number they dialed, not your employees’ private numbers).
  • All the systems you currently have in place – voicemail, caller ID, conferencing and DND – simply migrate to the cloud.
  • Set up is fast and painless, as are integrations with MS Teams, FreshBooks, Zoho, HubSpot and Salesforce, SMS and Android and IOS mobile apps.
  • We give you a robust, resilient, easy-to-use suite of tools to help you and your team create and collaborate via the cloud – Vodia is the most feature-rich phone system available.
  • Moving to the cloud with Vodia will reduce your telephony costs.
  • No one has to receive calls outside of business hours – your employees can set these hours with our app, mobile or PC, or through a standard web browser.
  • Separation of work and personal calls.
  • SMS and MMS, conference calls and call recording.

So are your employees reluctant to return to the office? With the Vodia phone system, they don’t have to. Deploy Vodia, and you’ll probably see enhanced collaboration and increased productivity. We’re happy to tell you more about it, and to put you in touch with one of our amazing resellers. Contact us to get started, sales@vodia.com.

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