Productivity leakage is a concern when it comes to remote work.

There’s still a debate on whether to work from home or the office. And to settle this debate, we focus on the productivity levels in each working environment. Productivity can only be measured with the amount of outcome generated by the employee.

It’s a common notion that employees are distracted or less productive when working remotely. A leader constantly worries about deadlines, deliverables, team relationships, employee creative levels, and upscaling employee skills that contribute to the company’s goals. However, a survey conducted by Work Trends Study states 87% of employees say they’re more productive when working remotely or in a hybrid setup. 

But employees, on the other hand, might feel a communication gap and lack motivation when working remotely. Employers must ensure a connected workplace with effective and regular communication, feedback, and employee training. Focusing on these factors alone can help companies tackle the challenges of shifting work culture.

With remote work culture growing, particularly given recent trends with companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and SalesForce all announcing new policies for unlimited working from home, it is crucial to stop and see how this change in dynamics might impact the culture at your company. These nearly invisible changes directly impact employees’ happiness, yet data and analytics are lacking to see how remote and hybrid working impacts things.

Regarding productivity, managers who track it down on baseless metrics like working hours, putting a tracker system, and following up every hour, jinx the work culture. In this blog, let’s try to understand how remote work culture directly impacts productivity, internal relationships, creativity, and collaboration and if it is the future of work!

How is remote work culture impacting work productivity?

While working remotely may increase productivity, decrease stress, eliminate real-estate costs, and lower greenhouse emissions, it may cause several workplace problems. Remote work can hurt a company’s culture in several ways; a lack of social interaction may cause workplace relationships to suffer. For those individuals who strongly prefer working in-person, remote work culture’s de-engagement effects can be as severe as 17% lower productivity to 24% higher turnover.

We covered quite a bit of ground on building good communications and developing a positive corporate culture while working with distributed or remote teams. Developing company culture is not simply done for its own sake; it significantly impacts employee retention, satisfaction, and performance.

You need to understand that long-lasting remote working culture impacts how you are perceived by employees and customers, which will eventually define the success or development of the company. But considering the upside of having a remote work culture, especially the cost advantages, it is not smart to completely turn down this culture shift. The only way to still embrace this shift is by ensuring healthy employer-employee or company-staff relationships. And with technological advances today, nothing is impossible!

Read more: How to Keep Your Remote Teams Connected

How can a digital workplace platform help maintain productivity in remote work culture?

There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to rethink the way they operate. For many, this has meant implementing remote work policies for the first time.
While working remotely has many benefits, some challenges also need to be addressed to ensure that productivity levels are maintained.

One way to do this is by using a digital workplace platform. This platform can help facilitate communication and collaboration between team members and help set and track goals.

It can be tough to cultivate a remote work team culture, but it’s worth it. Here are a few tips to help get you started.

1. Defining team culture in a remote work setting

The best way to create a team culture in a remote work setting is to start with the team’s goals and values. Define what the team wants to achieve and how they want to work together. Once these are established, everyone on the team should be on the same page and understand the culture that is being created. It’s important to be clear about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior and have a set of guidelines that everyone can refer to. This will help ensure that the team culture is maintained and everyone is working towards the same goal.

No one can work in a vacuum. To be productive, people need to feel part of a team. A remote work setting can be a challenge when it comes to creating a team culture.

Here are a few tips to help you get started.

• Define your team’s values and culture: What are the things that are important to your team? What are your core values? Defining your values and culture will help you to create a common understanding among your team members. It will also help you to make decisions when it comes to things like hiring and firing.
• Establish rules and guidelines: To ensure everyone is on the same page, it’s important to establish some rules and guidelines. These can include how often team members should communicate, what type of communication is acceptable, and how to handle conflict.
• Encourage team bonding: Even though team members may be working remotely, it’s important to find ways to encourage team bonding. This can be done through team-building exercises, social media groups, or video chats.
• Celebrate successes: When your team achieves something great, take the time to celebrate! This can be done through team emails, social media posts, or even a team video call.
• Be transparent: When things go wrong, it’s important to be transparent with your team. This includes being honest about why something went wrong, what is being done to fix it, and what the consequences will be. Creating a strong team culture in a remote work setting can be challenging, but it’s definitely worth the effort. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating a team that is productive and happy.

2. Managing conflict in a remote work team culture

To manage conflict in a remote work team culture, it is important to understand the dynamics of the team and the culture in which it operates. Effective conflict management involves understanding the triggers for conflict, the communication channels available, and the team’s culture.

In a remote team, there may be a higher chance of misunderstandings due to the lack of communication or facial expressions. This can be exacerbated when team members are from different cultures. It is important to be aware of the potential triggers for conflict and to have effective communication channels in place.

When managing conflict in a remote team culture, it is important to be aware of cultural norms and expectations. In some cultures, it is acceptable to be more direct in communication, while in others, it is considered rude. It is important to be aware of these differences and to adjust communication styles as needed.

By understanding the dynamics of the team and the culture in which it operates, you can better manage conflict in a remote work team.

3. Encouraging team productivity in a remote work setting

To encourage productivity in a remote work setting, setting up some ground rules and expectations for team members is important. This includes clearly defined working hours, communication methods, and expectations for quality and output. It is also important to foster a positive team environment where team members are supportive of one another and are willing to help out when needed. By establishing a productive remote work environment, team members are more likely to be productive and meet deadlines.

Read more: Modernize and Simplify Your HR processes with a Digital Workplace Platform

How InfinCE makes an apt Digital workplace platform

InfinCE allows you to feel more in control of your data and your work-giving you a greater sense of mastery and purpose. It also helps you feel more connected to your team and organization, fostering a sense of community and collaboration matters.

InfinCE: Interactive, Data-Rich Dashboards to Boost Engagement

As an HR professional, you know that employee engagement is essential to organizational success. But what’s the best way to promote engagement within your organization?

One effective way is to use modern dashboard software to create custom dashboards for employees. By doing so, you can ensure that employees have the information they need to stay aligned with organizational goals.

Not only will this help to promote employee engagement, but it will also help to improve communication and collaboration within your organization. So if you’re looking for a way to boost employee engagement, consider using modern dashboard software to create custom dashboards for employees.

A Comprehensive Employee Directory

Looking for the contact information for your entire employee base? Look no further than the InfinCE comprehensive employee directory. This easy-to-use tool provides all the information you need to connect with your employees, no matter where they work. With multiple modes of collaboration available – live chat, one-on-one video calls, and meetings – your employees will stay connected and productive, even when working remotely.

More Productivity tools with InfinCE

Enhance your organization’s credibility with business emails. Store captured business data on documents, presentations, or spreadsheets in a private drive and ensured selective access through permissions and controls. Create events on InfinCE’s calendar, track tasks, and enhance your workforce efficiency easily!

Conclusion 

Various stats have proved that remote work culture has contributed to productivity but, at the same time, has also increased work stress for employees. However, the advent of remote working tools has helped embrace the work culture shifts and continues to enable the company to empower the upside of remote work culture! 

InfinCE, a powerful digital workplace platform, can help your company improve communication and collaboration and maintain transparency to embrace the remote work culture. It’s easy to use and can be customized to meet your needs. Start a free 30-day trial today and see how it helps your company!

With organizations worldwide adapting to either a hybrid or a remote work structure, the shift to a new work order is difficult if there is no digital workplace platform to streamline operations, especially if the company has a mix of on-site and online employees. Companies need digital solutions to ensure that all employees and stakeholders are on the same page.  

During the pandemic, many companies managed to pivot to remote work, but many of them used existing technology overlays to adapt to a hybrid or online work structure. These piecemeal solutions are inadequate and do not have the intuitive design of a digital workplace solution built especially for digital workplaces and put workers at the center of their design. Companies should choose solutions that digitally transform tasks, unify data, drive productivity, and provide intelligent collaboration apps.

What is a digital workplace? 

A digital workplace is a virtual office space designed to help employees work efficiently and carry out their tasks in remote or hybrid settings. Digital workplaces give employees instant access to resources and help them collaborate better. They streamline company workflows, increase productivity, and boost team morale. Digital workplace solutions also enable an always-connected work environment and a seamless employee experience.

There is a misconception that a digital workplace is simply a group of remote workers. Digital workplaces are all about how you work and are not restricted to location.  

According to Deloitte, a digital workplace can manage tasks from your HR applications and your core business applications to emails, instant chats, enterprise social media tools, and virtual meeting tools.

Deloitte points to one of the key requirements of a good digital workplace solution – one that aligns with the company’s business value and connects worker experience to business outcomes.

Read more: Deliver Engaging Experiences with the InfinCE Digital Workplace

Digital workplaces are gaining traction in the remote work culture – here’s why

With digital workplaces, workplace efficiency has increased, and so has flexibility. Digital workplace solutions also equip companies with exciting new technologies that automate mundane tasks and increase the speed that it takes to complete time-sensitive projects.

With digital tools giving employees all the information they need, including troubleshooting guides and company manuals, customer care reps can service customers better. 

We live in a hyperconnected world where the right digital work experience drives workplace productivity. In its roundup of technology trends, Deloitte states that digital workplaces are gaining popularity because organizations need to use technology to optimize team productivity and collaboration to stay ahead of the curve. In particular, companies can derive incredible benefits from the actionable data generated by these tools and the AI-driven people analytics solutions that can drive superior workflow management solutions. 

A Gartner survey backs this up by reporting that 56% of CEOs attribute increased revenue to digital improvements. Many companies invest in digital workplace solutions because they know that these tools promise measurable returns, which accounts for their growing importance in business.

How Digital Workplace Solutions Make Remote Work Easy And Profitable 

Digital workplace solutions are built to make it easy to work virtually and remotely. They provide powerful enterprise productivity tools that help companies optimize workflows and create an agile workforce. Their tools work in sync with employee workflows, and they help companies adapt to the complexities of the new workforce.  

Digital workplace platforms help remote team members to collaborate easily. Employees can share files, manage cases, track project statuses, and enjoy a single integrated view of multiple workflows. This ensures that all employees and departments are not working in silos and that there is a more transparent, integrated working environment where team members can track project statuses, leads, define tasks, and set deadlines.

Digital workplace platforms provide collaboration tools that employees can use to work across locations and time zones. Digital workplace solutions also automate repetitive tasks, provide an integrated work experience, and increase employee engagement. They have also re-engineered organizational structures and cultures, with workers being more connected with leadership and employees having access to company data. 

Read more: Ensuring Digital Wellbeing With The Right Digital Workplace Platform!

Here’s How You Can Identify The Right Digital Workplace Solution 

When looking for the right digital workplace solution for your company, look for a complete digital workplace toolkit. While many piecemeal digital solutions offer communication tools, it’s the collaboration tools that truly make digital workplace solutions very useful. There is more to digital workplace productivity than ad-hoc digital solutions. Instead, look for a digital workplace orchestration platform that transforms how people work and collaborate. Unlike generic digital workplace tools, digital orchestration platforms are designed to help companies boost efficiency, scale operations, work on continuous innovation, and deliver proactive and intelligent people analytics.

Here are some aspects to consider when choosing the right digital workplace solution for your company.

• Go for personalized and intuitive solutions: Every company is different, so it is important to go with a customizable digital workplace solution that allows you to choose off-the-shelf software or SaaS per your requirements.  
• Look for collaboration tools: Choose a digital workplace platform that provides workgroup chats, group meetings, audio and video conferences, and other collaborative tools. Also, favor a platform with a unified dashboard to manage daily operations seamlessly. 
• Prioritize productivity tools: Go for platforms with important productivity tools like smart email management, simplified multi-app management, calendar management, time tracking, and collaboration channels. Look for tools that can monitor the progress of projects and employee performance. 
• Choose a people-focused digital workplace platform: With remote work, employees and teams need to be constantly engaged and motivated to work and collaborate efficiently. Choose platforms with intra-organizational tools that foster a sense of community and engagement.  

With an orchestration platform like InfinCE, you can simplify your processes and choose only the features you need, thereby controlling infrastructure costs. InfinCE’s modern tools unify data and give you a competitive edge over other companies. Want to increase your profits and drive great business outcomes? InfinCE helped a company like Fingent improve productivity by 20% due to its incredible digital workplace orchestration platform.

Fix a demo session today or talk to our experts to know more about InfinCE.

Remote work is here to stay, and companies that transition to a remote or hybrid work culture will be the ones that will adapt to the digital revolution that lies ahead. A survey by Upwork states that by 2025, 22% of North Americans will be working remotely.

To stay one step ahead of their competitors, companies must choose the right digital workplace platform to build their digital workplace ecosystem effectively and set up their digital businesses for success.

Digital workplace software offers the tools and technologies to make the best of remote work and to help remote teams double their productivity. These tools include apps to communicate, collaborate, and work productively from any part of the world, with unified access to business data and automation. 

Here are some factors to keep in mind when choosing the best digital workplace platform. 

• Opt for an integrated, cloud-based, one-stop digital workplace solution with robust data security features.
• Look for platforms that have superior project communication and automation tools  
• Choose user-friendly software with excellent dashboard systems and analytics.

Here are the top 10 digital workplace solutions in the market today.

Read more: The Definitive Guide to Perfect Digital Workplace Solution

 1. InfinCE

One of the best ultra-modern digital workplace platforms on the market, InfinCE offers a remarkable range of digital productivity tools and collaboration features. InfinCE is a cloud-based, all-in-one digital workplace platform that allows you to manage multiple workflows with its no-code workflow management. Its groundbreaking digital workplace orchestration platform helped US-based company Fingent launch its digital collaborations and remote workforce with incredible success.  

As soon as Fingent switched to InfinCE’s Digital Workplace, its productivity increased by 20%. InfinCE’s flawless data security system protected the company from serious data breaches.

Read more: How Fingent Achieved Breakthroughs in Collaboration with InfinCE Digital Workplace Orchestration Platform!

Key features of InfinCE

• Data-powered, custom dashboards: InfinCE offers tiled dashboards with a unified view of data and real-time insight, with graphs and charts adding to the visual element.
• Productivity tools: InfinCE’s productivity apps include calendar management tools, smart email management, and collaboration channels.
• Collaboration tools: InfinCE offers presentation and collaboration tools, including time management apps, calendars, spreadsheets, and task managers.
• Communication tools: Instant messaging, comprehensive workplace chat apps, video conferencing, and business apps help your company stay connected and communicate effectively online. 
• Dedicated servers and security: With private servers used primarily for a single business, there are very few data security risks.  
• Other features: A host of add-ons, including virtual desktops, instant access to contact databases, and integration with CRM and CMS systems.  

You may come across a digital workplace solution that stands out for one feature over the other. Some offer exceptional project management capabilities. Some are user-friendly and perfect as remote work platforms. Others are good for complex projects. InfinCE is one of the few digital workplace platforms that offers all features under one roof.

Set up a demo today!

Read more: Why is InfinCE a Perfect Mate for Your Enterprise Cloud Journey

2. Asana

Asana is a well-known app for managing tasks and workflows. Despite not being a full-fledged project management platform, it offers many benefits. It automates repetitive tasks, is focused on collaboration, and helps team members break down their tasks and improve work management significantly. It also offers many integrations, time-tracking tools, custom fields, workloads, Kanban boards, portfolios, and templates. 

3. MangoApps

Also known as MangoSuite, this user-friendly, flexible digital work portal unifies communication, teamwork, intranet, and engagement into a single system instead of relying on separate tools. MangoApps has effective employee engagement tools and a customized dashboard experience, making it easy for companies to offer streamlined communication and collaboration services. With MangoApps, you can centralize your company’s content, create searchable team workspaces, and digitize repetitive workflows. 

4. Zoho

A platform primarily known for its customer relationship management feature, Zoho is a very useful project and task management software that also offers a good user interface. It helps businesses communicate, collaborate, manage projects, and extrapolate intuitive reports. It offers some impressive real-time chats, invoice applications, inventory management capabilities, and communication tools. 

5. Kissflow  

Kissflow is another multifaceted and easy-to-use platform that offers diverse project management capabilities and comprehensive tracking tools. It helps teams manage complex workflows and offers facilities like contextual chats that help companies coordinate better. Kissflow offers reliable reporting tools and an intuitive workflow design, besides numerous integrations and efficient collaboration tools.  

6. Microsoft Teams 

A prevalent digital workplace solution in the market today, Microsoft Teams enables teams and employees to collaborate on multiple tasks and projects. It also helps employees share content. Its video conferencing and online meeting facilities are awe-inspiring. It also offers integrations with all Office 365 software apps. Microsoft Teams allows you to create your team channels, sign up to other data sources, add files, and customize your workspace.

7. Monday.com

Monday.com has many advantages, including an intuitive and visually appealing user interface with many display options. Its project visualizing tools are excellent, and it offers third-party integrations, task management tools, and data-driven dashboard analytics. Monday.com gives you multiple project views and customizable templates to track project portfolios and campaigns.

8. Trello

Another popular task and project management software is Trello. A leading workplace solutions and project management software with boards, visual cards, and lists to help teams stay organized. Trello does not have very advanced tracking and reporting capabilities, but it is still very popular among companies undertaking simple projects.

9. Wrike

Wrike is a digital workplace solution with many features, including performance tracking, integration capabilities, diverse workflows, analytics, and performance reports. Wrike has a customizable approvals process and gives a good overview of multiple projects and where each team member is in the cycle. It takes employees a while to break into the platform, but it does pack in multiple features. 

10. ClickUp

ClickUp is a cloud-based, customizable platform that offers collaboration and project management tools to boost productivity, apart from other features like task allocation and goal tracking. It has good dashboard visibility and offers great scheduling, team collaboration, and document management tools. ClickUp helps remote teams streamline their workforce, structure their processes more productively, and coordinate multiple tasks efficiently. 

Want more clarifications on how to choose the right digital workplace platform for your business? Connect with our experts today! We can help you identify apt workplace technologies to drive success with a streamlined workflow!

Remote work is taking a front seat, and companies need to shift from traditional workplace norms to an on-demand workforce that is changing the business world completely. To make this shift, companies need a digital workplace solution. These integrated and intelligent remote work platforms provide exciting new ways to increase employee engagement, optimize costs, and create an agile workforce. 

What is a digital workplace? On the face of it, a digital workplace may seem like a virtualized proxy of the in-person office space, but in today’s competitive and technology-enabled world, it needs to do so much more.

A digital workplace platform offers cloud-native technologies that improve the company’s bottom line and lead to better team collaboration. It also leverages digital tools that help companies achieve scale while reducing costs. 

Deloitte describes the digital workplace as encompassing “all the tools and technologies people need to get their work done in today’s workplace – both in operation and the ones to be implemented.” Deloitte’s report outlines one characteristic that makes a great digital workplace solution. A good digital workplace platform connects the employee experience with business outcomes.  

Read more: Why Does Employee Well-being Matter in a Hybrid Work Model?

Why Your Company Needs a Digital Workplace Solution

Digital workplace solutions give companies a competitive advantage by making them agile, flexible, and providing them with a centralized management view. In the shift to a remote work culture that is now the new normal, companies need to go beyond generic tools for remote work. Instead, they need to look at a digital workplace solution that integrates processes and leverages digital technologies to help companies improve their profits. There are many reasons why your company must rely on a digital workplace solution.

• Provides real-time collaboration and productivity tools: Productivity and collaboration tools are crucial for remote and hybrid work. Productivity tools like smart email management tools, collaboration channels, and task management apps can help companies complete more work in less time and strategically plan their workloads and business strategies.   
• Improves employee experience: Digital workplace solutions put employees at the center of their design, making team members feel engaged even though they work remotely.  
• Offers unified custom dashboards: A good digital workplace solution provides tools like interactive, data-rich dashboards that give a unified view of all the end-to-end processes. 
• Reduces costs and drives profitability: Digital workplace solutions reduce organizational and management costs. They can increase productivity, which impacts the bottom line. This survey by Gartner reveals a 44% rise in employee productivity. Thanks to collaboration tools. 
• Promises transparency and data security: With their business dashboards that provide an additional layer of data security, digital workplaces offer better transparency and prevent data theft.  
• Drives innovation and scalability: Digital workplace technologies will drive innovation by enabling companies to hire from around the world. They will also help companies scale and increase productivity due to their feature-rich collaboration tools. 

Read more: How to Keep Your Remote Teams Connected

The Best Ways to Improve Your Digital Workplace Management

In the aftermath of the pandemic, remote work is the new reality of an on-demand workforce. A company can have many productivity and collaboration apps but without a digital workplace management strategy and platform to unify them all, there can be information and collaboration overload.  

Here’s how you can improve your digital workplace management.

• Prioritize a single pane of glass view: Digital workplace management brings this unified view of the entire company’s workflows. A central point of control is important. With it, you can leverage advanced levels of automation to make collaboration better and faster. Unified dashboards lead to faster workflows and greater scale.
• Aim for seamless integration: Digital workplace solutions are invaluable only if they are completely integrated into the company’s overall business processes. Digital workplace management helps companies achieve this single point of integration.
• Choose smarter data analytics: To improve your digital workplace management, focus on actionable data and people analytics. Intelligent collaboration tools can give you real-time updates about projects and employee performance. It is not just important to have data but to mine and utilize it immediately. Use custom dashboards to track performances and processes. These dashboards can also give you immediate access to company-wide data from APIs, apps, and CSV files.
• Look for personalized digital solutions: Choose digital workplace solutions that suit your company and its specific requirements. This is where digital orchestration platforms come in. They blend into your company’s existing workflow and optimize it instead of disrupting processes. A digital orchestration platform helps you integrate software and solutions from various SaaS vendors to manage and scale your digital workplace.
• Pick the right tools: Choose digital workplace tools that drive higher rates of automation and collaboration. Digital workplace solutions should be designed to drive end-user adoption, leading to an agile digital workplace. Look for rich interactive collaboration tools like live chats, multiple screen sharing, breakout rooms, and shareable meeting links. Go with productivity apps with excellent project management capabilities and tools to track performance and tasks. 
• Give importance to the employee experience: Employee experience is central to the success of your digital platform. Opt for voice and video calls to build stronger workplace connections so that employees don’t miss face-to-face interactions. Employees value flexibility in remote work and tools like live chats, collaboration channels, and intranet platforms that keep social interactions alive. 
• Choose a centralized IT management: When your company runs multiple applications and has to juggle between many sign-on, work becomes tedious and difficult to manage. With a single sign-on and an efficient third-party tool integration, centralized IT management unifies all of the enterprise’s applications and workflows. It also increases business transparency. 

With the rise of remote work, sustaining a distributed workforce and empowering it with a solid digital workplace management solution is important. InfinCE integrates online and offline communications by providing all-time access from anywhere in the world. While most digital workplace tools offer a variety of tools, some of them like InfinCE, are purpose-built to provide unified reporting of company workflows and targets. InfinCE also provides companies with excellent data accessibility and multiple modes of effective collaboration. Its features include customizable dashboards built to mine data and generate metrics. Want to create powerful and profitable digital workplaces that help you race ahead of the competition?

Schedule an InfinCE demo today or talk to our experts!

The necessities of Covid-19 made companies rethink their priorities regarding managing their workforce. As a result, remote work shifted from being a short-term quick fix to a  long-term solution for increased efficiency and productivity. And in the post-pandemic world, work has become more partially remote, aka hybrid, than fully remote.

Hybrid Work Defined

A hybrid workplace blends both virtual and on-site arrangements to give employees the flexibility of dividing their working hours between the office and home. As a result, the employees enjoy more autonomy and life-work balance while remaining more engaged and productive at work. 

So, Why is Hybrid Work Relevant?

A Salesforce post says, “today’s hybrid workplace would soon be called just “the workplace”. A survey of 278 executives by McKinsey revealed that the surveyees planned to reduce their office space by 30%, indicating an increased acceptance of remote work, be it partial or otherwise. Cloud technologies and the right online tools would enable your employees to access data, connect with their colleagues from anywhere, and get their work done in a networked environment. 

The McKinsey study “The postpandemic future of work: Hybrid, remote and what’s ahead” surveyed 100 executives across multiple industries and geographies say that 9 out of 10 companies would go for a blend of remote and on-site working. As work culture gets increasingly hybrid, companies need to ensure efficient online tools are in place to enable their employees to collaborate and communicate seamlessly to get their work done. Organizations need to enforce the specifics required for a mix of remote and on-site work on a permanent basis to keep their hybrid workforce productive. 

Read more: Tips in Building a Hybrid Workplace for the Future

Benefits of a Hybrid Workplace

A hybrid workplace brings quite a few benefits to the table. 

1. Flexibility at work leaves workers happy

Increased flexibility and reduced commute would help employees enjoy a better work-life balance.

2. Reduces operational costs

Hybrid workplace solutions reduce the cost of real estate and office supplies considerably. The money saved on rentals can be invested in technology, marketing, etc.

3. Increases productivity and efficiency

Working from the comfort of their homes and flexible working hours have proven to increase employee productivity and efficiency.

4. Boosts employee engagement

A hybrid working model boosts collaboration among your remote teams, thus keeping them more engaged at work. 

5. Offers location independence

A hybrid work model will essentially have a remote work infrastructure in place, enabling your workforce to work from anywhere in the world.

6. Enhances company culture

A blend of remote and on-site work would motivate your employees to remain more productive and engaged and proactively contribute toward the company’s goals and culture. On-site working days can hold face-to-face meetings and build interpersonal relationships among employees.  

Post-pandemic, companies are increasingly opting for a hybrid working model on a global scale. The Accenture study “The Future of Work: Productive Anywhere” says 83% of the 9326 employees surveyed agree that a hybrid working model would be optimal wherein they get to work remotely for at least one-quarter of their working hours. This calls for adopting smart digital workplace solutions marked by flexibility, scalability, and connectivity to stay efficient and competitive. As remote work evolves into hybrid work, companies must reimagine their digital workplaces to stay competitive. 

Read more: How Can Your Business Be Future-ready to Embrace the Flexible Work

How to Reimagine Your Digital Workplace to Nurture a Hybrid Work Culture?

1. Choose the right set of digital tools 

Your business needs the right set of digital tools and technologies to support hybrid work. You need to choose a smart digital workplace solution well-equipped with state-of-the-art communication, collaboration, and remote technology tools to connect your entire workforce to support a hybrid culture. The platform should enable a seamless and secure flow of data across multiple departments, thus connecting your geographically diverse employees. It should also have smart analytical tools like custom dashboards to get intelligent reports on the progress of projects. As the digital workplace comes integrated with all the tools required for your business operations, your employees needn’t waste their precious time switching from one app to another.

2. Connect employee experiences to business outcomes

Make sure that new technologies enhance employee experiences. Modern tools integrated into the digital platform should recognize your employees’ efforts. Care should be taken to put your employees at the center of the design so that your digital workplace solution transforms how people collaborate and communicate to get work done and meet business goals. Employee surveys help realize what your workforce actually needs to get their work done efficiently. Integrate productivity tools on your digital platform to boost employee performance. The architectural elements should be synced to delight the end users, viz., your employees, while serving to meet goals smarter and faster. Better employee experiences help boost business outcomes.

3. Create a great workplace experience

Your employees deserve a good on-site experience whenever they report to their physical offices. This is very important to make your hybrid working model succeed. Better on-site experiences lead to better in-person collaborations, which boosts better online collaborations among your employees. On-site events should support virtual events to delight your employees. Good on-site experiences make the office a place your employees would love to go.  

4. Build digital fluency

Digital fluency is vital to meet business goals as well as enriching employee experiences. You need to leverage technologies to offer training programs for all segments of your workforce to upskill them.   

In short, the pandemic and multiple lockdowns have caused companies to revisit their long-term business strategies and revamp their business processes to make them hybrid compatible. An April 2022 study of 800 business leaders, “At Work: The 2022 Workplace Trends Report,” says 77% of the companies surveyed have adopted a hybrid working model and that an “at will” hybrid policy has gained momentum. 

Read more: How to Keep Your Remote Teams Connected

To Conclude

You need the tech support of a smart digital workplace solution for your hybrid work model to succeed. This is where an efficient digital platform like InfinCE comes to your aid. InfinCE can support and improve the performances of your hybrid workforce in more ways than one. Here are a few:

1. InfinCE has efficient office and collaboration tools to help your remote teams collaborate efficiently, share files seamlessly, and improve their productivity.
2. It keeps your data private and safe on a secure, private virtual cloud.
3. The curated InfinCE application marketplace offers a multitude of both commercial and open-source business apps from multiple vendors to suit your unique business needs. 
4. Single sign-on access enables your geographically dispersed employees to have unified access to your data.
5. InfinCE offers seamless IT infrastructure management from one place to help you manage your information assets with ease and scalability.
6. It comes with a pool of varied collaboration tools to help your teams connect with each other as well as external contacts through live individual and group chats; secure file sharing; audio and video calls, etc.
7. Helps improve your business efficiency by simplifying your data analytics with the help of custom dashboards and tiles for enhanced visibility and productivity across all departments.

InfinCE is, thus, your one-stop technology solution that caters to anything and everything your hybrid workforce needs. Get in touch with our experts to know more.  

Flexible working goes beyond the accepted concept of working from home. It offers your employees the freedom to work from anywhere, on any device of their choice! It is a way of working that considers your employee’s personal needs and gives them the freedom to work from home to a certain degree. The term refers to a non-traditional working arrangement wherein the employee can choose a flexible start and finish time, unlike a conventional nine-to-five work schedule. 

Flexible work could mean flexible working hours or any permutation and combination of remote and hybrid work put together. Agreed, multiple lockdowns during the pandemic forced companies worldwide to adopt remote work. But having experienced the benefits of remote work, especially in terms of increased productivity, companies have decided to accept a certain degree of remote work post covid to keep their dispersed employees happy while ensuring improved bottom lines.  

Benefits of Flexible Working

Flexible working brings to the table multiple benefits both to the employee and the employer. These include:

1. A better work-life balance for the employee
2. Lowers levels of absence
3. Decreases stress levels
4. Employees are motivated to be more productive
5. Reduces overhead expenses like rent, utilities
6. Increases employee engagement
7. Betters employer-employee relationship
8. Fosters employee retention

Flexible working hours and remote work have thus become the new normal in an anywhere work scenario.

Read more: Why Does Employee Well-being Matter in a Hybrid Work Model?

How Flexible Working Contributes to Company Efficiency?

1. Workplace flexibility can be leveraged to increase employee engagement and productivity, thus improving overall company efficiency.  
2. Flexibility at work leads to increased happiness of your employees, thus motivating them to work harder to meet goals.
3. Leverage technology to enable seamless communication and collaboration across geographies.
4. Increases the agility of your company in general and your workforce in particular, thus catering to improved customer service and increased customer loyalty. 
5. Reduces attrition levels, a fact that is likely to attract future talent.

A flexible work culture calls for accepting ‘flexibility’ as an essential strategic tool for managing your business and integrating it with all your business systems and processes. There has been a paradigm shift in how companies let their employees work, post Covid-19. The McKinsey-Ipsos study “The American Opportunity Survey” reports that 58% of the 25000 employed Americans surveyed confirm having the option to work full or part of the week from the privacy of their homes. 35% of the respondents of the same study say that they can work from home full time, and another 23% confirm that they can work from home one to four days a week. Stats indicate that remote and hybrid work is here to stay. Both employers and employees have realized the fact that flexible work serves to help the latter find a better work-life balance. 

The ongoing changes in the realm of work have changed employee expectations of work. Hybrid work would be an excellent opportunity for your geographically diverse teams to better their career prospects. Gartner’s “Future of Work Trends Post Covid-19,” says hybrid work is all set to become mainstream. 

Future of Work

• The future of work and the workplace involves embracing digital culture and tools to support flexible work. Adopting smart digital workplace solutions help companies break silos and give transparency in their internal communications. This motivates your employees to work towards realizing the organizational mission and vision better and more efficiently. You need the backup of smart communication and collaboration tools to implement flexible work successfully. Your company needs the right technical capabilities to support your ‘anywhere workforce’ for the successful implementation of flexible work. 
• As employee expectations of working remotely have changed, companies would be designing work around employee-driven flexible schedules to create a human-centric model and culture to promote a healthy hybrid environment.   
• Companies must develop processes and infrastructure that help upskill their current workforce and enable them to move to higher roles, optimize their present manpower and save money in the event.
• Employers must ensure well-being as a critical part of their Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to attract and retain talent.
• Companies will leverage technologies to ensure their hybrid employees remain connected to their organizational culture. Also, investments are to be made in talent processes to help expand employee networks. 
• Good manager-employee relationships pave the way for excellent employee experiences. Managers would require the support of proper tools to develop proactive relationships with their diverse teams.  
• Data analytics is essential to assess employee engagement and well-being to enrich employee experiences. Smart digital workplace solutions come with tools to track employee productivity as well. 

Read more: 6 Tips To Guarantee Data Security in a Digital Workplace

How Can a Smart Digital Workplace Solution like InfinCE render Your Business Futuristic

InfinCE is a modern workplace solution powered by cloud technologies and smart tools. It can unify your data, simplify your business processes, and enable seamless communication among your teams to deliver, no matter which corner of the earth they work from! The feature-rich digital platform brings to the table a multitude of benefits to ease your business operations and make your company future-ready in the ever-evolving digital ecosystem. Here is how InfinCE can be your best buddy to shore up your digital endeavors:

1. InfinCE is purpose-built to enable real-time collaboration through varied collaboration apps to support remote and hybrid work. The platform comes with an array of collaboration tools like employee directory, business phone, live chat, individual and group audio and video calls, etc., to help your teams work better and faster. 
2. It can simplify data analytics by building custom dashboards to suit your business needs. Better access to data and improved transparency help increase employee productivity.
3. Enables effective communication through online office tools, secure file sharing, email, and task manager.
4. Its curated application marketplace comes with several open-source and commercial business apps, allowing you to choose the right tools that suit your line of business, no matter which industry you represent.
5. It allows you to easily manage your information assets and scale efficiently as your business needs change.
6.  You can centrally control your IT assets through a single login.
7. It has stringent access controls to safeguard your critical data.
8. Allows your employees to access your business management software from anywhere on any device of their choice.
9. InfinCE is your one-stop solution for all your IT infrastructure needs.  
10. And what’s more, InfinCE mobile app allows you to access your data on its intuitive Android/IOS apps to deliver an engaging experience to your mobile workforce!

InfinCE is a smart, futuristic digital platform equipped with everything you need to ease your business operations and manage your mobile and diverse workforce efficiently as you scale up. Get in touch with our experts to know more, or sign up for a live demo.  

Remote and hybrid work has gained more popularity during and after the outbreak of Covid-19. Flexible work has been found to keep employees more productive and happy, a fact acknowledged by employers worldwide. Working from home/anywhere has become a vital strategy for organizations to increase employee productivity.  

Post Covid-19, companies are increasingly adopting hybrid work schedules by encouraging employees to work from the comfort of their homes for part of a week. The Accenture 2021 study “Future of Work: A Hybrid Work Model” found that 83% of the 9326 employees surveyed confirmed their allegiance to hybrid work, wherein they got to work at least 25% of the time remotely. Another key finding of the study was that “responsible leaders must move beyond physical location to shape the future of work by giving people resources tailored to their needs.” The same study report also documents that 63% of high-growth companies have already embraced a ‘productivity anywhere’ workforce model. And more companies are expected to follow suit! This data indicates companies that enable their employees to be productive and healthier anywhere have succeeded in improving bottom lines.    

Read more: 5 Tips to Improve Remote Collaboration

How Hybrid Work Model Increase Employee Efficiency?

A hybrid work model serves to improve employee efficiency in a multitude of ways. Here are a few:

1. Hybrid work calls for smart digitization of business processes.

Hybrid work requires the adoption of smart digital workplace platforms to enable your dispersed employees to communicate and collaborate with their remote team members to get their work done. Digitization of business processes endows your business with technical capabilities to fast-track its operations while training your employees in state-of-the-art technologies to help the latter upskill themselves and improve their efficiency.

2. Increases productivity   

Flexible work lets employees work to their strengths, thus serving to increase their productivity. The hybrid work model encourages teams to leverage cloud technologies to find an optimum balance of creativity and collaboration to meet goals.

3. Improves employee satisfaction and culture 

Getting to decide on how, where, and when to work to meet the organizational goals increases employee satisfaction by leaps and bounds. This autonomy in decision-making serves to boost productivity.

4. Increases collaboration and  betters work relationships 

Regular virtual meetings help track the progress of projects while facilitating your geographically diverse teams to communicate and collaborate effectively and efficiently over the digital platform in a connected world. A digital workplace solution offers your employees an avenue to contribute proactively toward meeting goals smarter and faster, thus strengthening relationships in the event.

5. Better work-life balance improves mental health

Hybrid work enables your employees to have a better work-life fit which is very important or their mental well-being. Getting to weave their work around their life allows your employees never to leak their energy into their work, thus decreasing their stress levels. This flexible work schedule prevents your employees from burnout, increasing their productivity.

Digitization improves the efficiency of both the employees and the employers, thus rendering your business processes smarter. Having said that, it doesn’t imply adopting hybrid work would be a cakewalk for companies. Hybrid work poses its own share of challenges to employers. 

Read more: 12 Ways To Drive A Connected Workplace

Two Major Challenges of the Hybrid Work Model

1. Nurturing company culture when working remotely

Companies are worried about growing a company culture around remote work that aligns with their core values and beliefs. The fear of physical distances hindering the development of company culture is amiss. Smart digital workplace solutions come equipped with the right communication and collaboration tools to keep your employees engaged at work and involved in team-building activities to enrich their experiences. Decision-makers must implement an employee-first culture to nurture their remote teams. 

2. Fear that employee well-being might be at risk 

Digital workplace solutions enable employees to seamlessly access data vital to their business operations. Increased levels of communication and collaboration might lead to your employees being bombarded with an overload of information that they may fail to disseminate, leading to higher levels of work stress and burnout. This will adversely affect your employees’ well-being. This problem can be resolved by choosing a smart digital workplace solution with custom capabilities to integrate the right tools to suit your business. InfinCE is a smart digital workplace solution that ensures the right data reaches relevant people through its highly customizable smart features. You needn’t settle for a one-size-fits-all kind of digital workplace solution anymore! You can use custom dashboards to simplify your employee data analytics and streamline the management of your information assets. Custom dashboards help analyze performances through smart people analytics and use it to manage and assign tasks to optimize your manpower.   

Tips to Reimagine the Well-being of a Hybrid Remote Workforce  

1. Hybrid working model helps make human connections 

A fully remote workforce might miss the human connections and relationships they once enjoyed at their on-site workplaces. Hybrid work would allow your teams to meet at their physical office premises periodically and enjoy casual, personal interactions with their peers like they once did. This will help eliminate the feeling of disconnect that fully remote employees might feel. 

2. Implement hybrid work as a strategy and train leaders to manage new work schedules

Business leaders and managers need to be trained to leverage cloud technologies to manage their hybrid workforce and track their work effectively so that their teams remain engaged and productive. They should be empathetic to the needs of their employees.

3. Integrate smart tools to streamline communication 

Digital workplace solutions come equipped with an array of smart tools to facilitate file sharing, virtual meetings, chatbots, etc., to enable seamless communication among your diverse teams. The right sets of tools ensure that data remains transparent and silos are broken while ensuring the communication remains relevant. 

4. Make employee wellness programs an essential part of your business strategy 

HR teams must plan workshops and programs to help employees destress and unwind. These could include classes on meditation, stress management, fitness challenges, etc. Employee wellness programs help boost employee loyalty and reduce attrition. 

5. Build digital fluency

Digital fluency is critical to improving revenues. Companies must adopt digital working solutions tailor-made to suit their business. Technology is vital to help your remote teams stay connected in a physically disconnected work scenario.

Read more: 6 Ways to Improve Engagement of Your Digital Employees

Summing up

Creating opportunities that optimize communication and cater to the mental well-being of your employees is thus vital for business growth. You must maintain transparency in your communication to build a culture of trust among your hybrid working teams. Hence, you must adopt the right kind of tools and applications to help your business remain agile to meet its ever-changing needs. This is where a smart digital workplace solution like InfinCE comes in handy. 

InfinCE is a feature-rich digital platform that can help you manage your hybrid workforce through its,

• Custom dashboards that enable smarter data analysis and improve business efficiency by tracking the progress of projects in real-time
• Varied collaboration apps that enable seamless communication among your dispersed teams through a comprehensive employee directory; live individual and group chats; and individual/group audio/video calls
• Curated marketplace that includes a multitude of applications to suit any business or industry 
• A suite of productivity apps that includes online office tools, business email, and secure file sharing to enable faster and smarter execution of tasks
• Seamless IT infrastructure management from a single place to enable better visibility and much more!

Get in touch with our experts or experience a live demo to know how InfinCE can be an asset to your digitization endeavors.   

Today’s workforce is witnessing a massive shift in culture. The pandemic disrupted the workforce in every way. We may be inching back to normalcy, but many companies still work remotely, and remote work seems to become a permanent fixture. It also has benefits, including giving companies access to talent pools across locations.  

This Gartner report published in 2022 finds that a company will risk losing up to 39% of its workforce if it returns to a full on-site arrangement. Even an office setting involves collaboration and communication with employees from other time zones and office locations. The hybrid work culture has led employees to witness better physical and mental well-being, indicating that companies need to evolve with the changing workforce and embrace this new reality.   

This increases the need for a new work model that values employee connection, team building, and collaboration. The role of a manager is changing too. Managers should invest in the right tools and team workflow technologies to ensure teams are connected, whether remote or hybrid. Collaborative notes, shared documents, and tools to monitor response times and communication standards will ensure that all team members are on the same page. Companies should focus on consistent communication and a purposeful agenda to make the best of hybrid and remote work cultures.  

With all its advantages, managing a remote workforce is not easy. According to this Harvard survey, remote workers often feel lonely and disconnected. This proves that keeping remote workers connected is more important than ever. Companies must use employee experience software and digital workplace solutions to keep their remote workforce invested in the work. Here are some ways in which you can keep remote teams connected. 

Read more: 6 Ways to Improve Engagement of Your Digital Employees

1. Use the Right Communication Tools

Streamlined communication is the key to keeping remote workers connected. In fact, ineffective communication can negatively impact your productivity and team morale. Most teams face problems when they choose the wrong messaging apps to solve complex problems. When handling high-priority projects, for example, teams must use apps that give complete information exchanges and team interactions. Companies should not leave employees struggling with perception and communication gaps. Look for digital workplace solutions that offer multiple communication tools to meet different requirements, all in a unified platform. 

Channel selection also plays a role in effective team communication. Companies should use high-bandwidth and synchronous, face-to-face channels like video conferencing for complex projects, tasks, and exchanges. Similarly, they can use low-bandwidth and asynchronous channels like email or apps for simple and linear tasks and interactions. 

Another crucial piece of the puzzle regarding communication among remote team members is the need for a comprehensive workplace chat app. This is different from virtual meetings and video interactions or calls.  

2. Invest in the Best Collaboration Tools

A common problem in a remotely functioning team is that when using different collaboration apps like Zoom, Slack, Google Hangouts, and Spreadsheets, switching between multiple apps becomes a huge problem. Look for a digital workplace solution that integrates different apps under one roof. 

Before companies onboard remote teams, they must choose and implement collaboration tools like video conferencing, meeting rooms, and group chats to ensure that team members can communicate instantly.  

Collaboration tools include everything from apps and video-sharing technologies to programs that let employees revise documents, share interactive presentations, and brainstorm together in real time. InfinCE, for example, ensures that companies can bring partners and clients on board for a video conference or online meeting without downloading the app and even has features like simultaneous document editing. Such features are designed specifically for remote or hybrid teams and to improve productivity significantly. 

Besides enhancing the workflow, collaboration apps capture a lot of data and insights from projects and tasks, which can be used in the future. Companies should choose digital workplace solutions that support custom app integrations to meet specific needs. For example, developers and project managers who are collaborating remotely on a project rely on cloud-based tools with task-management capabilities. This means that they need tools that let their team members merge changes, schedule meetings, update events, check member availability, coordinate better, and reduce planning time.  

Read more: 5 Tips to Improve Remote Collaboration

3. Opt for Intuitive and Visual Dashboards

Dashboards are superb information management tools that enable visual facilitation. Visual tools are great ways to help employees focus, get involved, and access information on demand. Dashboards are also great analytics tools to generate reports to drive business decisions.

A centralized dashboard is essential for collecting data from multiple sources and providing a unified workflow view. It also keeps employees engaged by sharing a snapshot of the team’s projects or the company’s performance. Dashboards are also useful for organizational communication. Senior management can set objectives that can be broken down into action items, and these actionable tasks can be attributed to overall company goals and metrics. Apart from being an excellent organizational tool, this dashboard feature makes employees feel invested in the company’s growth, and they can track the company’s achievement milestones in conjunction with their own projects and efforts. 

Some digital workplace solutions also offer dashboard tiles that further customize the dashboard experience and strengthen communication, especially with application tiles that help to visualize business data on the dashboard.

4. Use Productivity Apps and Management Tools 

Remote team workers can stay connected with the right project management tools and productivity apps. The right productivity apps are built to be intuitive and to improve the employee experience. They keep teams and projects connected and synchronized. Productivity apps also track performance and enable professional growth across the team. You can also choose productivity tools and project management software that automate workflows and save valuable time.

There are multiple productivity apps but pick a digital workplace solution that can integrate all the productivity apps of your choice. Employee disengagement is a silent killer in the remote workplace, and having an integrated remote work platform will ensure that all team members are focused on the work and believe in the team. 

There are so many other factors that keep remote teams connected. It is important to implement a good remote onboarding program. InfinCE’s collaboration platform, for instance, makes it easy for managers and administrators to onboard employees quickly, instantly assign new job roles, and address personal employee needs. Data security is another matter of concern. Opt for apps that let you share files securely and a digital workplace solution that enables you to run your enterprise on a secure private cloud location. 

According to Gartner, organizations will be forced to adopt digital solutions to support remote and hybrid work, an investment that will drive business growth like never before. Companies that don’t adapt could slip out of the race.
InfinCE offers future-proof digital workplace solutions that truly lead to cross-functional collaborations, exemplary teams, and high-value business outcomes. Book a demo today to set your company on the path to digital transformation.

Digitization of workspaces has changed how businesses operate and connect with their employees, customers, and other stakeholders. The value your geographically diverse teams gain from digitalizing your business processes is multidimensional, be it in flexible working hours, enhanced productivity, the sheer convenience of mobility and security, or the ease of efficient communication and collaboration. It has redefined how work is getting done on a global scale. 

Digitalization automates your business processes to enable your employees to communicate seamlessly through multiple collaboration tools built into your digital workplace solution. It equips your employees with the right capabilities and tools to collaborate with their remote teams to work better and keep themselves engaged on the digital platform, thus motivating them to strive more toward attaining the goals set.     

How Digitalization Keeps Your Employees Engaged?

Remote work caused employees to miss the social interactions they enjoyed with their colleagues when working in physical workplaces. Organizational silos reduce engagement, resist information sharing, and adversely affect productivity. 

Digitalization helps improve employee engagement and ease data sharing, enhancing productivity in the event. Virtual gatherings in digital workplaces make up for the face-to-face interactions in physical workplaces to a large extent. Employee engagement depicts how emotionally engaged your employees are at work. Engaged employees make it their mission to work toward business success. Forbes defines employee engagement as “the emotional commitment the employee has with the organization and its goals”. Engaged employee wants to be heard and to feel that they are valued members of the company they work for. They hate to be treated as income-generating tools but want to be part of a winning team that works towards a common goal: improving the bottom line. 

A smart digital workplace solution like InfinCE leverages cloud technologies to improve employee engagement. 

Read more: How a Unified Environment Promotes a Successful Digital Workplace

6 Ways to Enhance Employee Engagement Through InfinCE

1. Offer real-time appreciation 

Instant access to information in a connected world helps your employees achieve targets faster. Engaged employees value recognition more than their paychecks and deserve accolades for their contributions. They will likely leave the organization when their sincere efforts go unnoticed and unappreciated. Companies must acknowledge the achievements of their employees in real-time, even while working remotely. This is made possible through a digital workplace platform like InfinCE, with great scalability and ease of use. Creating custom dashboards would give explicit visibility and showcase employees’ achievements in real-time, thus motivating them to remain loyal to the company.

2. Peer-to-peer recognition

Smart companies have adopted peer-to-peer recognition to boost employee engagement on digital platforms. This works wonders in cases where your employees do not get along well with their superiors. InfinCE helps build strong support networks by recognizing peers’ efforts, thus causing your employees to feel valued and appreciated. Building a culture of recognition will help create a new attitude and outlook toward the company in the employees’ minds.     

3. Improved data security 

A smart digital workplace solution like InfinCE can secure your data through virtual private servers. Critical data will be safeguarded with stringent access controls. Other safety features like secure file sharing, password protection, and edit access services to ensure authorized access. Your employees can access data and perform tasks in a secure digital environment.

4. Use productivity tools to increase engagement

An efficient digital workplace solution, InfinCE comes equipped with an extensive suite of productivity tools to ease your day-to-day business operations. Once the platform is deployed, your employees will realize that creating documents, handling emails, scheduling events, and managing tasks have never been easier. Efficient digital platforms collaborate with online office tools to help your employees manage business data better. InfinCE has in-built capabilities to let your employees fine-tune documents through comments and simultaneous edits. 

5. Collaboration apps enable seamless communication and employee engagement   

A good digital platform comes with an extensive suite of collaboration apps to help remote employees better connect with their teams, work together to meet goals, and stay engaged. InfinCE streamlines communication while enabling seamless remote work. 

6. Conduct virtual team-building activities

Virtual team-building activities bring your geographically dispersed employees together and help them achieve goals through collaboration. You can use the digital apps on InfinCE to host virtual team-building activities like online office games, campaigns, etc., to shore up your team efforts to improve your digital employee engagement. 

Read more: Ensuring Digital Wellbeing With The Right Digital Workplace Platform!

In a scenario where remote work has become the new trend, companies need the backup of a smart digital workplace solution like InfinCE to boost their digital employee engagement. InfinCE has built-in capabilities to create custom dashboards to report your employee’s activities and recognize their achievements. The platform offers seamless IT management from one place while ensuring the safety of data rendered. It also enables seamless integration of third-party tools for communication, collaboration, and increased productivity. InfinCE has a curated marketplace of varied business apps from multiple vendors from which you can choose the apps that suit your business best. Custom apps can seamlessly integrate with the platform to make your digital transformation more productive. 

Digital technologies empower your employees to proactively involve themselves in their work with the kind of flexibility they require to manage their work from remote locations. Get in touch with our experts to know more.

Teamwork is always the underlying element for business success, now more than ever, considering today’s remote working environment. The remote work revolution has caused companies to increasingly let their employees work from home, requiring geographically diverse team members to work in unison to attain corporate goals. 

So, why is remote collaboration important? 

74% of Fortune 500 CEOs expect to reduce their office space, thanks to anywhere working. Remote work calls for seamless collaboration among teams, and the digitalization of business processes endows companies with remote work capabilities. Remote collaboration is essential because it can:

1. Increase productivity, 
2. Optimize workflow processes,
3. Strengthen team relationships,
4. Help manage projects better, and
5. Improve communication.

A robust virtual collaboration environment must be in place for remote work to be productive. Your business needs the support of a smart digital workplace solution integrated with efficient collaboration tools to enable its dispersed team members to seamlessly share data to meet goals faster. 

What are collaboration tools?

Remote collaboration tools are the different kinds of software and services that allow your geographically diverse teams to work together to meet business goals. They eliminate the limitations of geographical locations as impediments to teamwork and equip your team members with the right capabilities to work in conjunction with each other to complete projects. You need a suite of various collaboration tools integrated into your digital workplace platform because they bring diverse benefits to the table.  

Read more: How A Collaboration Software Can Improve Productivity

A Few Benefits of Remote Collaboration  

1) Increases productivity   

Productivity is vital to increasing profits and efficiency. A productive workforce is a key to sustained business growth. Your remote employees have more time saved by eliminating unnecessary commutes, which can be effectively used to complete tasks faster. Likewise, virtual meetings consume less time than face-to-face meetings. In short, remote work helps your employees save a lot of time which they can productively use to complete their work faster and smarter.

2) Eases problem-solving

Collaboration enables diverse skill sets to come together to carry out tasks and address any challenges. Seamless sharing of knowledge can help resolve problems with more efficiency and address the blind spots, if any, with more ease, thus optimizing workflow processes. 

3) Allows freedom and flexibility at work     

One of the biggest boons of remote work is enabling your employees to enjoy more freedom and flexibility at work. The employees have ample time to accommodate their personal and professional lives while clocking the required work hours and completing tasks on time. This serves to ease work pressure and foster trust while leaving your employees more satisfied. 

4) Saves cost for both employers and employees  

Remote work relieves employers of the need to pay huge rentals for their office premises. Even in a hybrid environment, the physical premises of the office need to be retained only on a limited scale, thus saving huge costs which are otherwise incurred in the form of rents payable to huge commercial spaces. Remote work eliminates the costs of transportation, childcare, and work wear for employees, thus adding up to their savings. 

Thus, it is imperative for businesses to foster smart and effective collaboration among their employees to help the latter thrive in an increasingly digital working environment. Remote collaboration requires your teams to leverage technology to nurture communication among their members to work collaboratively to complete projects.    

Here are 5 Tips to Improve Remote Collaboration 

1. Set clear-cut goals and allocate tasks effectively

Your employees must be given a clear idea of the goals set. Removing uncertainty around the goals would help improve remote communication, increase productivity, and track the progress of projects. Set periodic milestones in well-defined terms, the progress of which can be tracked and displayed on custom dashboards to be viewed by the relevant persons.

2. Plan and schedule regular meetings  

Meetings should be set in a recurring pattern such that your employees get to know beforehand about it and plan their home and work life around it. Video calls and meetings, single and group chats can be done in real-time on digital platforms and made more fruitful by the data sharing feature of digital workplace solutions.

3. Set boundaries for communication 

Timelines should be set for communication which the teams should strictly follow to avoid false assumptions and misconceptions that could adversely affect team relationships and dynamics. Respecting the timeline for communication is important because the line between personal and professional lives blurs when working remotely and because diverse teams would be working in different time zones. The importance of the matter to be conveyed merits the type of communication that needs to be used, like email, instant messaging, phone calls, etc.

4. Create a collaborative environment by setting up multiple communication channels 

A torrential flow of data through a single channel of communication can cause the information to get lost and people to disconnect. Your teams need a digital platform that streamlines communication by dedicating separate discussion channels for separate tasks such that the right set of data reaches only the relevant personnel. Smart digital workplace platforms offer a multitude of avenues for effective communication among teams, like email, audio calls, one-on-one, and group video calls, individual and group chats, etc. 

5. Create custom dashboards for smarter data analysis 

Creating a custom dashboard on your digital workplace platform is the smartest way to track the progress of your projects. A smart, personalized dashboard simplifies data analysis and displays the right sets of metrics to the relevant people, thus giving transparency to the progress of tasks. Your employees get to stay on top of company updates and seamlessly share data through standard and custom tiles on custom dashboards designed exclusively to meet your unique business needs. 

Read more: How Can Organizations Profit More from Collaboration Software?

Effective remote collaboration thus improves productivity and builds healthy relationships among your employees while keeping them engaged at work. Businesses must embrace smart digital workplace solutions to make them future-ready and create a smart digital working environment for their remote employees. The challenges of cloud technologies are ever-evolving, and so are your business needs. A smart digital workplace solution like InfinCE would be your best buddy to promote smarter collaboration among your dispersed teams because:  

1. Its feature-packed collaboration apps affect smarter and streamlined communication among your teams. 
2. The employee directory on the platform lists all details of your internal and external contacts, allowing you to initiate a call, chat, or email directly from the directory.
3.  You can choose the right collaboration application from our extensive collaboration suite to help your employees connect better with remote team members and work together to meet goals.  
4. Individual and group chats can be made more meaningful through seamless and secure sharing of files.
5. Build trusted relationships through the multiple communication apps integrated with the platform.
6. Leverage centralized data using custom tiles on multiple dashboards.

InfinCE is the one-stop digital workplace solution that can make your business future-ready with infinite scaling-up capabilities to meet the ever-evolving challenges of the digital ecosystem. Get in touch with our experts to know more.