Goals of increased employee productivity and cost savings are a no-brainer in today’s digitally transformed business landscape. As Rodney Zimmel from McKinsey Digital observes, the whole point of digital transformation isn’t exactly to become digital. It’s actually to drive value for the business. And that value comes from understanding clearly how to move from a physical workspace to a hybrid or a digital workplace platform. 

Embracing a digital workplace is crucial for businesses looking to increase productivity, enhance collaboration, and reduce costs. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a key accelerator of the perceptive shift to the digital workplace.

Read More: The Definitive Guide to Perfect Digital Workplace Solution

In this blog, we’ll discuss the 8 key considerations you need to make while you make the much needed transition to a digital workplace. From the benefits to caution areas, to potential pitfalls – we have the rundown.

1. The Covid-19 pandemic as a watershed movement: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for businesses to shift to a digital workplace, leading to improved efficiencies, cost savings, and a more agile workforce. According to a study by PwC, companies that adopt digital workplace technology experience a 67% increase in productivity. Additionally, Gartner estimates that the digital workplace market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.6% from 2020 to 2027, reaching $45.7 billion by 2027. Deloitte reports that businesses can save up to $11,000 per employee annually by adopting a digital workplace platform. With the rise of automation and artificial intelligence, businesses need to embrace digital transformation and stay ahead of competition. Failure to do so could result in a loss of market share and diminished profitability.
2. Investment in tools and technologies: To enable a successful digital workplace, businesses must invest in the right tools and technologies. This includes video conferencing, instant messaging, project management software, cloud storage, and more. These tools enable employees to communicate and collaborate, regardless of their location or time zone. Additionally, digital workplace tools and technologies offer companies the opportunity to enhance the employee experience, leading to better retention rates and improved employee satisfaction. Access to online training and development programs, as well as digital resources and tools for wellbeing, help employees to feel valued and supported by their employers. A case in point is Accenture, which has implemented a platform called “Collaboration 2.0.” This platform offers employees a range of tools and services to simplify and enhance collaboration and communication, including instant messaging, video conferencing, and document-sharing capabilities. Accenture has reported increased productivity and employee engagement as a result of Collaboration 2.0.
3. The need for continuous upskilling and training: As businesses shift to digital workplaces, it’s essential to upskill and train employees to use the latest technologies effectively. This can be done through online training, workshops, and mentorship programs. Upskilling employees can also boost morale and improve job satisfaction as employees feel valued and equipped with the skills to succeed in a digital workplace. A key example to highlight this is AT&T, which created a Future Ready Employee initiative aimed at providing ongoing upskilling and reskilling to workers while providing them with new career development paths. As a result, they have improved employee retention by 14% and accelerated digital transformation.
4. Cybersecurity as a crucial tenet: As businesses shift to a digital workplace, cybersecurity becomes a crucial consideration. Cyber threats such as phishing, ransomware, and malware can wreak havoc on a business’s operations, leading to data loss and financial losses. To maintain business continuity, it is important to stay wary of cyber attacks that can bring business operations to a complete halt, causing a loss in productivity and revenue.  Educating employees on cybersecurity best practices and investing in strong cybersecurity measures, such as password management and two-factor authentication, is critical in mitigating these risks.
5. Remote work as a key cost-effective driver: Remote work has become increasingly popular in recent years, with the pandemic intensifying the trend. Remote work offers many benefits, such as cost savings and increased productivity. However, managing a remote team can be challenging, requiring strong communication and collaboration tools and a clear structure for managing tasks and deadlines.
6. Change management: Shifting to a digital workplace requires a shift in thinking and behavior, which can be challenging for some employees. Change management is critical in managing resistance to change and ensuring a smooth transition. This involves involving employees in the process and providing them with the support and training necessary to adapt to the new reality. Training employees to get up to speed with the latest tools and technologies is key to successful implementation of a digital workplace platform. The risk of working in silos is also cut to a great degree if there is a cohesive change management plan that drives key resources toward a co
7. Generative AI and the future of work: The future of work is set to be increasingly digital, with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality playing a significant role. Businesses must continue to invest in digital tools and technologies to remain competitive and harness the potential benefits these technologies offer.
8. Processes and best practices: To successfully shift to a digital workplace, businesses must adopt best practices. This includes creating a digital transformation roadmap and involving employees in the process.
   1. Create a clear digital transformation roadmap: Develop a clear roadmap that outlines your goals, timeline, process, and milestones. This will ensure that everyone in your organization understands the direction of the digital transformation.
   2. Involve employees in the process: Employees are key stakeholders in the transformation process, and their involvement is crucial for the success of the project. Get them involved in brainstorming sessions, focus groups, testing, and feedback.
   3. Secure buy-in from leadership: Secure the buy-in from senior leadership to ensure that the transformation receives the necessary resources and support. This will demonstrate the importance of the project and its impact on the organization’s growth.
   4. Evaluate and choose the right digital tools and platforms: Carefully choose the digital tools and platforms that fit your organization’s needs and culture. Ensure that the tools provide the required features and functionality to achieve your goals.
   5. Train and support employees: Ensure that your employees have appropriate training and support throughout the transformation process. Provide training for new tools and processes to improve their adoption and comprehension.
   6. Measure the success of the transition: Regularly review the progress of the transformation using metrics that are relevant to your goals. Assess the results and adjust plans where necessary to achieve intended outcomes.
   7. Ensure data security and privacy: Implement appropriate data security measures to protect data and comply with applicable laws and regulations.
   8. Simplify processes and eliminate redundancies: Use the transformation to simplify processes and eliminate redundancies. This will optimize the use of resources and reduce costs.
   9. Foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement: Encourage innovation and continuous improvement in your organization by creating a culture that promotes creativity, experimentation, and learning.
   10. Communicate effectively: Communicate the transformation plans and progress consistently and openly with all stakeholders, partners, and employees. This will ensure that everyone is aware of the efforts and the benefits of the transformation.

In addition to this, the implementation of best practices needs to be reviewed to get a tangible measure of success. Therefore, defining key performance indicators against very specific goals is crucial in ensuring the transition is successful.

Read more: Role of a Digital Workplace Platform in Hybrid Workplace

In conclusion, the shift to a digital workplace is essential for any business looking to remain competitive in an increasingly digital world. The benefits of enhanced collaboration, increased productivity, and cost savings are significant, but the transition requires careful planning, investment in the right tools and technologies, and upskilling and training employees. 

To know more about how InfinCE can take your business to new heights, connect with our experts today!

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!

Technology has, over the years, changed the way businesses operate, and the pandemic has fast-tracked the digitization of businesses. COVID-19 induced uncertainties pave the way for increased adoption of digital workplace solutions to prevent any possible disruption to workflows. Digital workplace software is the right platform your business needs to smoothen its digital journey as part of your efforts to scale up the capabilities and efficiency of your internal business operations.   

The concept of a digital workplace stems from the idea that there is a virtual equivalent to a conventional physical workplace that needs to be planned and managed efficiently with the right kind of tools and technologies for higher employee productivity, engagement, and experience. A Hewlett Packard article defines a digital workplace as a “virtualized form of the traditional in-person office environment, where many elements of collaboration and productivity are performed through some combination of digital applications, cloud computing, and other technology”.

A digital workplace goes beyond the physical confines of a traditional workplace to offer your business a digital ecosystem powered by cloud technologies for its day-to-day activities. It facilitates seamless data sharing and collaboration among your employees across multiple geographies in a connected environment. “The Digital Workplace enables new, more effective ways of working; raises employee engagement and agility, and exploits consumer-oriented styles and technologies,” says Gartner.

A digital workplace solution offers a single integrated platform with capabilities to enable your employees to seamlessly access all the data, software, and other related tools to perform their work, irrespective of their physical location or device. When you move part or whole of the internal operations of your business to a digital workplace, your employees get empowered by the right sets of tools to improve their efficiency at the workplace. Embracing digitization is a testimony to a change in the working mindset and culture of your organization. 

Read more: Merits and Demerits of Digital Workplaces – A Sneak Peak

So how do digital workplace tools help your digital workplace employees improve their efficiency? A good digital workplace solution like InfinCE is armed with services and capabilities across multiple dimensions of your business operations to ease seamless integration. Here is how :

1. Improves internal communication and collaboration.

Effective communication is crucial to business growth. A good digital workplace platform comes equipped with the right communication tools to help your digital workplace employees stay connected with peers and higher-ups all the time. InfinCE has an array of feature-packed collaboration apps for faster, smarter, and streamlined communication. Its office tools enable faster sharing and secure storage of documents and bring your geographically dispersed teams together no matter which corner of the earth they work from.

The centralized storage of data saves a large volume of human efforts and working hours; erstwhile used to be spent in search of information during the pre-adoption period. The comprehensive employee directory in InfinCE will fetch contact details of your internal staff as well as external partners with whom you can initiate a chat, call, or email depending on their online presence status. InfinCE also enables real-time active individual and group chats among your employees. The provision for shareable invite links helps you have video chats with your employees and clients without needing to download the InfinCE app. Setting up video meetings has never been easier! Multiple screen share and simultaneous document editing render your online meetings and presentations to be more effective and interactive.

2. Improves employee experience, engagement, and productivity.

A digital workplace platform offers your employees the relevant tools and technologies at their fingertips to give proactive feedback on their employee experiences. This boosts digital employee experience and serves as a motivational factor for increased levels of engagement and productivity on their part. An engaged workforce will always direct their efforts toward meeting the business goals set, thus actively contributing to your business’s growth. As already said, technology helps save time which can be productively used to accomplish business growth. In addition, the interactive tools in InfinCE help build stronger and trusted relationships with your employees and clients on the secure servers of the platform. 

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

3. Brings multiple applications to the table. 

Your business needs multiple applications to run its day-to-day operations. Digital workplace solutions make sure all the applications required for your business operations are available on their platforms. InfinCE provides a curated applications marketplace with an ever-growing library of applications from multiple vendors, including CRM, CMS, and HRM solutions hosted on secure cloud environments and dedicated to serving your business needs. 

4. Boosts workforce agility.

A company’s ability to move its employees to support changes in the highly volatile business environments defines its workforce agility. A digital workplace software solution endows your employees with the capabilities to be productive anytime, anywhere as long as they have internet connectivity. They ensure the internal operations of your business remain uninterrupted in a connected world. Besides, they get to be trained in new skills in tune with the change in customer demands and software updates.

Digital workplace tools have the capabilities to document employee experiences which can be curated and shared among the present and future employees to choose the practices that best suit your business needs. InfinCE offers an array of smart productivity apps that ensure the smooth functioning of your day-to-day business activities and raises your workforce efficiency. We have a dedicated and skilled team to manage the hosting, maintenance, and updates of our digital workplace software to keep your digital workplace employees abreast of the ever-evolving practices and smart technologies in the digital landscape.  

Thus the best digital workplace solutions have the tools and capabilities to increase your employee experience, engagement, and productivity to motivate them to put in their best efforts to improve the bottom line of your business. The digital workplace benefits are plenty and are good enough reasons for non-adopters to embrace it. However, companies should strategically analyze their work environment and business needs before adopting the best digital workplace solution that caters to their requirements. 

Watch: How InfinCE makes work management simpler and efficient from anywhere!

InfinCE is empowered by a wide range of tools and capabilities to provide your business with a tailor-made digital workplace solution to give your internal customers – your employees – an integrated experience sans back-end complexity. 

Gone are the days when work meant a place where employees went to earn their livelihood. Instead, Digital technologies and remote work culture have redefined work as something that goes to the employees on their preferred devices at their geographical location. InfinCE has the right sets of digital workplace tools to synergize with your employees to make your digital transformation journey meaningful.

For more guidance about our digital workplace platform, feel free to contact our experts.

InfinCE Digital Workplace Platform Resolves The Persistent Challenges in Remote Work

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed organizations worldwide to adopt remote work culture to keep their business afloat. This calls for implementing a reliable digital workplace strategy and choosing the right digital workplace solution. 

Adopting a digital workplace strategy and managing remote teams can bring many advantages to your company. Researchers say that businesses that adopt the right digital workplace platform experience fewer interruptions and improved productivity. A fine-tuned and established remote work culture allows employees to stay connected with their families while managing their work roles with increased focus. It also helps them stay safe and healthy by avoiding physical contact. 

Read more: Why InfinCE is The Only True Digital Workplace Orchestration Platform Ever Created

According to a study by Time Stylers, employees save more time when working from home. Remote working also allows them to avoid the stress of the daily commute and work-life balance issues, leading to higher levels of job satisfaction. “The business case for remote working is hard to challenge when it comes to productivity with various studies finding employees are up to 65% more productive when working from home than in traditional workplaces,” their report said. However, going with the digital workplace approach is not devoid of its challenges either.

What are the common digital workplace challenges?

While improved employee productivity and better retention rates benefit employers, they also need to choose the “right” digital workplace software to address the universal challenges of managing remote teams. Dr. Ted Sun, President and CIO at Transcontinental University, Ohio, says that “As long as leaders have solid systems to monitor productivity, which some are struggling with, managers can focus and develop the productivity of their workforce – getting them closer to end results instead of the blind assumption that time equates to results.” Having a reliable digital workplace platform is more crucial for the success of remote teams than what many leaders presume. 

Here are five common challenges in a digital workplace, which can be resolved effectively by InfinCE, the all-in-one digital workplace software.

Read more: 5 Features of InfinCE that will Transform The Way You Work

Challenge #1. Uncertain employee engagement levels

Although working from home allows employees to spend more time with their loved ones, most people were not used to working from home full-time before the COVID-19 outbreak. This has led to working longer hours and burnouts and a poor work-life balance for many first-time remote workers. The monotonous nature of remote work also contributed to lower morale and disengagement. Therefore, business leaders need to ensure the best employee engagement and interaction to ensure that no such emotional challenges affect their overall productivity.

With InfinCE all-in-one digital workplace platform, managers and employees can collaborate on the projects more actively and streamline their interactions via numerous communication features provided by InfinCE. 

Imagine attending an “after-office” virtual party using the InfinCE video meeting! It will boost your employee morale and add to the employee experience.

Read more: How Successful Leaders Engage Employees Using Modern Business Communication Tools like InfinCE

Challenge #2: One size doesn’t fit all

The sudden push to adopt remote workplace culture led many companies to look for the “easiest” digital workplace platform during the pandemic. Various surveys reveal that the standalone digital workplace solutions have disappointed employees as they weren’t receiving a productive workplace solution that fits their work, habits, and preferences.  

It is vital to take a more personalized approach when setting up the digital workplace so that remote teams can be more effective in managing their job roles. With the InfinCE all-in-one digital workplace solution, leaders can fine-tune what features they need in the system to support their workplace needs, which can go a long way to ensure business success and employee satisfaction.

Read more: An 8-Point Checklist to Enhance The Modern-Day Digital Workplace 

Challenge #3: Technology and data slump

For most leaders who are new to remote work culture, adopting as many collaboration and engagement tools as possible seems to be the solution for managing a digital workplace. However, juggling multiple work management solutions for assigning tasks, tracking project progress, recording time, sharing and accessing files, and more, can do more harm than any good. Working with too many collaboration tools can lead to end-user confusion, decreased focus, and inefficiencies.

As disparate digital workplace software applications can also create a lack of visibility into what is going on with the different projects, it will create chaos across the entire organization. But InfinCE saves you from managing multiple technologies and platforms as it is an all-in-one digital workplace solution. InfinCE offers the essential IT and technology support needed to start and run a business. It’s one platform with unlimited possibilities. 

InfinCE equips your workforce with all the essential tools to virtually collaborate and manage critical business functions just as in a physical office space. It’s fast to set up, easy to use, and brings down your operating costs. InfinCE securely runs on employee-owned devices without expensive add-ons, such as VDI equipment or mobile device security software, saving thousands in capital expense.

While employers can manage their remote teams easily, employees have everything they need to perform their jobs adeptly in one place. 

Read more: How IT Teams Can Prepare to Support Remote Workforce During COVID-19

Challenge #4: Budget constraints

IT spending has always been a core concern for management and leadership. The mandatory transition to remote work only increases this. Controlling budgets gets even crazier as businesses cannot keep away from investing in advanced digital workplace solutions. Small, medium, or large, an enterprise that wants to thrive in the New Normal must embrace a robust digital workplace solution. When it comes to budget planning in times of a pandemic, digital workplace adoption is a primary item in the CFO’s plan. 

As per a Gartner study, “Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.8 trillion in 2021, an increase of 4% from 2020.” Yet that does not mean investing blindly in technology and hoping that it will boost employee productivity.

Instead, finding the most effective digital workplace platform helps manage all the different aspects of remote work in an organization. At the same time, it should help maintain compliance, ensure security, and meet digital employee experience expectations. It is also vital to ensure that the remote collaboration tool can be a handy solution to create a hybrid work culture in the future.

This is where InfinCE offers tremendous business value for business owners and employees.

InfinCE digital workplace platform is built to:  

• simplify how businesses get the software and related support 
• help businesses lower their IT-related costs

Business owners don’t have time to learn about digital tools or manage them, and they don’t have money to waste. InfinCE gives them high-value technology options that are intuitive and affordable. By building upon the latest developments in the cloud and incorporating available open-source software, InfinCE has pulled together the things a small business needs, right from a secure, modern IT infrastructure to a company website and mail server to fully-featured enterprise software and desktop tools. 

White Paper: The Business Value of InfinCE for Business Owners and Employees. Click here to download.

Challenge #5: Organizational silos

Organizational silos have always been a challenge for organizations worldwide, with many big enterprises even having to deal with fragmented teams and processes. When managing a highly distributed workforce, leaders must communicate their teams’ goals and expectations to build confidence and ensure a unified remote work culture. As with any other new business approach, proper planning and execution matter the most when advancing with a digital workplace strategy.

Read more: 3 Actionable Steps for CIOs to Drive Post-COVID Work Experience

A standard rule of thumb is to ensure that the digital workplace platform helps break down silos and build rapport. Even when located in different parts of the world, video communication and virtual conferences enhance your credibility among your customers and employees. Robust communication and collaboration channels add strategic value to the business while also instilling innovation and motivating employees to perform to their best levels.

Move to a full-fledged digital workplace with InfinCE

As the world is reopening post-COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are trying to build a flexible and hybrid workplace culture that merges remote work with physical workplace norms. Therefore, the choice of the right digital workplace software also matters to define how it can cater to the company’s future needs in creating a successful and empowering workplace.

Read more: 5 Features of InfinCE that will Transform The Way You Work

InfinCE offers everything a real enterprise cloud application has – affordable, feature-loaded, and secure. InfinCE is a popular choice among companies that seek cloud offerings because it features an integrated private cloud that combines everything a business needs in one place, from communications and collaboration tools to IT management options. Get started with InfinCE today by talking to an expert. 

InfinCE: A Digital Workplace Orchestration Platform to Set Your Business Quick & Smart!

Most organizations begin their drive to adopt digital transformation by adopting a digital workplace approach. However, leaders are often confused about how to proceed with building a flexible remote work culture. While choosing a digital workplace solution seems to be the right way to go about it, most businesses find all such tools the same, which is never the case. Instead, you need to go for the best digital workplace orchestration platform to ensure that your digital workplace thrives and your employees can perform to their best potential.

Choosing InfinCE to drive scalability in your digital workplace

Why InfinCE digital workplace orchestration platform?

There is no one-size-fits-all digital workplace tool, even though some claim to be. It is crucial to find a digital workplace solution that can be personalized and customized according to your company’s needs and requirements. Likewise, the digital workplace orchestration platform you choose should be easy to integrate within your organizational processes. Adopting the digital work culture should not disrupt your existing workflow; instead, augment it for better results. This is where InfinCE makes a difference. 

InfinCE allows you to quickly deploy and manage software and solutions from other vendors and SaaS providers to build a flexible and scalable digital workplace. With InfinCE, you can directly control your business infrastructure capabilities and costs, which is vital to creating a thriving digital workplace culture. In other words, when you manage your digital workplace using InfinCE, you can empower your remote teams with all the tools and technology they need to perform their job roles effectively. This, in turn, ensures a smooth workflow and drives improved output.

All these advantages make InfinCE the only true digital workplace orchestration platform ever built. 

White Paper: InfinCE digital workplace orchestration platform helps organizations implement an entirely new working environment and accurately replicate their employees’ changing work experience. How does InfinCE transform the workplace and add value to business owners and employees? Download our free white paper.

Key benefits of choosing InfinCE

• A unified dashboard for seamless management
• Work from anywhere and stay connected to the business network all the time
• Access critical files and documents on any connected device using authorized single sign-on credentials
• Have one-on-one or group meetings on desktop PCs or mobile devices
• Schedule audio or video conferences or use the instant messaging feature for communication
• Quickly deploy required tools and solutions as and when needed
• Quick implementation and simple user onboarding
• Choose from SaaS or off-the-shelf software vendors as required 
• Monitor project progress and track employee performance and more

With all these features and a host of ready-to-use business apps, cloud servers, and technical services, InfinCE is much more than your digital workplace solution. Instead, it is a complete business suite that empowers you to benefit from the tools and technology you need to ensure optimum business efficiency, productivity, and growth. 

Read more: 5 Features of InfinCE that will Transform The Way You Work

InfinCE is the most advanced cloud platform ever built. With a few clicks, you will open up a new world for your organization to start orchestrating all your digital assets and unlimited possibilities to build your cloud. 

How InfinCE solves the most pressing digital workplace challenges?

Tracking metrics has been one of the key challenges for businesses for ages and applies to the digital workplace. With the customizable dashboards in InfinCE, you can stay updated about all business metrics, company events, projects, policies, and announcements. Besides, you can also monitor servers, storage, and apps in real-time to have better visibility of the resources. 

Read more: How Successful Leaders Engage Employees Using Modern Business Communication Tools like InfinCE

Here are some other pain points that can be addressed effectively by choosing InfinCE.

1. Solving remote work management challenges

Adopting a digital workplace culture means much more than allowing your employees to work from their homes or accessing files and documents online. While it is an essential part of the digital work culture, that is not all. Your remote teams should also collaborate on various aspects of a project from any location and at any time. As using outdated technology cannot meet those requirements, InfinCE employs cloud technology to ensure that your remote teams remain connected and collaborate with others as needed. 

InfinCE is the world’s first-ever cloud platform that has created the next level of abstraction for computing. You can configure everything on the cloud with a few clicks. In short, InfinCE is cloud simplified!

2. Overcoming technology confusion

Using multiple collaboration and team management tools creates confusion and inefficiencies. For instance, using an instant messaging app for communication and different software for sensitive data sharing can lead to poor collaboration and affect employee productivity. Moreover, multiple toolsets can also create a lack of visibility into the project’s progress and lead to disorienting results. 

With InfinCE, you will get a single unified workplace orchestration platform to handle all the communication, collaboration, and team management requirements.

Read more: Why Switch to a Modern Intranet Software Solution Like InfinCE

3. Saving the organization from overspending

When you subscribe to multiple software and tools for getting all the essential features to your business, the final costs can go way beyond the planned budget for digital transformation. InfinCE digital workplace orchestration platform enables you to subscribe to a host of third-party applications needed to manage your business efficiently. You don’t need to memorize multiple login credentials. With InfinCE’s single sign-on, you can access numerous applications and tools at one go. It reduces your subscription costs and licensing fees that usually take an extra toll on your budget. 

InfinCE also allows you to scale your resources as needed to build a flexible and hybrid remote work culture as per your company requirements.

4. Addressing productivity issues

Implementing a digital workplace culture can lead to serious productivity issues if your employees find using the new interface and applications difficult. InfinCE offers a unified user experience to address that with a single sign-on for accessing the integrated business software, collaboration apps, cloud servers, and necessary technical services. Apart from making it easier for employees to get started with the digital solution, InfinCE enables a seamless migration of your existing processes to the new platform.

Read more: 5 Ways an Integrated Cloud Platform is Beneficial for Your Small Business

Your employees can access all the productivity apps they need via InfinCE, including email, instant messaging, calendar, video meeting, one-on-call, custom dashboards for teams and individuals, online Office tools (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), screen sharing, file sharing, database, and so on. 

5. Ensuring data security

A core component of adopting a digital workplace strategy is to move crucial business data to the cloud so that the relevant teams can access it easily. However, the growth rates of cybercrimes and data breaches these days have made data security very challenging for legacy standalone business apps. InfinCE keeps your files and data securely in its virtual private servers with advanced firewalls and access controls to address the concerns. This helps thwart cyberattacks in real-time while ensuring seamless access of the data for the authorized users.

Read more: 5 Ways Virtual Private Servers Make a Difference to Your Business’s Digital Future

InfinCE also gives you access to 24/7 concierge support to take care of any technology glitches in the digital workplace suite to minimize downtime. You can also organize end-user security awareness programs by consulting with the support team to help your employees understand the importance of data security and guide them on the best practices to follow when using the digital workplace orchestration platform on their personal devices.

Modernize your business by adopting InfinCE digital workplace orchestration platform

There is no arguing that InfinCE makes migrating to a digital workplace culture simpler and efficient. Even if you have many legacy applications that you do not want to abandon totally, you can adopt the digital workplace culture by integrating the essential ones with InfinCE. If that seems tricky, you can always upgrade or replace those legacy applications easily with InfinCE’s technical support.

Today’s competitive industry requires innovative digital workplace solutions, which allow you to control the costs and simplify administration and make team management seamless. You get all that with InfinCE, the only authentic and holistic digital workplace orchestration platform. 

Please chat with our expert to understand why InfinCE is the best fit for your business. 

How Can CIOs Contribute Toward Sustainable Work From Home Experience

As the world tries to wipe out the pandemic, businesses are looking to adopt a more flexible work culture that can accommodate various working requirements. We are in a remote working era that undoubtedly increases the significance of CIOs and IT teams. CIOs now have the responsibility to create a work environment that caters to the agile work models of their employees while ensuring the best work from home experience.

Gartner recently released a report on how CIOs should “embrace radical flexibility” to deliver great remote work experience in the post-COVID world. According to the report, “CIOs need to create a post-COVID-19 work environment that supports radical flexibility for the evolving IT workforce. CIOs must now consider and plan for the purpose and structure of the emerging work environment for the IT organization and workforce.” 

Here is a quick look at the actionable steps CIOs can take to meet the varying employee and employer needs and expectations.

1. Building a robust remote work culture

Most leaders are used to managing people at the office or primary work location, but they often feel uncomfortable when it comes to managing remote teams. More trouble arises when legacy systems and remote work policies cannot address the changing needs for working from a different location or not being scalable to meet the evolving demands. Therefore, to create a sustainable work from home experience, CIOs need to adopt flexible work patterns and the right tools to manage remote teams.

Read more: 3 Ways a Workplace App Helps Manage Your Business During COVID-19 

Gartner recommends that it is important to survey managers and workers about workplace expectations, preferences, requirements, and limitations. It will help employers determine their employees’ work location preferences to create a flexible post-COVID-19 work environment. At the same time, it is also essential to communicate all the changes, work expectations, and deadlines to the relevant team members using a unified platform. This is where an all-in-one work management solution like InfinCE can be of great help.

InfinCE is a modern, innovative digital workplace orchestration platform that helps you manage every aspect of your business, including:

• workplace collaboration
• project management
• communication (video, audio, chat, email, video meetings, etc.)
• ERP, CRM, finance, accounting, and a host of day-to-day workplace activities 

When you have InfinCE adapted to your workplace, you can easily integrate it into your existing applications. You can also choose to adopt a wide range of leading, open-source third-party applications supported by the InfinCE app marketplace. InfinCE has everything to support your business – Office online tools, productivity apps (calendar, task manager, chat, email, video, and audio meetings, etc.), and a plethora of enterprise applications to manage your business from anywhere. 

Read more: How Successful Leaders Engage Employees Using Modern Business Communication Tools like InfinCE 

2. Adopting a flexible work pattern

According to a 2020 survey about the post-COVID-19 work experience by Gartner, most employees have a “clear preference and expectation of having flexibility in selecting their primary work location and in arranging their schedule.” The report also suggests that “around 80% of workers expect to continue to work from home at least three days per week”. What’s more, around 50% of employees even indicated that they would quit their jobs if they do not get a work from home option from their employers.

These stats clearly show the importance of building a work culture that embraces and delivers the right remote work experience. However, as adopting a flexible work environment can mean including new variables that were not part of the usual work culture earlier, CIOs should clearly understand the emerging work patterns before defining workforce policies.

Read more: An 8-Point Checklist to Enhance The Modern-Day Digital Workplace 

A study from Owl Labs and Global Workplace Analytics highlighted that following a hybrid work culture that combines remote work with office work can be a potential solution for most companies. “The majority of the workforce expect to work from a home office two or three days per week, with the option to attend the employer office the other days. Although this hybrid combination is emerging as the dominant pattern for the majority of workers, it only accounts for 50% to 60% of the workforce,” the report said.

This means that CIOs should understand employee needs and work patterns across different variations and make adjustments to create the right work policy for the company. Collaborating with the HR team and surveying the staff, managers, and executives can be pretty helpful here. That data can determine the different expectations of the company and employees and help CIOs develop the most flexible work policy guidelines that accommodate everything.

Download White Paper: Adapting to The Changing Face of Enterprise Collaboration

3. Communicating the expectations

Another crucial role of the CIOs in building a robust and flexible work culture is to communicate the relevant staff’s expectations appropriately. The Gartner report says that remote work has increased from around 29% before the Coronavirus pandemic to more than 75% by April 2020. The report further states that “On average, clients expect that 57% of their workforces could work entirely remotely, and 63% could work remotely at least sometimes.”

This indicates that leaders should plan for around half of their staff working from home in the post-COVID-19 era. It could either be working from home every day or a couple of days every week. No matter what, CIOs need to develop remote work policies that go beyond the traditional pre-COVID criteria and definitions. As legacy remote work policies do not have room for scheduling flexibility and guiding decisions, CIOs must adopt new work policies that address the expectations from everyone across the organization.

Nonetheless, developing a flexible work policy should not be limited to sending a signal to the staff and management about how new patterns and expectations are incorporated into the work environment. Instead, it should also focus on delivering consistency across the different functional areas of the company, especially when there is no enterprise policy in effect.

Read more: 7 Ways to Improve Team Collaboration in 2021

Discussing the work policy changes with the HR manager and various department leaders can help CIOs identify how the planned approach can work out to support the needs of the staff while keeping up with the management decisions. Meanwhile, CIOs should also determine how they can replace legacy practices and applications with modern solutions to benefit remote work experience. The new remote work solution should also support the growing needs of the company. Likewise, CIOs should figure out the contractual obligations and regulatory requirements before implementing the remote work policy.

Read more: 5 Best Practices To Enable Seamless Communication For Your Remote Workforce 

Looking forward

CIOs also need to realize what types of interactions or meetings are common in the remote workplace and find the right digital workplace solution to address all their needs. You need an all-in-one team management platform that can furnish all kinds of communication needs, be it video conferences, audio calls, file sharing, and instant messaging. The platform should also help you track time and attendance, assign tasks, monitor the progress of a project, etc. CIOs need to take the appropriate actions now to support the purpose and structure of their evolving work environment.

Download White Paper: The Business Value of InfinCE for Business Owners and Employees

InfinCE is the preferred choice of many CIOs in managing virtual teams. Interested to know why? Drop us a message, and let’s help you realize a seamless workplace collaboration and project management with InfinCE. 

Managing a Remote Team Successfully During COVID-19

The remote work culture has become more than a trend today and evolved into the mainstream practice for many companies across the world. While remote working does have many advantages, it comes with quite a few challenges, especially when you have to start managing a completely remote team all of a sudden.

Read more: Best Practices to Remotely Manage Your Business During COVID-19

To effectively navigate the challenges of remote team management, you need to be aware of the significant factors that can affect job performance and level of engagement. You also need to prepare a robust strategy to ensure that everyone in your team delivers their best capability along those lines. This post covers a few tips to manage remote teams efficiently and drive success for your organization.

1. Get the right project management software

This is the most critical aspect of managing a remote team. When working across different time zones, you need to invest in a reliable digital workplace orchestration platform with excellent online communication and work management features. This will help to add more value to your remote working culture while ensuring that you have the right tools to plan tasks, manage projects, track employee performance, and do much more, all under one roof.

Read more: 5 Ways A Project Management Tool Can Help Your Business Grow

2. Schedule every day check-ins

Daily check-ins may seem tricky in a work from home scenario, but it is a vital ingredient for managers and teams new to remote work culture. An email, call, or text message is enough to check with your team and know how they are doing. However, it would be even more effective to use video conferencing to bridge the gap of face-to-face interaction. You can get all these features in an all-in-one team collaboration software, which makes daily communication so much easier for you.

3. Set your expectations right

Your company will have certain expectations for each of the employees in your team. You need to communicate those expectations clearly to your team and get their feedback on whether they align with the same. It is even more critical to reassign your team members to new tasks. Having clear targets for the work hours, availability, team meetings, and project deadlines will help ensure that everyone delivers their best performance to meet the expectations.

4. (Re)Work on your communication skills

You are going to use an online communication platform for managing your remote team. This means that you need to understand how the team management software works, its features, and how you can use it to bring value to your team. You may be familiar with using some online communication channels, but the stakes are higher when it comes to remote team collaboration. So you need to develop your writing skills and virtual meeting strategies to ensure that your team is on the same page when you work on a project.

Read more: 7 Ways to Improve Team Collaboration in 2021

5. Use video conferencing often

While telephonic and written conversations should be a part of your day-to-day team management regime, it is also necessary that you incorporate video conferencing to build rapport. This way, you can assess the body language of your employees and see how they react to a change in plans or a new assignment. It will also help you identify some non-verbal clues that indicate if something is wrong with your team members. That will, in turn, allow you to address the situation proactively before it becomes a significant problem.

Read more: 5 Workplace Innovations You Can Welcome with Video Conferencing

6. Have regular team meetings

Apart from daily check-ins, you should also schedule regular team meetings to discuss the current project and its status. It will help you assess the progress of the job at hand to meet the deadlines as expected. Moreover, regular team meetings can help brainstorm different ideas for new projects while imparting a sense of involvement to everyone in your team. You can also ensure that everyone is up-to-date and works towards realizing the company’s common goal.

7. Focus on the outcomes

It is imperative to focus on the result rather than the process to ensure the optimal engagement of your team members. At the same time, you should also evaluate the process constantly and find ways to improve it to drive better efficiency from your employees. Therefore, you need to define the goals upfront and focus on reaching the target by letting your team members develop the plan of action they feel more comfortable with and execute well.

Download White Paper: Adapting to The Changing Face of Enterprise Collaboration

8. Provide help whenever needed

To build a successful remote team, you should be able to address the requirements of all your employees whenever needed. For instance, if your team comes across an unexpected problem related to the project at hand, you should be there to clarify whatever doubts they have to minimize downtime. Here too, video calls can help you identify if your team members feel low or unmotivated to complete a task. At that point, you can pitch in and give them a helping hand to finish the job as required.

9. Encourage social interactions

Social isolation is a significant challenge in remote working. Therefore, you need to build a remote work culture that integrates informal social interactions in a traditional office setting into your online communications. From virtual weekend meet-ups to after-office casual talks, encouraging social interactions within your team will boost employee morale and engagement. You can even plan virtual pizza parties, happy hours, or employee recognition sessions for non-work-related conversations.

Read more: 5 Best Practices To Enable Seamless Communication For Your Remote Workforce

10. Mentor more, manage well

The best remote team managers prefer to be mentors who guide their teams on different aspects of their job roles rather than “managing” them. Leading by example always works, be it in a traditional office scenario or remote work culture. Make sure that you are more of a mentor and coach to your team. It may require taking new initiatives to address the challenges your team is facing, but it will be worth the effort to develop a successful remote workforce.

These are a few ways, which will help you ensure effective remote team management. As every industry is going global and digital, it is high time to adopt the right approaches and tools that make your team more efficient and gain a competitive advantage in the market.InfinCE is a digital workplace orchestration platform that allows businesses to manage their employees, projects, and operations seamlessly in a remote-first world. Request a demo to see InfinCE in action.