Thinking along
Curious
Open for change
Experiment
Eager
Flexible
Helpful
Analytical
The business
The tools
The work
The workspace
Not all are equal
The digitally savvy employee juggles all the tools necessary to work in the hybrid workplace. But tools alone are not enough! Furthermore, the digitally savvy employee feels supported by the digitally savvy organization when trying new things.
Digital first is therefore the best starting point. At the same time, organizations must not lose sight of the distinction between knowledge workers and employees in the field. Too great a gap between the two can cripple the digital dexterity of your entire organization.
(1) Source: Bloom et. al (Stanford, 2015) and Cap Gemini (2021)
They operate in the field and rarely sit at a desk. They mainly need mobile devices to stay informed, complete administrative tasks and log their activities.
Knowledge workers
Employees in the field
They combine home and office work and they mainly need (mobile) devices, all kinds of software tools and Internet access to get the job done. Research has shown that the productivity of this group can increase by 13%-24% through working from home. (1)
Digital dexterity for different types of employees
- Corporate and corona updates
- Intervention reporting
- Check and task lists
- Contact information of employees and services
- Training material
- Shift planning
- HR module (for leave and other requests)
Useful tools for employees in the field:
Not all digitally savvy
employees are equal
Beobank’s agency of the future
CUSTOMER CASE
Beobank is the first bank in Belgium to open a one-stop shop for professional customers, who can work there themselves and receive customers for meetings.
- Your applications are always up to date and your data secure by working in the Cloud.
- Make sure your employees can connect optimally and securely anywhere, via 4G (and soon 5G), via hotspots, via connections secured with VPN and more.
Anywhere
The digitally savvy employee moves smoothly between home office and corporate office (and everything in between).
The workspace
- Discover our 'Packs for Employees’. With this tax-efficient compensation alternative, you as the employer pay a portion of the cost of your employee’s private Internet subscription. Super fast internet everywhere ensures that your employees are optimally productive wherever they are.
- Additional tips for maintaining work-life balance.
- Read more about 'the smart building'.
- Get to know our SD-WAN solutions.
- Ensure security via VPN.
Find out more
Boss Paints combines telecommuting and in-kind benefits
CUSTOMER CASE
At Boss Paints, HR policy revolves around work-life balance: company restaurant, ironing service, flexible work hours and, of course, a home Internet connection.
Watch the video.
How to maintain a good work-life balance?
Put away work materials at the end of the day or push them aside, do not leave papers lying around... Make clear agreements with the people you share a home with.
Take enough breaks and do not stay glued to your screen but walk around (or go outside). Regularly ventilate the space in which you work.
Create routines; work in blocks of 1 to 2 hours; plan your breaks; plan your moments to exercise; change your workspace (a different view of the world can stimulate creativity).
Make your workspace ergonomic: place your screen at eye level, make sure you have a good sitting posture, exercise or sport.
More tips on working healthy at home.
Excellent Internet connection.
Perhaps the most important requirement to remain productive: excellent Internet connection. Home Internet is of course a must, but when several people in the house are all downloading or streaming at the same time, your connection might struggle. So provide enough robust subscriptions for your employees.
For active callers, consider a Mobile Indoor Coverage installation (to boost the mobile signal in your home) or go for Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) and call and text over the WiFi network from now on. This way, you avoid walls and insulation blocking the signals.
Via VPN (Virtual Private Network), you and your employees can access the company network remotely and securely for various applications (voice/data/video/cloud/e-payments etc.) and the interaction between employees, customers and suppliers.
At home
How to maintain a good work-life balance?
Does your business need Sdx?
What is the added value of an intelligent network for your business?
You can guarantee smooth access to applications in the cloud and on site via Software Defined Technology, SDx, a software layer on top of your network that intelligently and simply manages the traffic between locations and user devices. With SDx, you can allocate extra bandwidth to the applications that are essential to your business.
- ‘Floor Occupancy Monitoring’ allows you to track the use of available spaces (desks, meeting rooms, facilities). This makes compliance with social distancing and monitoring the cleaning of buildings a lot easier.
- ‘Comfort Monitoring’ allows you to closely monitor the temperature, humidity and carbon levels of the office to keep the well-being, comfort and health of employees optimal at all times.
At the office
Maintaining an overview of a healthy work environment becomes easier with IoT solutions.
Does your staff already book their flex space or meeting room online?
By coordinating different tools, you and your employees keep it both safe and comfortable. Smart buildings connect as many different functions as possible so people know what to expect from a distance.
At home
The office
Anywhere
Proximus has developed a chatbot for its own HR department that already provides more than 800 standardized answers. In this way, we take a lot of pressure off the first line.
YODA, the largest chatbot in the Benelux
Digital collaboration has been possible for a long time but has now become standard. But we need to start thinking about how we can evolve to a new normal. Many digital habits will be retained because they are efficient and make us more productive.
Digital collaboration
Work in the hybrid workplace is more flexible than ever, and the roles employees fill are also becoming less defined. We are evolving from function-driven work to project-driven work. That also has an impact on how leadership is done.
The work
More about Cisco Webex
More about Microsoft Teams
From now on, we will automatically hold meetings in a hybrid format. Assuming that everyone will be in the office for the next meeting is a thing of the past.
A good reflex: send conference call data along with every invite to a physical meeting.
Hybrid meetings
With Teams, project teams can manage their projects completely online. You can store all documents there, accessible to everyone involved.
Via posts, chat and call, all communication also remains transparent and available to everyone.
Teams integrates other useful apps as well, such as project software, forms, notes, document management, workflows etc.
Do all your employees automatically save all documents in the Cloud? The great advantage? Everyone automatically works on the same documents, reducing the risk of miscommunication and people working side-by-side.
In the Cloud
And what about incoming calls?
Those certainly cannot go unanswered just because employees work from home. Through Voice Managed Services (VMS), you manage the routing of your calls in the cloud while using Fixed Mobile Unification cost-effectively to integrate employee cell phones and smartphones into your PBX without additional Wi-Fi or DECT infrastructure. The company number is displayed when a call goes out, and when the phone is in private mode, no more company calls come in and the private number is displayed.
Thanks to citizen development, regular users can build new IT applications themselves, without any coding knowledge or help from specialized IT people. Many cloud systems let you combine modules to develop new applications. This way, IT departments are less burdened with questions from the business and other departments gain more ownership over their IT applications.
Curious how employees can automate work themselves through Microsoft Teams?
Automate and simplify tasks wherever possible.
TIP
Try managing your next project entirely from your collaboration software. No more emails and certainly no more attachments to send around! Everything online in the Cloud.
Find out more?
Find out how Liantis tackles this.
- Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint, but also individual and group chats, online meetings and web conferencing.
- In addition, you can integrate your telephony directly with the Teams interface.
- At the same time, you add your favorite Microsoft apps and third-party services so that all your employees always have the most complete collaboration tools at their disposal.
With Microsoft Teams and Office 365, all your employees work together digitally and interactively on the same environment in the Cloud.
Microsoft Teams and Office 365
Delivering good work is difficult without the right tools: devices and applications. In addition, the digitally savvy organization will have occasionally to show its digitally savvy employees the way through the wide range of possibilities.
The tools
Productivity applications or how to digitize as many tasks, actions and processes as possible.
- Storing documents online offers many advantages. So avoid attachments still sent by e-mail.
- Teams and Office 365 also offer a lot of project management tools. Are you already using them?
- Are all meeting reports drawn up in OneNote by default?
In the rush to switch, there was not much time to discover all the digital possibilities. It is perfectly possible that employees simply have continued to carry on working as usual way, albeit partly online. But the various collaboration suites offer a whole range of extra tools that can make hybrid working even more efficient. It can therefore be a good idea to evaluate which tools are being used and which you as an organization do or do not want to promote.
Are all your employees using the right tools?
Do not lose sight of the evolutions.
Software-as-a-Service offers the great advantage that you always have the most recent versions. But it also means that things change and the way you work can also change. Ensuring that everyone is on board requires a bit of effort.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows your employees to access the corporate network remotely and guarantees you centralized secure Internet access for sites and various applications (voice/data/video/cloud/e-payments etc.).
Obviously, you are keeping it safe.
Discover more
Find out how Krëfel call center employees were able to work fully operational from home in just one week.
CUSTOMER CASE
Bron: Gartner, februari 2019
- With laptop-as-a-service and smartphone/tablet-as-a-service, you provide your employees with the right hardware to work on while you outsource its management and maintenance. In this way, you relieve your own IT department and offer your employees the most recent devices.
- Do not forget the extras. A decent headset is indispensable for the digitally savvy employee. Depending on the function of the employee, an additional screen may be necessary.
- Also do not lose sight of ergonomics: a good office chair and having the laptop at the right height can help prevent a sore back or neck.
.
Or how to manage all devices optimally.
Embed good digital habits
Working from home en masse has brought a producitivity boost to people with office jobs. Now is the time to embed good digital habits. Do not automatically assume that the current way of digital collaboration also is the most optimal. In our rush to shift to digital, we may have overlooked some options.
Pick a quieter time to evaluate the current digital workspace and habits. Engage with your digitally savvy employees to identify potential issues and then address them. Just as the SaaS software we use keeps evolving and improving, the way we work with it can also be improved somewhat.
The hybrid workplace continues to evolve and the digitally savvy employee naturally evolves with it. But what about the business? What advantages do digitally savvy employees bring?
The business
Read more: The digitally savvy organization
“Remote working operates best when the company works with output control: as long as the work is done or the customers are satisfied, you give your employees confidence.”
Marijke Verbruggen, Professor Work and Organisation Studies, KU Leuven
Digital transformation
The speed at which new digital technologies and applications have become commonplace, both in the workspace and beyond, is unseen. It also requires your employees to remain dexterous with them. Digitally savvy organizations offer their employees the space and opportunity to experiment with digital transformation via pilot projects (‘minimal viable products’).
- Innovate processes and ways of working: are you using the right tools? Which routine tasks can be automated?
- Innovate products: do you sell products, how could you turn them into a service model?
- Innovate services: do you sell services, how could you then market them as a product?
- Innovate your strategy: how can digital solutions help you develop new business models?
The hybrid workplace offers a wealth of opportunities for innovation:
Innovation
Employees with high digital dexterity are 3.3 times more likely to initiate, complete and achieve the goals of digital transformations, compared to employees with moderate digital dexterity.
Source: Gartner, February 2019
… of employees state that during the first couple of months of the pandemic, they were able to maintain or improve their productivity. Even when it comes to tasks that require collaboration (such as exchanges with colleagues, teamwork, client interaction), 51% claim that their productivity remained the same or improved.
Source: Workplace of the Future, BCG, July 2020
… of employers confirm they will prioritize investments in digital infrastructure that embed telework in a sustainable way.
Source: Workplace of the Future, BCG, July 2020
The digitally savvy employee juggles all the tools necessary to work in the hybrid workplace. But tools alone are not enough! Furthermore, the digitally savvy employee feels supported by the digitally savvy organization when trying new things.
Digital first is therefore the best starting point. At the same time, organizations must not lose sight of the distinction between knowledge workers and employees in the field. Too great a gap between the two can cripple the digital dexterity of your entire organization.
(1) Source: Bloom et. al (Stanford, 2015) and Cap Gemini (2021)
- Corporate and corona updates
- Intervention reporting
- Check and task lists
- Contact information of employees and services
- Training material
- Shift planning
- HR module (for leave and other requests)
Useful tools for employees in the field:
They operate in the field and rarely sit at a desk. They mainly need mobile devices to stay informed, complete administrative tasks and log their activities.
Knowledge workers
Employees in the field
They combine home and office work and they mainly need (mobile) devices, all kinds of software tools and Internet access to get the job done. Research has shown that the productivity of this group can increase by 13%-24% through working from home. (1)
Digital dexterity for different types of employees
employees are equal
Not all digitally savvy
Does your staff already book their flex space or meeting room online?
By coordinating different tools, you and your employees keep it both safe and comfortable. Smart buildings connect as many different functions as possible so people know what to expect from a distance.
How to maintain a good work-life balance?
Put away work materials at the end of the day or push them aside, do not leave papers lying around... Make clear agreements with the people you share a home with.
Take enough breaks and do not stay glued to your screen but walk around (or go outside). Regularly ventilate the space in which you work.
Create routines; work in blocks of 1 to 2 hours; plan your breaks; plan your moments to exercise; change your workspace (a different view of the world can stimulate creativity).
Make your workspace ergonomic: place your screen at eye level, make sure you have a good sitting posture, exercise or sport.
More tips on working healthy at home.
Excellent Internet connection.
Perhaps the most important requirement to remain productive: excellent Internet connection. Home Internet is of course a must, but when several people in the house are all downloading or streaming at the same time, your connection might struggle. So provide enough robust subscriptions for your employees.
For active callers, consider a Mobile Indoor Coverage installation (to boost the mobile signal in your home) or go for Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) and call and text over the WiFi network from now on. This way, you avoid walls and insulation blocking the signals.
Via VPN (Virtual Private Network), you and your employees can access the company network remotely and securely for various applications (voice/data/video/cloud/e-payments etc.) and the interaction between employees, customers and suppliers.
The workspace
The digitally savvy employee moves smoothly between home office and corporate office (and everything in between).
At the office
Does your business need Sdx?
What is the added value of an intelligent network for your business?
How to maintain a good work-life balance?
You can guarantee smooth access to applications in the cloud and on site via Software Defined Technology, SDx, a software layer on top of your network that intelligently and simply manages the traffic between locations and user devices. With SDx, you can allocate extra bandwidth to the applications that are essential to your business.
- ‘Floor Occupancy Monitoring’ allows you to track the use of available spaces (desks, meeting rooms, facilities). This makes compliance with social distancing and monitoring the cleaning of buildings a lot easier.
- ‘Comfort Monitoring’ allows you to closely monitor the temperature, humidity and carbon levels of the office to keep the well-being, comfort and health of employees optimal at all times.
Maintaining an overview of a healthy work environment becomes easier with IoT solutions.
Boss Paints combines telecommuting and in-kind benefits
CUSTOMER CASE
At Boss Paints, HR policy revolves around work-life balance: company restaurant, ironing service, flexible work hours and, of course, a home Internet connection.
At home
Beobank’s agency of the future
CUSTOMER CASE
Beobank is the first bank in Belgium to open a one-stop shop for professional customers, who can work there themselves and receive customers for meetings.
- Discover our 'Packs for Employees’. With this tax-efficient compensation alternative, you as the employer pay a portion of the cost of your employee’s private Internet subscription. Super fast internet everywhere ensures that your employees are optimally productive wherever they are.
Anywhere
- Make sure your employees can connect optimally and securely anywhere, via 4G (and soon 5G), via hotspots, via connections secured with VPN and more.
- Your applications are always up to date and your data secure by working in the Cloud.
Find out more
- Additional tips for maintaining work-life balance.
- Read more about 'the smart building'.
- Get to know our SD-WAN solutions.
- Ensure security via VPN.
Proximus has developed a chatbot for its own HR department that already provides more than 800 standardized answers. In this way, we take a lot of pressure off the first line.
YODA, the largest chatbot in the Benelux
More about Cisco Webex
More about Microsoft Teams
Thanks to citizen development, regular users can build new IT applications themselves, without any coding knowledge or help from specialized IT people. Many cloud systems let you combine modules to develop new applications. This way, IT departments are less burdened with questions from the business and other departments gain more ownership over their IT applications.
Curious how employees can automate work themselves through Microsoft Teams?
Automate and simplify tasks wherever possible.
Read more about Voice Managed Services
And what about incoming calls?
Those certainly cannot go unanswered just because employees work from home. Through Voice Managed Services (VMS), you manage the routing of your calls in the cloud while using Fixed Mobile Unification cost-effectively to integrate employee cell phones and smartphones into your PBX without additional Wi-Fi or DECT infrastructure. The company number is displayed when a call goes out, and when the phone is in private mode, no more company calls come in and the private number is displayed.
TIP
Try managing your next project entirely from your collaboration software. No more emails and certainly no more attachments to send around! Everything online in the Cloud.
Find out more?
Find out how Liantis tackles this.
With Teams, project teams can manage their projects completely online. You can store all documents there, accessible to everyone involved.
Via posts, chat and call, all communication also remains transparent and available to everyone.
Teams integrates other useful apps as well, such as project software, forms, notes, document management, workflows etc.
Do all your employees automatically save all documents in the Cloud? The great advantage? Everyone automatically works on the same documents, reducing the risk of miscommunication and people working side-by-side.
In the Cloud
From now on, we will automatically hold meetings in a hybrid format. Assuming that everyone will be in the office for the next meeting is a thing of the past.
A good reflex: send conference call data along with every invite to a physical meeting.
Hybrid meetings
Digital collaboration has been possible for a long time but has now become standard. But we need to start thinking about how we can evolve to a new normal. Many digital habits will be retained because they are efficient and make us more productive.
Digital collaboration
Work in the hybrid workplace is more flexible than ever, and the roles employees fill are also becoming less defined. We are evolving from function-driven work to project-driven work. That also has an impact on how leadership is done.
The work
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows your employees to access the corporate network remotely and guarantees you centralized secure Internet access for sites and various applications (voice/data/video/cloud/e-payments etc.).
Obviously, you are keeping it safe.
- Storing documents online offers many advantages. So avoid attachments still sent by e-mail.
- Teams and Office 365 also offer a lot of project management tools. Are you already using them?
- Are all meeting reports drawn up in OneNote by default?
In the rush to switch, there was not much time to discover all the digital possibilities. It is perfectly possible that employees simply have continued to carry on working as usual way, albeit partly online. But the various collaboration suites offer a whole range of extra tools that can make hybrid working even more efficient. It can therefore be a good idea to evaluate which tools are being used and which you as an organization do or do not want to promote.
Are all your employees using the right tools?
Do not lose sight of the evolutions.
Software-as-a-Service offers the great advantage that you always have the most recent versions. But it also means that things change and the way you work can also change. Ensuring that everyone is on board requires a bit of effort.
- Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint, but also individual and group chats, online meetings and web conferencing.
- In addition, you can integrate your telephony directly with the Teams interface.
- At the same time, you add your favorite Microsoft apps and third-party services so that all your employees always have the most complete collaboration tools at their disposal.
With Microsoft Teams and Office 365, all your employees work together digitally and interactively on the same environment in the Cloud.
Microsoft Teams and Office 365
Productivity applications or how to digitize as many tasks, actions and processes as possible.
- With laptop-as-a-service and smartphone/tablet-as-a-service, you provide your employees with the right hardware to work on while you outsource its management and maintenance. In this way, you relieve your own IT department and offer your employees the most recent devices.
- Do not forget the extras. A decent headset is indispensable for the digitally savvy employee. Depending on the function of the employee, an additional screen may be necessary.
- Also do not lose sight of ergonomics: a good office chair and having the laptop at the right height can help prevent a sore back or neck.
.
Or how to manage all devices optimally.
Discover more
Find out how Krëfel call center employees were able to work fully operational from home in just one week.
CUSTOMER CASE
Bron: Gartner, februari 2019
Delivering good work is difficult without the right tools: devices and applications. In addition, the digitally savvy organization will have occasionally to show its digitally savvy employees the way through the wide range of possibilities.
The tools
Source: Workplace of the Future, BCG, July 2020
… of employers confirm they will prioritize investments in digital infrastructure that embed telework in a sustainable way.
… of employees state that during the first couple of months of the pandemic, they were able to maintain or improve their productivity. Even when it comes to tasks that require collaboration (such as exchanges with colleagues, teamwork, client interaction), 51% claim that their productivity remained the same or improved.
Source: Workplace of the Future, BCG, July 2020
Employees with high digital dexterity are 3.3 times more likely to initiate, complete and achieve the goals of digital transformations, compared to employees with moderate digital dexterity.
Source: Gartner, February 2019
- Innovate processes and ways of working: are you using the right tools? Which routine tasks can be automated?
- Innovate products: do you sell products, how could you turn them into a service model?
- Innovate services: do you sell services, how could you then market them as a product?
- Innovate your strategy: how can digital solutions help you develop new business models?
The hybrid workplace offers a wealth of opportunities for innovation:
Innovation
Digital transformation
The speed at which new digital technologies and applications have become commonplace, both in the workspace and beyond, is unseen. It also requires your employees to remain dexterous with them. Digitally savvy organizations offer their employees the space and opportunity to experiment with digital transformation via pilot projects (‘minimal viable products’).
“Remote working operates best when the company works with output control: as long as the work is done or the customers are satisfied, you give your employees confidence.”
Marijke Verbruggen, Professor Work and Organisation Studies, KU Leuven
Working from home en masse has brought a producitivity boost to people with office jobs. Now is the time to embed good digital habits. Do not automatically assume that the current way of digital collaboration also is the most optimal. In our rush to shift to digital, we may have overlooked some options.
Pick a quieter time to evaluate the current digital workspace and habits. Engage with your digitally savvy employees to identify potential issues and then address them. Just as the SaaS software we use keeps evolving and improving, the way we work with it can also be improved somewhat.
Embed good digital habits
The hybrid workplace continues to evolve and the digitally savvy employee naturally evolves with it. But what about the business? What advantages do digitally savvy employees bring?
The business
