Given the rapid and continuous evolution of the regulatory landscape, financial services firms will continue to emphasize two fundamental drivers of workplace values: culture and engagement.
Culture is inherently porous in nature — it seeps from one point of interaction to another very quickly and spreads across departments and organizations. Engagement, on the other hand, grows in silos. Even in the same workplace settings, with similar variables, it is hard to achieve the same level of engagement from everyone in the organization.
Financial services organizations had a hard time maintaining culture and engagement when the work-from-home model became prevalent during the pandemic. While the past years have demonstrated that finance work can be done in a fully remote environment, driving workplace values to prevent a disconnect among people and promote collaboration and productivity, requires a fresh perspective on workplace capabilities.
Building workplace resiliency
These new capabilities are aimed at developing workplace resiliency that help in navigating through disruptions and at the same time play a greater role in driving workplace values. While there is no typical formula for handling a disruption, rethinking every part of the workplace, from operations to delivery models, and communications to collaboration is critical to building safety nets.
Besides, as financial services firms are adapting to hybrid work models, it has set new expectations in the workforce to have a seamless experience when it comes to communication and collaboration in remote settings.
This has made financial services organizations revisit their employee experience priorities, without losing focus on appropriate governance and controls. They are using technology to deliver new experiences and supervise culture and engagement within the organization.
Unified Communication and Collaboration (UCC) technologies along with a range of infrastructure applications, provide many choices to organizations planning to build capabilities around the hybrid work model. Cloud-based Workplace-as-as-service, comprising various as-a-service workplace models such as PC-as-a-service (PCaaS) and Experience-as-a-service (EaaS) help enterprises in balancing workplace experience and business continuity.
Many choices and more control
Enterprises can have more control over the usage of their assets and content with desktop application management solutions. These solutions cover a wide variety of computing devices that span platforms from laptops to smartphones and tablets.
Security issues that are growing with the advancement in technology are also managed through various workplace security solutions including multi-factor authentication, security monitoring and profile management for anti-virus.
These solutions are further armed with new developments in artificial intelligence, blockchain, automation and immersive technologies. Many enterprises have doubled their focus on employing these technologies in their work environment to eliminate disruption and improve employee uptime. For instance, AI & RPA-based analytics and automation are leveraged to identify disruption patterns and enable proactive resolution and healing.
Empowering the talent pipeline
These technologies pave the roadway and create robust defenses for enterprises to help them deploy a hybrid model for a large number of people in the talent pipeline, including contractors, consultants, temporary workers and freelancers.
With a more holistic roll-out of the hybrid work model across the organization, enterprises can not only build a resilient workplace but also emphasize their focus on employee well-being and diversity and inclusion. However, they might need to renovate their fundamental values in line with a new workplace environment which is technology-powered and people-centric.
The onus is on the leadership to analyze and decipher the culture in the hybrid workplace environment to achieve their organizational goals. For instance, a culture of learning and upskilling can be promoted through integrated learning and interactive platforms that allow employees to choose what they want to learn, when they want to learn and on what platform they want to learn.
It is also easy to track the usage journey of the employees on these platforms, based on which leaders can identify the gaps and undertake change initiatives to improve learning.
Fostering a culture of making informed decisions
Organizational culture also affects decision-making among employees to a great extent. Facilitating employees with useful information and visibility into their work can help them make faster and more informed decisions. The use of personalized smart dashboards, powered by AI/ML-based predictive analytics can provide them with data insights to evaluate performance and progress. Based on data-driven insights, employees can take constructive decisions and ownership of their work time.
As the scope of the workplace has expanded with the hybrid model, enterprises must also reinvent their strategies for promoting inclusivity and diversity within the hybrid settings. By leveraging digital tools and platforms, they can ensure that all employees, regardless of their location, ethnic backgrounds and circumstances have equal and timely access to opportunities and resources.
The technologies that support the hybrid work model are extensively benefit-driven when it comes to fostering a culture of inclusivity, where diverse voices are heard and valued and where all employees work with transparency and accountability.
Driving greater values with resilience
Workplaces are a powerful driver of organizational values. Since these values get easily swayed by changes in the workplace environment, it is important for enterprises to use resilience as their key strategy to uphold their core values. These are harder to materialize in a hybrid setting, but with the right technologies and strong commitment, enterprises can succeed at prioritizing their fundamental values along with business continuity and sustainability.
