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Return to Office and the Future of Hybrid Work

CMMA Blog

Return to Office and the Future of Hybrid Work

The pandemic has radically changed how and where we work, giving businesses and employees the latitude to redefine the modern workplace as they plan their return to the office. Planning a successful return to the office requires businesses to understand employee expectations, develop a plan that addresses those needs, and ensure they have flexible technologies that support the unique demands of the hybrid workplace.

Return to Office – Employee vs. Leadership Perspectives

Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2022 examined what a return to the office looks like from both the worker and employer perspectives. The study found that 50% of leaders say their company does or plans to require a full-time return to the office. However, this is in stark contrast to the 52% of respondents who stated they are considering moving to hybrid or remote work this year.

Due largely to the pandemic, employees’ priorities have shifted and maintaining flexibility and a healthy work-life balance is now of the utmost importance to many workers. The divergence in expectations between leadership and employees has led many workers to draw a line in the sand when it comes to required full-time in-person work. In the same report, Microsoft found that 52% of Gen Z and Millennials are considering changing employers in 2022. With the desire for workplace flexibility so evident, many business leaders have taken note and developed return-to-office (RTO) strategies that will help them retain and attract talent.

The Hybrid Future

A powerful compromise between the two sides is the hybrid model. This strategy grants leadership the facetime needed to build company culture and foster collaboration while offering the flexibility their workforce demands. Industry leaders like Microsoft and Google have publicly announced their return-to-office dates in conjunction with the hybrid work models they will use going forward. Both companies plan to allow certain roles to remain fully remote, while others will be asked to return to the office on a part-time basis with essential positions remaining in-person full-time.

The hybrid approach requires leadership to be deliberate when creating synchronous work. Building inclusive hybrid meetings and scheduling them on days when hybrid workers are in the office allows teams the opportunity to maximize collaboration and re-establish a strong company culture. Offering adaptable options like on-demand recordings for those who cannot attend will further the reach of communications and keep goals better aligned. The surge in live and on-demand video usage during the pandemic will continue to play a critical role in connecting the hybrid office. Still organizations must equip themselves with technologies that enable fast and efficient communication with all employees regardless of their location.

A Flexible Workforce Needs a Flexible Network

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there’s been a 252% increase in weekly time spent in meetings for the average Microsoft Teams user. In the past two years, it’s become apparent that the real-time communication and collaboration live video offers is essential to modern businesses. Video is a bandwidth-heavy medium, and existing corporate networks may be unable to support the increased load as employees return to the office. Many organizations have learned this the hard way after initiating their RTO plans. Even with only a fraction of their workforce back in the office, many businesses have discovered that their networks are not equipped to handle the influx of live and on-demand video being consumed on site.

Network spikes can occur when a small number of people are streaming an event or viewing it on-demand in-office, leading to poor user experience and decreased engagement, while impacting critical business applications running on the same network.

With the hybrid model, businesses must ensure their network is prepared to support a dispersed workforce’s communication and collaboration needs. Optimizing networks for video with an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) like Kollective ensures hybrid workers are connected no matter where they are working.

Meet the RTO Protection Plan

Kollective’s Edge Accelerator platform offers businesses the flexibility and confidence to meet the demands of the hybrid workplace. With three intelligent delivery solutions – Browser-Based Peering, Agent-Based Peering, and Edgecache – Kollective’s Complete Coverage tackles all of the complex network challenges of hybrid work environments, including:

  • Remote offices
  • Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
  • Firewalled or backhauled locations (e.g., China)
  • Hard-to-reach users
  • Zero Trust Networks

Prepare your network for the return-to-office and hybrid work today with a free trial of Kollective’s Browser-Based Peering solution.

The post Return to Office and the Future of Hybrid Work appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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The Drawbacks of Remote Work

CMMA Blog

The Drawbacks of Remote Work

The pandemic forced businesses and employees to adopt the virtual workplace overnight. Remote work quickly became the standard, leaving little time to prepare employees for this new way of working. Many employees realized the benefits of remote work like a better work-life balance and the flexibility to work their own hours. Others, especially those newer to the workforce, struggled with the lack of social interaction and burnout. As the world continues to reopen and remote options become a permanent fixture of the modern office, it is important that businesses are aware of the downsides of remote work when deciding how to enable workplace flexibility.

Socially Remote

With the move to remote work, the social aspects of office culture have become harder to replicate. Those working from home often experience feelings of isolation and loneliness which can take a toll on their productivity as well as their mental and physical well-being. In a poll conducted by the American Psychiatric Association, nearly two-thirds of remote workers experienced these feelings some of the time and 17% felt them all the time. Creating an inclusive hybrid culture can help address these problems.

Professional Growth

Workplace social opportunities are pivotal in relationship building and career growth. However, the networking and mentorship opportunities vital to professional development aren’t easy to access when working remotely. Remote employees miss out on the countless daily interactions that occur in office settings. These seemingly small social interactions play a significant role in building rapport with coworkers. This can also make it difficult for new hires and younger employees to form bonds with a company and its culture.

No generation has been more impacted by this than Gen Z. A growing number of young employees have never worked in an office. They graduated during the pandemic or started jobs as business closed and transitioned to remote work. While many argue that remote work can harm their professional and personal lives in the future by missing office work, research suggests it may also lead to retention issues for employers. In a recent Bankrate survey, 77% of Gen Z workers plan to look for a new job in the next year.

Burnout

Blurred lines between home and office, longer working hours, less time off, and feeling cut off from peers and management can lead to burnout for remote workers. A survey by Indeed found that 52% of respondents experienced burnout in 2021, up from 43% in 2020. Younger employees who struggle to adhere to work-life boundaries are particularly susceptible to this with 58% of Gen Z respondents reporting burnout.

Hybrid Solutions Address Remote Concerns

Despite these negatives, 87% of employees want to retain workplace flexibility post-pandemic. A popular solution to this problem is the hybrid work model, which allows for in-person meetings or in-office days while still offering the flexibility of remote work. Learn how Kollective solves for hybrid work .

Kollective Empowers Hybrid Strategies

While a hybrid workplace can be a buffer against many of the downsides of fully remote work, it can also put a strain on systems not prepared for this scenario. Live video plays an integral role in synchronous communications for the hybrid workplace, and corporate networks are often overtaxed when delivering bandwidth-intensive video. Even a small number of employees streaming a live event or on-demand video can overload a network. The recent comments by Google’s CEO highlight this concern , predicting that employees will come in less than before but en masse when they do, thus creating peak demand problems for networks. Networks need to be optimized with an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN), to ensure every employee receives the same high-quality video.

Employees expect a seamless video communications experience – their engagement and retention depend on it. Poor content delivery interrupts communications, inhibits collaboration, and stalls innovation. Kollective’s Edge Accelerator offers complete coverage to reliably deliver video to your entire workforce without investing in additional infrastructure. Our multiple delivery methods can be configured or combined to meet the needs of even the most complex networks. With Kollective’s ECDN in place, flawless communications reach every employee.

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How to Make Hybrid Meetings Inclusive

CMMA Blog

How to Make Hybrid Meetings Inclusive

Building Inclusive Hybrid Meetings

The adoption of hybrid workplaces has forced leaders to “rethink” everyday business activities. Before the pandemic, meetings were planned and structured well in advance. Microsoft found that weekly meeting time for Teams users has more than doubled since February 2020, leaving organizers less time to prepare. Hybrid meetings – meetings that contain a mix of in-person and remote attendees – have become critical to businesses needing to connect dispersed teams. Many face a challenge to make hybrid meetings inclusive for every attendee regardless of whether they are in the office, working from home or joining from a remote office. This article offers several ideas to help design inclusive hybrid meetings.

Create and Communicate Structure

Whether you are running a company-wide all-hands or a small team check-in, remote attendees can be at a disadvantage compared to those in the room with you. An excellent way to lessen the disparities and build inclusive meetings is to use the remote experience to inform how you prepare for and facilitate meetings.

“Creating equitable, inclusive experiences starts with designing for people not in the room.” – Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO | The Hybrid Work Paradox

Create space for engagement. Before the event, reviewing each activity from the perspective of the remote participants will help encourage engagement. If presenting content like a video or slide deck, ensure the camera has an unobstructed view of the presenter and the presentation. Supply remote attendees with copies of any presentation materials or handouts ahead of the meeting. During discussion or Q&A sessions, ask for remote participants’ input first to ensure their voices are heard and consider appointing an in-person ally for remote attendees who can physically participate during interactive meeting activities. Not all activities will be remote-friendly but understanding the meeting from a remote perspective goes a long way towards building equity.

Provide an agenda with objectives in advance. Empower your team to participate by preparing them ahead of time with topics to be covered, the motivation behind the content, and presentation method. Creating a clear agenda will help limit in-person chatter, which can be distracting for remote viewers. For each topic on the agenda, define its objective. Is it to share information, solicit feedback, brainstorm, or work together to reach a consensus?? Including an objective and how each group will achieve that goal will increase engagement.

Put the Right Technology in Place

The technology you use plays a significant role in keeping all parties engaged and connected. Unlike in-person or virtual meetings, hybrid meetings require physical spaces, hardware and software to create virtual spaces, and infrastructure to connect the two.

Develop a technology plan for the whole team. Communicate technology requirements for both remote and in-person attendees and coordinate with IT to ensure everyone has the tools they need to participate. Hybrid meetings also require rooms outfitted with video and audio capabilities so that remote attendees can see and hear what is happening. Ensure the meeting room is properly equipped to handle your meeting structure and that the system is turned on and tested beforehand. With multiple locations and devices connecting simultaneously, there is a higher chance something could go wrong. Creating backup plans in case the room’s wifi goes down or remote viewers or presenters lose their connection will mitigate the damage of technical difficulties.

Prepare your network for the demands of hybrid meetings. As employees return to the office and hybrid meetings become commonplace, the influx of live video can tax existing networks and negatively impact their performance. In larger meetings with a mix of in-person and remote attendees accessing the live stream, ill-prepared networks can result in buffering or event failures. After experiencing multiple delivery failures to employees in critical locations, HSBC turned to Kollective for a solution that would remedy the problem. “Efficient video delivery to staff located on the fringes of the network was key to the requirement of the solution. Kollective was able to meet this requirement bringing communications to areas where it had not been possible before.” Adding an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) to your technology stack will optimize your network, allowing you to deliver flawless live video to every employee regardless of their location, device, or bandwidth limitations.

Complete Coverage

With the rising demands of the hybrid workplace, other solutions have struggled to adapt and deliver in complex network environments. Kollective developed Complete Coverage to provide businesses with greater flexibility and the confidence that their network will always work. Kollective’s Edge Accelerator is the only ECDN Platform with delivery methods that handle the most diverse network needs to ensure that no employee is left behind.

Begin scaling live video today. Kollective’s Browser-Based Peering delivery solution solves most hybrid meeting challenges by reducing the bandwidth needed to deliver high-quality live video at scale. Browser-Based Peering is a cloud-based, WebRTC technology that can be deployed in minutes without installing software, purchasing hardware, or investing in additional infrastructure.

Reliable delivery in any situation. Combining Brower-Based Peering with Kollective’s Agent-Based Peering or EdgeCache delivery solutions meets the needs of networks with more specific demands like zero-trust or delivery to China or remote locations. Our multiple solutions can communicate using intelligent logic to utilize the most efficient delivery method with every request.

Building inclusive hybrid meetings requires new considerations due to their increased complexity. By preparing your team, leveraging technology, and enhancing your network you can make every employee feel included regardless of location.

The post How to Make Hybrid Meetings Inclusive appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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The Rise of Zero Trust Networks

CMMA Blog

The Rise of Zero Trust Networks

In the past two years, we have witnessed a rapid evolution in cybersecurity and a rise in Zero Trust security as a top priority for organizations across the globe. With the shift to remote and hybrid work models, businesses must adapt to support employees working in locations beyond the perimeter of the corporate network. Increased prevalence of cloud-based services, the internet of things (IoT), and the growing sophistication of cyberattacks has caused business leaders to adopt more robust security protocols.

In response to these changes, the adoption of Zero Trust security models has skyrocketed across diverse markets and industries. In their report titled, “The State of Zero Trust Security 2021 ,” identity management firm Okta found that Zero Trust has increased in priority for 78% of businesses. Microsoft’s 2021 “Zero Trust Adoption Report ” echoed these sentiments, stating, “Security decision-makers (SDMs) say developing a Zero Trust strategy is their #1 security priority, with 96% saying it’s critical to their organization’s success.”

As more businesses switch to Zero Trust security models, software solutions they rely on must perform and comply with these new security practices. Kollective’s Edge Accelerator was built with Zero Trust security in mind, allowing businesses to scale content delivery in evolving network environments.

This article will review the basics of Zero Trust, the factors leading to the increase in Zero Trust adoption, where adoption is occurring, and how Kollective enables businesses with Zero Trust networks.

What is Zero Trust?

Zero Trust is a security model based on the principle: “never trust, always verify.” In Zero Trust networks, no device is trusted by default. Users must be authenticated, authorized and continually validated before being granted access to applications and data, whether they are inside or outside the organization’s network.

Zero Trust networks redefine the traditional understanding of the network edge. In Zero Trust frameworks, networks can be local, in the cloud, or a combination of the two – supporting workers in any location. With pushes towards digital transformation, Zero Trust allows businesses to ad dress the challenges of the modern office, including securing remote employees and hybrid cloud environments.

Hybrid Work is Driving Zero Trust Adoption

Zero Trust models have been a part of the enterprise for over a decade. Google implemented Zero Trust architecture into their security model as far back as 2009. The growth of Zero Trust strategies in the 2010s was slow, but has accelerated over the past three years. The increase was fueled by the rise of mobile computing, the internet of things (IoT), and cloud-based services, and the pandemic only amplified these problems. Existing challenges and the subsequent shift to remote and hybrid workplaces have driven Zero Trust adoption to record highs as leadership seeks better ways to safeguard systems and data as employees access them off-site and through personal devices.

Business leaders confirmed that the move to hybrid work models accelerated their Zero Trust timelines. In a poll of over 600 global security leaders, Okta found that the challenges of hybrid work caused businesses to become “more security conscious” and forced them to prioritize Zero Trust strategies. As a result, most companies (90%) are actively pursuing Zero Trust initiatives, up from 41% in 2020. While many companies are still determining how to integrate Zero Trust frameworks, Microsoft found that implementation is well underway – “76% of organizations have at least started implementing a Zero Trust strategy with 35% claiming to be fully implemented.”

Zero Trust Adoption Varies by Industry

While Zero Trust initiatives have increased across all industries, Okta discovered that adoption varies among key verticals. Highly regulated industries, like financial services, lead other verticals in their use of Zero Trust, with 94% reporting they already have Zero Trust frameworks in place or “have aggressive goals to get there.” Other industries with notable pushes towards Zero Trust include healthcare and software. Almost one-third (30%) of healthcare organizations stated that Zero Trust is now a top priority compared to 17% globally. While software companies like Microsoft and Google implemented Zero Trust models, only 9% of software organizations have a Zero Trust initiative currently in place. However, the industry is poised for change as nearly 4 in 5 plan to adopt initiatives by the end of next year.

EMEA Experiences the Largest Increase in Zero Trust Initiatives

In Okta’s report, they found that at least 87% of APAC, EMEA, and North American organizations have defined Zero Trust initiatives in place or plan to start them in the next 12-18 months. While all regions saw substantial increases in adoption since 2020, the most significant jump occurred in EMEA where Zero Trust initiatives grew by a factor of five.

Increase in Zero Trust Initiatives by Region

  • APAC: 50% (2020) to 91% (2021)
  • EMEA: 18% (2020) to 90% (2021)
  • North America: 60% (2020) to 87% (2021)

Kollective Supports Zero Trust Networks

Secure by design. Creating an effective security design requires a comprehensive security policy woven into every layer of a solution, addressing present threats and future concerns. That is how Kollective’s Edge Accelerator was architected – with security in mind from conception to release, ensuring the highest degree of protection for your data.

Zero Trust with Kollective. As more businesses adopt Zero Trust frameworks, solutions must adhere to their security standards. Kollective’s Edge Accelerator provides best-in-class content delivery mechanisms and offers advanced security controls to support networks operating in Zero Trust environments. Learn more about Kollective’s security .

Performance without Security Risks. In Microsoft’s study, overall security and the end-user experience were the primary motivators for organizations adopting Zero Trust frameworks. These priorities are directly in line with Kollective’s goals – to flawlessly deliver content to any user in any location securely. Kollective’s Edge Accelerator handles the most diverse network needs, from delivering video to China to supporting hybrid workplaces with complex network environments. Kollective provides businesses with flexibility and the confidence that their network will always work.

Talk to an expert today to see how Kollective’s ECDN solutions excel in Zero Trust network environments.

The post The Rise of Zero Trust Networks appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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The Hybrid Work Paradox

CMMA Blog

The Hybrid Work Paradox

In a recent article , Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, “solving the Hybrid Work Paradox will be the challenge of the decade.” The stakes for Microsoft are undeniably high. The Covid-19 pandemic coupled with advances to their hybrid solutions (e.g. Microsoft Teams, Stream, Viva, O365) has resulted in huge increases in usage and directly improved the efficiency and collaboration of their hybrid workforce of over 180,000 employees.

Therefore, it’s no surprise Microsoft released a study in September 2021 titled, The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour , analyzes collaboration and communication of 61,182 remote Microsoft employees over the first six months of 2020. In this article, we’ll detail their findings, examine the current state of hybrid work, and explore how business leaders can prepare their workforce for the challenges of the hybrid office.

What is the Hybrid Work Paradox?

Workers want the flexibility of remote work, but also the inspiration and real-time collaboration that in-person work offers. This is the Hybrid Work Paradox. So, can workers have it both ways? To put it simply, yes, but businesses need policies and technology geared for flexibility. As Nadella puts it, companies need to “embrace flexibility across their entire operating model, including the ways people work, the places they inhabit and how they approach business.”

To know how businesses need to flex in response to hybrid work, we need to develop an understanding of the pain points and hurdles to overcome. Microsoft’s study provides many of those insights; let’s dive in and review what they found.

Productivity Increases at the Cost of Creativity

Microsoft’s study analyzed remote work behaviors of employees between December 2019 and June 2020. This time frame is significant as it establishes a pre-pandemic baseline to compare data against once the pandemic struck. While businesses and workers have become more adapted to remote work since June 2020, there’s still valuable information to glean from the study.

The main benefit researchers discovered about remote work was a slight, but noticeable increase in productivity and hours worked per week. However, this came at the cost of creativity. While remote work eliminates in-person communication, they found that workers didn’t always replace in-person interactions with video or voice calls. This was part of a broader trend signaling a decrease in synchronous communications (e.g. scheduled meetings, video calls, etc.). Instead, reliance on asynchronous communications such as emails and IMs grew. Researchers concluded that this makes it more difficult to convey complex ideas and converge on the meaning of complex information thereby reducing creative output.

Another consequence of remote work was the growth of communication silos. Remote work caused workers to have fewer bridging ties with other members in the company and spend less time with the bridging ties they already built. Researchers worried this could become a more significant problem over time, stating “it is possible that the long-term effects of firm-wide remote work are different. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, workers were able to leverage existing network connections, many of which were built in person. This may not be possible if firm-wide remote work were implemented long-term.”

We can summarize the study’s findings on the downstream effects of remote work in three points.

  1. Increase in productivity
  2. Decrease in real-time conversations
  3. Increase in departmental silos

There is no Universal Solution to the Hybrid Work Paradox

The results of the study seem to paint a bleak picture of the current state of remote work – at least at the beginning of the pandemic. Though, perhaps the greatest benefit of Microsoft’s study is that it has drawn attention to the specific shortcomings and pain points of remote work. These problems are not insurmountable. Rather, they give managers and team leads areas to focus on.

So how do we solve the hybrid work paradox? Well, for one, it’s important to understand that these rules don’t universally apply. Each business is unique in their structure and operational methods. And different roles are more affected by remote work than others. For example, professions that are used to prolonged periods of solitary work (e.g., writers, designers, etc.) are not as affected by the pitfalls of hybrid work as cross-functional roles that rely on lots of collaboration.

Managers can start addressing hybrid concerns by embracing the flexibility of hybrid work and ensuring they build an open culture. This starts with increasing synchronous communications and facilitating connections between other departments to enable collaboration and cross-functional work.

Secondly, preparing your company and team with the tools and technology needed to lower these barriers. Workers need functional and reliable communications tools like Microsoft Teams that allow remote workers a comparable level of collaboration offered by in-person work. Additionally, enterprise networks need to be able to handle and consistently deliver these bandwidth intensive forms of communication. Stay tuned for our next article in this series where we’ll review how Kollective’s ECDN uniquely provides the coverage and flexibility necessary to solve the problems presented by hybrid work.

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