How Mature Is Your Company’s Hybrid Work Environment?
As we continue to experience new COVID variants, companies are delaying their move back to the office. Cisco found that more than a quarter of companies surveyed believed they would never get 90% of their workforce to return to the office.
Instead of asking employees to return fully, companies are transitioning from remote work to hybrid work. Hybrid work creates a blend of in-office and remote workplaces.
Even though hybrid work is a relatively new phenomenon, technology thought leaders are working to develop a hybrid work maturity model to gauge how completely companies have made a transition to a hybrid work environment. Your company can assess its level of hybrid work maturity by looking for certain indicators. Mature hybrid work environments provide seamless and frictionless work experiences for employees working in the office, at home, and in other remote locations.
To determine your level of hybrid work maturity, ask yourself the following questions.
Do you have a resilient distributed infrastructure?
Cisco reported that companies are creating distributed infrastructures to support hybrid work. For example:
- During the pandemic, cloud services have grown 30% to 50%
- Adoption of videoconferencing platforms has increased 30x
As companies embrace distributed infrastructures that include the cloud, endpoints, and collaboration tools, they must ensure the resiliency of these architectures to promote business continuity and user satisfaction.
Organizations with higher levels of hybrid work maturity have created secure cloud-first infrastructures. These infrastructures take advantage of distributed applications and cloud services, such as public cloud, hybrid cloud, software as a service (SaaS), and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
With the cloud and connectivity, employees should be able to work safely from anywhere and collaborate from any device.
Do you follow best practices for business policies and a resilient IT operating model?
Companies with a high level of hybrid work maturity have developed and follow business policies. These business policies should include rules and best practices for:
- Work from home
- Data and application security
- Workplace resources
Best practices for a resilient IT operating model should consider:
- Network operations
- Data Center/Cloud operations
- Security operations
- Device management
Are you empowering distributed work in a cloud-accelerated world?
Hybrid work maturity using a cloud environment requires Zero Trust security and end-to-end visibility that empowers distributed work. To reach a high level of maturity, your company’s strategy must support secure remote work, return to the workplace, and flexible multi-cloud strategies.
For secure remote work, you need:
- Secure communication and collaboration
- Secure remote access
- Automation and zero-touch provisioning
For the return to the workplace, you must have:
- Optimized connectivity
- Scalable capacity
- Common policy and segmentation
For flexible multi-cloud, you should have:
- Hybrid and multi-cloud delivery
- Applications and cloud services experience
- Visibility and assurance
Increasing Your Level of Hybrid Work Maturity
Developing a hybrid work maturity model is an emerging and ongoing process. The global market intelligence firm IDC and Cisco have teamed up to conduct research to better understand how companies are transitioning to hybrid work and progressing on their journey to maturity.
As a Premier Cisco Partner, iConvergence can help your company assess its hybrid work maturity level and develop a strategy for using Cisco tools to support hybrid work. We focus on solution areas that are critical for hybrid work success, including Networking, Network Security, and Collaboration. Our team of Cisco-certified experts can help you design your hybrid work strategy and implement the Cisco solutions you need to realize it through a hybrid work environment.
Find out how to increase your hybrid work maturity. Reach out to the Cisco experts at iConvergence.