Back from the Pandemic

There is no hiding that within the last year and a half, remote working has become almost everyone’s favorite change the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into. Now that the world is returning to some semblance of normalcy, it is time to consider how to proceed in the AV community.

Despite the obvious and sometimes overbearing qualities that come with remote work, organizations have spent over a year trying to adopt this new method of getting things done. As operations resume, there are several obstacles that companies will face moving forward. HR will have many decisions to make, employees to please, opinions to sift through, and perhaps the most important, how should to balance the inevitable, partial, perhaps hybrid, return to work sites.

After extensive research, Gartner provides us with “current data on remote work in practice,” as well as a three-part series “to help guide HR.” It is clear that waging employee preferences and needs will be critical in this new era of reestablishing in-person, hybrid, and remote work for everyone.

Best practices leveraging UCC

The research found on Gartner discusses the three imperative components of navigating this decision. The first, “benchmarking current remote adoption rates and outlining future remote patterns.” This means, your company must reflect on how effective and efficient the work over the past year has been. Data should be analyzed and compiled in order to create tangible evidence necessary for creating a reasonable plan of attack. Second to this, it is vital that companies address “perceived barriers to continued remote work.” The data completed in the first step will inevitably reveal negative consequences of working remotely. Once these flaws are acknowledged, they must be examined. It is also imperative that these flaws are met with predictions regarding potential obstacles that did not arise throughout COVID-19. Lastly, Gartner suggests, “providing a framework for making decisions about which parts of the workforce can or should stay remote.” Arguably, this last point is not easily resolved and in fact, it is quite moot. Companies should consider leaning into this last point, reaching out to employees, and understanding what the individual needs of each employer are. COVID-19 was, as everyone loves to say, unprecedented. As a result, returning to normalcy will look vastly different for some people. Respecting and assessing these opinions should set the foundation for a general sense of contentment once the return plan is finalized.

For more information, we encourage you to do research on this topic. The article referenced in this blog post can be found here. It is no secret that what works for one company may not work for another. AV Nation encourages individual research and assessment of the company’s current climate.