How a Global Pandemic Prepared Business Leaders for Hybrid Work The hybrid environment is here to stay, so business leaders must reflect on what has been learned during the pandemic to shape our future.
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As the CEO of an application security company with a global presence, the pandemic taught me — and continues to teach me — many things about resilience, leading by example and quickly adapting to overcome new challenges. Businesses around the world are settling into their journey of hybrid work, and Covid continues to keep us in a state of uncertainty.
That's why I'd like to reflect on the top physical, psychological and digital challenges that come with leading a business in this precise moment and going forward.
Physical: mobilizing the workforce
At the onset of Covid, businesses quickly anticipated that employees would be working remotely for a significant period of time. Fortunately, some of our employees spread across the world had already been working remotely for quite some time, so we had the proper foundation in place to make this a widespread company practice. As soon as we predicted the pivot to remote work, we worked more closely than ever before with our IT staff. In fact, looking back, IT carried a fair amount of weight on its shoulders, since technology is a key foundation of keeping business alive and thriving.
From a physical perspective, we had to ensure employees had the right tools, resources and infrastructure at their disposal, and in record time. Nearly overnight, we abandoned our fixed assets and workstations and made the entire workforce more mobile-friendly, providing employees worldwide with laptops and other technology. It didn't end there. We also ensured that these mobile technologies were complete with firewalls, VPNs, peer-to-peer connectivity, identity management and remote login solutions.
In a hybrid environment, this same lesson applies. Gone are the days when a physical, bulky computer sits in an office workstation. This simply won't work for employees who want to work from anywhere, at any time. But as leaders transition to making the workforce mobile, they must work in lockstep with IT to provide the right physical technology, without ever losing sight of security and accessibility.
Related: 10 New Books for Leading in a Hybrid Work Environment
Psychology: creating a feeling of togetherness
IT wasn't the only department with which we have regularly communicated throughout the pandemic. Our HR team was a vital part of ensuring employee satisfaction and motivation during such a challenging time for all, both personally and professionally. The reality is that many employees — regardless of position, department or tenure — struggled with the sudden changes that have been brought on by the pandemic. As a business leader, I ensure that employees are always a top, if not the top, priority for our company. For hours and hours on end, the leadership team worked with HR to determine how to make employees feel supported, connected and valued, despite not physically being in the office together.
To begin, we increased the cadence of our virtual all-hands meetings. We did so not only because we were operating remotely, but also because of the uncertainty around Covid. It was a way to support one another amid the chaos in the world. As CEO, I knew that it was important to set the tone from the top. For most virtual meetings, I took the proper safety precautions to work from the office to show employees that we'd continue operating as usual as a business, and that the physical workspace would be here when the time is right to return.
We also realized that employees crave interaction, so to kick off the fiscal year, we mailed each employee an interactive experience that we could partake in together, from the safety of our own homes. We also hosted virtual cooking and fitness classes, escape-room challenges, happy hours and more. Not only did this bring people closer together, but it also allowed some cross-functional teams to meet and work together for the first time.
As we explore hybrid work models, leaders, alongside their HR teams, must continue appealing to both remote and in-office employees. For example, if an important meeting is happening, is the office space properly set up to safely convene? Do remote employees have the information needed to seamlessly log in to such meetings? If an in-person experience is taking place during the gathering, how can remote employees get involved without feeling left out? These are all questions that will arise as some employees return to the office while others remain remote. As leaders, we must prioritize all employee satisfaction, even if it means going the extra mile to appeal to both parties.
Related: The Future of Work Is Hybrid
Digital: embedding security into work
As soon as the workforce became more mobile, attack surfaces exponentially increased, with employees introducing new apps, software and devices into the corporate network, and cybercriminals instantly capitalized on the opportunity. From a digital perspective, we took proactive, preventative measures to ensure that all employees, from the C-suite down to part-time staff and third-party contractors, understood the shared security responsibility in this new, remote setting.
Immediately, a refreshed security training was offered to all employees, one which emphasized the changes in security measures needed when working from home. For example, employees were encouraged to practice "digital distancing" with their Wi-Fi networks; one where connectivity was split into two networks, for home and professional use. We've quickly learned that traditional, lecture-based training alone isn't effective — again, employees crave interaction. Therefore, we made training shorter, more interactive and gamified in nature, which has been proven to be more effective over time.
We also re-evaluated the security of our supply chain. For any company, this means working closely with your security team to ensure that all third-party vendors hold security as a top priority, echoing your own business model. If there was ever any question or doubt, or if the vendor was notorious for headline-making security flaws, a change needed to be made — before major repercussions happened further down the line.
The year 2020 dramatically transformed the way we do business, and 2021 continued to serve as a year of change and evolution in the era of hybrid work. The hybrid environment is here to stay, and business leaders must reflect on the challenges from the past 18 months to help guide us forward and make this new environment a success for all employees, regardless of where or when they work.
