Ron Xavier |
There has been so much talk about hybrid IT environments, but not enough about the hybrid workplace which is affecting us all.
It’s important to consider the impact of hybrid work, and the key areas to think about in helping employees be engaged and productive regardless of where they work. It’s not where people work that drives results – it’s invested employees. But getting, and keeping, employees engaged is harder than ever. The last few years have taught us that hybrid work is the future. This way of working is no longer just a desire for employees, it’s an expectation and businesses must adapt if they want to attract and retain new talent. Your workplace is now a workspace which can be anywhere depending on your device and connectivity.
The new, physically distributed way of working brings new challenges that go beyond technology. Organisations can consider addressing goals such as supporting corporate culture, employee wellness, productivity, innovation, career development, employee contribution equity, and more. Kyndryl’s modern work goal is to bring together Microsoft technologies with Kyndryl’s integrations, services and processes to deliver a continuously improving total experience.
This means frictionless support, technology and productivity experiences that allow the technology to fade into the background for an employee to do their best work, which drives a better customer experience. We achieve continuous improvement for our customers with a data-driven approach, where we gain insights into the environment and turn those insights into action.
Let’s discuss Kyndryl’s four Ms of hybrid work: modern, meaningful, and measurable, with Microsoft.
Modern: Implementing modern identity, collaboration, devices, security, and automation tooling is vital for enabling more flexible ways of working. Not to mention, these items must be wrapped up with intelligent support capabilities to resolve issues efficiently. Modern also means implementing cloud-powered, cloud-connected, and cloud-native technologies that bring intelligence and visibility to your workflows.
Meaningful: Hybrid-working employees crave connectivity to the business and each other, meaning the importance of collaboration tooling has skyrocketed. Concerns about equity, visibility, productivity, culture, well-being, stagnated innovation, and maximising investments are also top priorities.
Measurable: The shift in service-level agreements that focus more on service availability to outcome-based experience-level agreements is key to gauging success and driving continuous improvement in the employee experience.
With Microsoft: The last 'M' is with Microsoft. That's the platform of choice and it’s what we're working with to be able to give clients what they need to maximise their investments. Right now, we're looking at intelligent adoption services. We have all had the experience of searching for specific training or trying to understand how to use a specific tool. You have to go and find that learning, and sometimes you're not sure exactly what you need to learn.
What we're looking at is tying together the usage analytics and productivity analytics to show how you use your tools day to day. We’re then leveraging Viva Learning for those who use the Viva platform or using connections or topics that will surface that learning to those who do not. Whether it's a virtual agent or just within the Viva platform itself, we want to build a service to teach you how to use OneDrive or SharePoint better, so you can now be more efficient with your workday.
Kyndyrl has helped customers achieve significant digital workplace outcomes. At a multinational petroleum company, we helped to improve end-user experience impacts by 30 per cent. We worked with a government agency to reduce the number of monthly service desk calls by 50 per cent. Our work with a public sector customer saw over 25,000 devices deployed in one week, and with our help a financial services firm reduced the average time to resolve service tickets by 96 per cent.
Analyst firm Nelson Hall recognised Kyndryl as a leader in cognitive service desk capability in a vendor evaluation and assessment tool report. The report said: “Everything Kyndryl does across the digital workplace is data-driven, with analytics guiding and being prescriptive regarding what the end-user experience needs to be. Facilitated through its cognitive channel, Kyndryl focuses on the integration of analytics, cognitive, and automation into all workplace offerings.”
Kyndryl wants to co-create a digital workplace for our customers that incorporates the four Ms – modern, meaningful, and measurable, with Microsoft. Our experts and open technology platform can provide the scale, security, and expertise to deliver enhanced digital experiences for your employees to help fuel collaboration, productivity, and enable an inclusive hybrid workplace culture.
To learn more about Kyndryl’s offering for the digital workplace, visit: www.kyndryl.com/us/en/services/digital-workplace
Ron Xavier is technical business development executive, Microsoft Global Center of Competency, digital workplace services technical at Kyndryl
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.