siliconindia | | July 20208By Sowmyanarayan Sampath, President - Global Enterprise, VerizonSowmyanarayan is leading Verizon's global enterprise business unit (worth $12 billion) and is responsible for securely connecting Verizon's customers to global economy.RETURN TO BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL: WORKPLACE OF THE FUTUREin my opinionE very year, thinktanks, businesses (including Verizon), academics and analysts give their view on the technology trends that they believe will most impact the future workplace--and how those technologies are shaping business technology investment. It's a constant concern for business leaders around the globe.Over the years, the pressures driving toward remote working have been building, but no one could have predicted the seismic shift caused by COVID-19. Entire functions of many global organizations are now working remotely, and this looks set to permanently alter the way people think about the world of work.Remote working is no longer a benefit, luxury or convenience. It's also more than a current make-do for organizations looking to conduct business as usual. We argue that senior leaders will have to leverage this inflection point to drive sustainable competitive advantage for their organizations in the new normal.We are creating a series of articles that will examine how business leaders need to think about enabling the workplace of the future, with remote working fully integrated into business practice. In this first article, we are focusing on the technology building blocks that CIOs need to consider while taking into account the underlying emerging set of new technologies.The COVID-19 effectEven before the coronavirus hit, remote working had been steadily increasing in many countries around the globe. For example, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank found that over the last 30 years, remote working in the U.S. has grown 7% yearly. Despite that growth, only 7% of U.S. civilians currently have access to a "flexible workplace" benefit, according to theU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.Many organizations, therefore, have largely stayed true to the idea of the office workplace--that is, until COVID-19 hit. One reason for this could be that many established businesses have foundations that were built in the last century, and the corporate world is still primarily defined by the baby boomers--a group that entered the workforce before mobile phones, personal computers and the internet even existed. For them, the office is where work is done, and the very concept of remote working may raise concerns over productivity and motivation. Which is why many organizations have not enabled remote working as part of their business as usual before now. Those organizations that were still largely built around an office-based model are the ones that have had to scramble the hardest in recent weeks in the drive to set up remote working capabilities.The 4 waves of remote workingIn our view, there are four waves of remote working, and right now, we're in the middle of the COVID-19 - induced third wave. The COVID-19 crisis is hastening organizations ambitions to embrace remote working as the new normal.What CIOs around the globe need to think about is how to make this happen.What's interesting is that, over recent years, we've already seen "traditional" ways of working being pressured from various directions, including the impact of the sharing economy on lifestyle, the gradual decline in commute efficiency, the fight for millennial talent and the impact of the climate crisis on air travel. This is perhaps why many jobs were already starting to be enabled remotely, from contact centers to customer service, computer programming to sales, data entry to medical billing, coding to design.What is becoming clear is that the post-COVID-19 new normal will be different. Boston Consulting Group's view is that "comfort with remote work will reshape our future workplace", where flexible work arrangements will increasingly be the norm. In the post-COVID-19 fourth wave of remote working, organizations wishing to drive
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