Future of business in a collaborative environment

The future of work, employees’ profile, and professional environment are changing rapidly, and 2021 can be a transformative year in this context. If the organizational climate was already important before the pandemic, the challenge of managing and engaging remote or hybrid workforce for the long term now brings an even more challenging perspective. 

Many companies adjusted well to telecommuting and all of their advantages in terms of cost and security, and today they are evaluating whether or not to go back to the office at a 100%, or to switch to hybrid models. On the other hand, employees’ opinion is divided, as shown by Deloitte’s survey.  33% of respondents say working from home is easier and enjoy virtual environment flexibility, as well as the time spared for not having to travel.   Another 34% find it more difficult, since isolation hinders concentration, and consider that serving customers and colleagues remotely is more challenging.  

Collaborative environments were a growing trend before the pandemic, primarily because of the benefits they entail for the company and employees.  Main advantages in a nutshell: 

Professional performance improvement: collaborative work enhances each team member’s performance. This system represents a great motivation for professionals and encourages them to do their best in order to reach success. 

Increased time management: sharing talent helps creating a more agile work environment. 

Democratized knowledge: sharing ideas is always enriching. Collaborative environments provide each professional with the opportunity to build their vision and show their strength to get the most of them. Because of that, knowledge is shared and each project member grows professionally. 

Higher company engagement: this work strategy nurtures an internal innovation culture and creates more commitment between company and their employees.  

Several studies indicate that companies promoting collaborative work are up to five times more likely to achieve high performance. However, the sudden and radical change in the professional environment had negative impacts as well. Many employees felt disconnected from their teams. Companies need to focus on conveying what they have learned from collaborative environments to remote work, investing in tools and technology supportive of this new model. 

There are a series of factors that influence our behavior at work, either how information flows among teams, how decisions are made, location, or how employee benefit programs are measured and enforced.  Effective communication from anywhere is a fundamental premise for all of them. 

With an eye on this challenge, Lumen combines their technologies and expertise with those of leading collaboration solution providers, such as MS Teams, Cisco Webex, and Zoom, to improve videoconferencing and shared content customer experience to help businesses continue with their vital conversations. These Collaboration solutions bring together Lumen’s integrated network security capabilities and the security features built in collaborative environments, to proactively protect businesses using their combined services. They provide an enhanced work experience for businesses all over the world, matching our platform’s speed and reliability with world-class collaboration solutions. 

This combination of delivery helps companies stay productive and nimble, fostering a more collaborative culture. 

Collaborative work is here to stay and guided by our belief that humanity is at its best when technology improves the way we live and work, we remain steadfast in our quest for innovations that deliver amazing experiences and help companies and their employees achieve the success they seek integrated, learning from each other.