How did social media support organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The power of social media came to light during the COVID-19 pandemic when organizations faced an unprecedented shift. It came in the form of mandated work from home, which took a toll on employee productivity and mental well-being, as everyone was isolated. During this time, social media sites became a platform to stay connected with peers and updated on the latest news and information. Nearly all social media sites amped up their features to incorporate the new business model. Moreover, the ongoing pandemic accelerated the use of online forum discussions to facilitate professionals to share industry-related insights and ways to transition to the new normal. Most organizations enhanced their presence on LinkedIn, where they promoted employees to share stories of professional and personal growth, challenges, etc. This helped everyone feel they were not alone in this. Moreover, social media has also become a preferred platform for global hiring. Additionally, many companies encouraged their employees to post their work from home pictures and videos on social media to foster a positive environment. Overall, social media has become a powerful way to promote employee well-being and connect with co-workers. Now let’s take a look at the benefits of using social media for business.

Why is social media important for your business?

Social media is an effective platform for businesses to enhance their customer reach, sales, and profit margins. It offers a myriad of benefits. Here’s a list of compelling reasons to build your brand’s social media presence right away.

Positions the organization on a global platform

There are 3.96 billion social media users as of 2022, and the number is projected to grow to 4.41 billion by 2025. Given the exponential user growth rate, no organization can ignore this as an effective tool to make a mark in the marketplace. When organizations create their social media profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, they inadvertently open their doors to a global audience. And as a result, they can target a larger clientele. Brands like GoPro, Nike, Spotify, Wayfair, and Starbucks are some examples that stand out in positioning their brand on the global map. Using different social media sites, one can engage with their customers, respond to their needs better, and even collaborate with the influencers to target the right audience.

Streamlines communication in a hybrid setup

The after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have split the workforce into three groups, in-office, hybrid, and remote, making collaboration a tedious process. Social media works as a bridge in these challenging situations by enabling employees to communicate effortlessly. It is faster than most traditional communication tools like email and other messaging software that have their own limitations. Furthermore, the informal nature of social media allows the Gen Zs and the millennial-led workforce to communicate seamlessly.

Leads to organic traffic and boosts sales

Social media is instrumental in getting organic traffic that eventually generates leads for businesses. Using social media analytics, businesses can target their customers by tracking their activity and also pay for sponsored ads to increase top-of-the-mind recall value. Thus, when customers plan to buy a product or service in that niche, the brand becomes their first choice. For example, people refer to Xerox when they want a photocopy and Coca-cola when they want a soft drink. In addition, brands today run attractive contests in collaboration with social media influencers and build a community that they can leverage to drive sales.

Networking with the right audience and tracking competitors

Social media helps businesses tremendously when connecting and networking with the right people. Further, it serves as an online marketplace where vendors meet their potential customers. The actionable insights provided by social media apps help brands understand their target audience, purchase history, and their buying behavior. Leveraging this data, they can approach them at the right time in their buying journey. Furthermore, businesses can run an extensive competitor analysis to determine the strengths, content type, audience engagement, gaps, and threats. They can use these insights to make data-driven decisions and amplify their social media marketing game. Along with this, even employees get a chance to connect with the professionals in their domain and gain industry knowledge.

Facilitates training and personal development for employees

The advent of remote work and online education has propelled social media apps to add a new feature to their existing suite. Popular platforms like LinkedIn learning, edWeb, Edmodo, ISTE community, and Ted-Ed have become the first preference for professional learning and career development. Employees can use their free time to access and learn more about their industry from training modules and articles shared on these platforms. Organizations also sponsor these courses for their workforce to gain a competitive advantage.

Improves employee acknowledgement and retention

Since employees are working remotely, organizations can avail social media to acknowledge their hard work. They can add their employees’ pictures with captions talking about the tangible benefits their commitment brought to the company. This fosters a sense of accomplishment amongst the employees, and they can share these posts on their profiles to enhance credibility. It also helps increase the employee retention rate because they feel valued and recognized.

Helps recruit the right talent across geographies

According to Glassdoor, 72% of people look up their jobs on social media. Using social media as a hiring medium is an ongoing trend for most organizations. Businesses can recruit from a global talent pool by leveraging their social media presence. Moreover, job seekers are more likely to apply to a company with a strong brand presence online, reflecting their work culture. One of the prime examples is the well-known food chain McDonald’s. They used Snapchat in Canada to hire employees by taking an innovative approach. They tweaked the term applications to “snaplications” to attract the Genz and millennials as they were the prime targets. Aspirants could upload a thirty-second video sharing why they want to work at the burger franchise. Organizations can implement social media to elevate employee productivity, not just business benefits. Here are some ways to get started.

Tips on using social media to enhance employee productivity

When organizations use social media wisely and strategically, it can be beneficial in improving employee productivity in the long run. Here’s how;

Formulate a personalized social media calendar

Organizations heavily invest in building their social media presence and creating content around their brand on different platforms. However, the best practice is to create a content calendar that will help employees plan their schedules ahead of time. Further, it will prevent any clash on priority and enable employees to prepare the necessary content on time. For example, if the social media team prepares three posts a week, including videos, reels, and infographics, they can schedule the posts a week prior. This will ensure better time management and productivity, helping organizations consistently keep their audience engaged.

Encourage employees to take mental breaks for a healthy work-life balance

Due to various reasons like high workload, tight deadlines, etc., employees could miss out on taking breaks. However, constant work or long working hours can lead to burnout, lowering productivity. When employees consume social media content for entertainment, it releases dopamine, which activates the brain’s pleasure and reward center. Therefore, employees are rejuvenated and return with increased enthusiasm and vigor to continue work. They can also read some inspirational stories for a productivity boost if they feel disengaged.

Create an online community for employees

Organizations can create an online community or forum on social media to help employees connect and communicate with like-minded people from their domain. They can raise questions and doubts, discuss trends, seek expert advice, and understand conceptual topics. These forums can work as a means of getting a third-party perspective on processes from professionals outside the organization. Employees can also utilize these online communities to collaborate on innovative ideas. It can expedite problem-solving, elevating productivity.

Use social media platforms for rewards and recognition

As discussed earlier, organizations can leverage social media to recognize their employees. One way is to post their story on LinkedIn, which helps boost employee morale or create a shout-out on stories and reels crediting an employee’s hard work. Sharing employee’s contribution gives them a sense of purpose as they will be able to see the conspicuous results of their efforts. It will also encourage them to work harder to attain further goals, helping them be more productive. Additionally, an enhanced feeling of joy and inclusivity will enhance employee retention.

Set clear goals and tasks for social media

Social media can increase sales and reach a target audience, but doing it unorganized can do more harm than good. Therefore, social media managers can set clear goals and objectives every month. When employees get clear information in advance, they can divide the work accordingly. Moreover, organizations can first state the objective of using social media. For example, some may use it to hire global talent, while others seek to generate leads and increase sales. Clarifying the objective before executing the social media strategy will help employees put their efforts in the right direction, thus enhancing productivity.

Conclusion

As mentioned in this blog, leveraging social platforms in the workplace the right way can contribute to employee productivity. Therefore, it’s high time organizations encouraged their employees to use social media constructively and not perceive it as a source of distraction. Coupled with best practices, the strategies mentioned above can help you put social media to the best use.

The Glossary

The Saviom Solution:

SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solutions for managing enterprise resources efficiently and effectively. Having more than 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence in over 50 countries. It is also popular with more than 100 customers and helps them achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software which can be easily customized as per business requirements.

This stat indicates that conflicts are inherent to a workplace. However, while reconciliations are easy in the in-office work setup, they can blow out of proportion in a hybrid workplace.   

One major reason is the absence of in-person conversations, making it challenging to bring the distributed team members on the same page.  

Additionally, differences in perspectives, working styles, or cultures, and difficulty in building trust and transparency, etc., can aggravate hybrid team conflicts. Furthermore, these conflicts can garner an inconducive work environment and affect an individual’s performance, lower work quality, and cause unplanned attritions.  

To combat this, a good leader must implement their conflict resolution skills and resolve these disputes to maintain team synergy. This blog highlights the major challenges faced while resolving conflicts in a hybrid work environment and the strategies to overcome them. 

But first, let’s understand: 

What is conflict resolution?

Conflict resolution in a workplace is the process of resolving a conflict or discrepancy between two or more parties. While individuals may resolve their disputes mutually, it can often need a manager’s or team leader’s intervention based on their severity and intensity. 

Effective conflict resolution entails determining the cause, eliminating it, and reaching a mutually acceptable and peaceful resolution. It also involves finding and implementing measures to prevent the same type of conflict from reoccurring in the future. 

Now that it is clear what conflict resolution implies, let’s understand why it is an uphill task in a hybrid work setup.  

Why is conflict resolution a challenge in a hybrid workspace?

One of the best ways to sustain team synergy and foster a positive work environment is by effectively handling differences, disagreements, and conflicts between individuals. 

However, it becomes a daunting task in a hybrid workspace. 

Here are the reasons why. 

Ineffective communication and lack of real-time collaboration

Communication is a major concern in hybrid work setup. As the team members are distributed across different time zones, managers find it challenging to bring them on a common platform at the same time. Just implementing asynchronous communication channels cannot solve this purpose.  

Moreover, often video calls (synchronous communication) can’t replicate in-person interactions due to the loss of conversational nuances. This difficulty in streamlining communication between individuals makes reconciliations arduous for the management.

Lack of trust and transparency

Trust and transparency are not the strongest suits of a hybrid work setup. That’s because when employees don’t get a chance to work in person with their coworkers, it leads to a gap in understanding different opinions, perspectives, or even working styles. 

This breeding skepticism worsens the disputes and makes conflict resolution a challenge as both parties are unwilling to iron out their differences or understand each other’s stance.  

Cultural and cross-generational differences

A hybrid workforce usually comprises a diverse workforce in terms of culture, nationalities, generations, and more. However, these differences lead to a shift in mindsets and perspectives.   

When two cross-cultural or cross–generational employees are caught in a dispute, managers may not be able to find a middle ground and resolve it.   

However, leaders can overcome these challenges with effective conflict resolution skills. 

Let’s see how,

How to resolve conflicts in hybrid teams?

Although you can form a customized conflict resolution strategy for your firm, there are some common ways you can implement to address conflicts.   

Enlisted below are some of the most effective ones, 

Conduct one-on-one with both parties individually

While resolving conflicts, managers often skip to the resolution process and jump to conclusions without gathering the complete details or cause of the dispute. This absence of adequate information may render the meeting ineffective and fail the very purpose of conflict resolution with the parties involved.  

Therefore, managers must make it a point to discuss the matter separately with each member involved in the disparity.  

For this, you can have one-on-one video calls to listen to each side, understand their perspectives, analyze them, take a stance, and deduce ways to address the conflict and resolve the discrepancy. This step will help you get the whole picture of the situation, assess it from all angles, and determine its source objectively. 

Use a communication tool to host an open-ended discussion

After separate meetings with individuals, you should bring the conflicting parties on a common platform to discuss issues. You can use any video conferencing tool as appropriate to schedule a video call and send an invite to the ones involved. A small introduction to brief everyone on the meeting’s main motive can help set the stage and prepare for the discussion that follows.  

The meeting should be open-ended to allow disputing members to freely express their viewpoints without fear of oppression or hesitation. However, laying down ground rules is imperative to maintain decorum and ensure no one uses derogatory language. It also helps make sure that no one takes over the meeting and everyone gets a fair chance to voice their concerns. 

Promote empathy and mutual understanding

In order to create a comfortable space for employees to share their side of the story, managers must exhibit empathy. Only then can an employee trust their leader and be transparent about their concerns. Further, it will help you understand the situation with an open mind, analyze the reason behind a person’s actions with clarity, and form an opinion on it. 

Besides being empathetic yourself, it is equally vital for you to encourage and remind conflicting individuals to empathize with each other during the meeting. It will help them understand and accept the other side better, which will expedite conflict management and resolution. 

Focus on the issue without getting personal

If the disputes go out of hand, managers may lose their calm and composure and end up making a personal remark on someone’s personality, even if it is unintentional. This will do more harm and make matters even worse. Managers must refrain from doing so and stay focused on the end goal. They should give their undivided attention to the issue at hand, maintain their cool, no matter how intense a conflict is. 

Additionally, the same code of conduct should be followed by the conflicting parties. A warning should be issued to the person resorting to personal attacks, followed by a suitable disciplinary action if needed. It will help keep the flow of the meeting in the right direction and prevent any unwanted animosities and clashes, thereby speeding up conflict resolution.  

Maintain a neutral tone without any biases

Knowingly or unknowingly, managers may end up favoring someone who they have worked closely with. However, the role of a mediator necessitates absolute impartiality and objectivity. Even if a manager prefers one particular employee to another, it shouldn’t reflect in their tone and demeanor while addressing conflicts and disputes.  

They should consider everyone’s concerns, issues, and viewpoints without predispositions or prejudices. It will help ensure that no one feels undervalued, unheard, or left out and keep the feelings of hostility and resentment at bay. Moreover, it will help you seek the cooperation you need to brainstorm the solution, thus simplifying conflict resolution.  

Reason with both the parties and encourage them to find a solution mutually

After listening to all the conflicting sides and gathering everyone’s input, managers should analyze their perspectives thoroughly. Then they should explain the rationale behind the actions, viewpoints to both the parties and convey their stance while citing the reason behind it. 

After doing so, they can finally give some time to employees to come to a conclusion. By compiling their inputs, suggestions for the way forward, and adding your own inputs; you can encourage them to arrive at a mutually agreeable solution. This way, managers can facilitate finding a middle ground by not imposing their decision but encouraging the individuals to develop an understanding for each other. 

Make a decision in case of constant disagreement

While a mediator is ideally supposed to listen to both sides and promote mutual agreement, it may not always work out. When disputes grow intense and parties turn too hostile to resolve the matter harmoniously, the manager should step in and take the matter into their hands.  

It implies that they should analyze the situation thoroughly, consolidate all opinions and suggestions, and use their discretion to arrive at a solution. Besides, it is their responsibility to ensure that all the parties involved respect and follow the decision. In addition, the manager can also suggest tips to avoid such confrontations in the future. 

Tips to minimize conflicts

Ronald Reagan, the former US President, says,
“Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”

It is true that no workplace is absolutely conflict-free. However, how effectively you handle them determines your leadership skills in an organization.

While the above-discussed strategies can help you resolve disputes once they occur, you should also strive to prevent them in the first place.

Enlisted below are certain tips that you can follow to minimize workplace conflicts.

• Set clear expectations and emphasize individual roles and responsibilities to prevent role ambiguities.
• Ensure equal growth opportunities for both in-office and remote workers to make them feel equally valued and prevent unhealthy competition.
• Pair team members with similar working styles together to achieve better synchronization.
• Promote mutual trust and transparency among team members.
• Acknowledge, celebrate, and reward milestones collectively to make everyone feel recognized and an integral part of the organization.
• Leverage the right tools and technology to bring team members on the same page and maintain transparency.
• Host timely virtual team-building sessions and watercooler conversations to strengthen team bonds.
• Prioritize conducting emotional and diversity intelligence training to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity (DE, &I) in a hybrid work environment.

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients with their Workforce Planning Software. Saviom also provides tools for Enterprise Project Resource Management, Project Portfolio Management, and Professional Service Automation. Boost your remote team collaboration with Saviom.

What are cross-functional teams?

Cross-functional teams comprise human resources belonging to a company’s different functional areas or departments who come together and work collectively to achieve a common goal or accomplish a project. Let’s take another related example. The software development team of a product firm can work cohesively with the sales team to understand the current industry demands and incorporate the requisite features in a new product. This practice is beneficial in two ways. For one, there is extensive knowledge sharing between different departments which will improve the information base of your firm. For two, cross-functional collaboration is enhancing client satisfaction. Let’s delve into the benefits,

Advantages of cross-functional teams

Global business leaders are considering cross-functional teams the future of the work structure. The reason is the plethora of benefits they provide for enterprises. Here’s a rundown on those benefits that explain why forming these teams is the need of the hour.

Increased innovation

Every employee differs in viewpoints, approaches, and personality. So, when members from different functional groups work as a team, they bring their own perspectives to the table. In addition, their acquired industry experience, unique skills, and creativity combine to pave the way for “out-of-the-box” ideas that boost innovation. For example, Apple uses cross-functional collaboration to enhance customer experience. The business process management team, for example, works cross-functionally with other Apple teams and brainstorms ways to improve the process and achieve desired results.

Better knowledge sharing

Forming cross-functional teams facilitates an easy flow of knowledge between different departments. For instance, if a sales executive notices a trend in clients’ expectations, they can share it with the marketing team. It helps the marketing team revamp their strategies using these valuable insights and maintain their competitive edge. Moreover, cross-functional collaboration enables the team to work in tandem and identify and overcome project-related challenges from a broader perspective without limiting themselves to a niche. For instance, CISCO created the “Architecture Centre of Excellence” (ACoE), a cross-functional geography community. Its members are architect experts who can learn, collaborate, and share knowledge about architecture topics. ACoE has helped CISCO achieve some of its business goals, including an increase in site traffic and better clients’ experience.

High-performance work culture

Companies strive to maintain and sustain a high-performance culture to deliver exceptional results. As discussed earlier, resources get an all-inclusive perspective to look at a project when they work in cross-functional teams. They can leverage diverse skills and ideas to deduce the best possible solution for a project bottleneck. Moreover, when different departments work in cohesion, it helps the members understand the interdependencies better. They get a clear picture of how the project is the result of the success of each of these interdependent tasks. It also increases individual accountability as every resource knows how their role will affect the progress of a consecutive task. It eventually enhances individual performances and the quality of the deliverable, thereby garnering a high-performance culture.

Enhances efficiency and profitability

Forming a cross-functional team empowers you to go beyond matrix boundaries and leverage diverse projects’ internal resources. This way, it reduces dependence on external channels to hire resources, thereby controlling resource costs and increasing profitability. At the same time, managers can tap into the maximum potential of each resource and leverage their talent, leading to efficient and intelligent utilization of the workforce. Furthermore, working towards a common goal enables the team to synchronize their efforts better. These individual efforts reflect in their work which escalates the overall team’s and organizational efficiency. These benefits are a clear indication of the necessity to empower cross-functional teams. So, let’s understand the ways to bolster them.

How to empower cross-functional teams?

Forming a cross-functional team is just half the battle won. Empowering them to ensure their consistent performance and productivity is the real task. Managers can implement multiple strategies to achieve the same. Here’s a rundown on some of the most prominent ones.

Standardize communication policies

Seamless communication is important for a business, especially when team members are dispersed across geographical and matrix boundaries. First, you need to establish clear rules and guidelines to streamline cross-functional communication. Deciding on the channels to use across your teams based on the purpose follows next. Managers can implement a common platform, a code of conduct to maintain decorum, and establish the rules for using synchronous and asynchronous methods. It helps minimize the chances of discrepancies and internal confusion regarding communication. Besides, you can set protocols for away messages, time-outs, email alerts, or one-on-ones with teammates. For instance, one of the protocols can be setting an agenda before the onset of any meeting. It can potentially reduce the meeting hours as the host will stick to the point, ultimately minimizing zoom fatigue and enhancing productivity.

Assemble the right team with the right skills

A crucial step to forming the right cross-functional team is assessing the project’s requirements and identifying the resources from different departments accordingly. Competent allocation of the workforce and assembling the right team ensure project quality and timely delivery. Moreover, managers must also ascertain that the resources possess requisite soft skills like team spirit, emotional intelligence, problem-solving approach, etc., that align with the company’s culture. This will allow the team to work in tandem and minimize discrepancies. Further, managers should form a fair mix of resources from different band levels and competencies. It will provide fair opportunities for less-experienced employees or freshers to learn, grow, and prove their mettle in a collaborative environment.

Define individual roles and shared goals clearly

Defining organizational goals is essential to align the members’ efforts with long-term objectives. However, while most team leaders ensure this, they fail to take proper measures to prevent “social loafing”, which is: A natural psychological phenomenon whereby employees generally tend to reduce their effort when working collectively instead of alone. It makes those who work diligently feel exploited while the ones who slack off drift away further from their individual accountability. The result is a rift between them, which hampers team spirit and impacts the overall productivity. Thus, a team leader should also establish key performance indicators and goals for individual team members. It will ensure individual and team accountability and secure the project’s fate.

Celebrate milestones collectively

Rewarding oneself is incumbent to boost morale and positivity. Thus, managers must make it a point to celebrate the accomplishment of milestones and recognize the ones responsible for taking it to the finish line. Expressing gratitude towards the whole team and acknowledging individual efforts makes the workforce feel valued and appreciated. Additionally, appreciating and rewarding the work in front of the team fosters a sense of pride and motivates employees to perform better. There are myriad ways to reward and recognize extraordinary efforts. You can send an appreciation email or use social media shout-outs to high-performers and ultimately inspire them to walk the extra mile.

Foster trust and transparency

Working with a non-homogeneous group with different mindsets may sometimes cause trust or credibility to erode and build tension. However, it is essential to iron out these differences between the team members and the leader to upkeep cohesiveness and efficiency. Being transparent about your expectations and their performance is also crucial to retaining the team’s trust and confidence in your leadership. Project managers must also promote autonomy and avoid micromanaging the employees. It gives them a sense of responsibility and makes them feel trusted by their leaders. At the same time, managers should conduct timely reviews and one-on-ones to point out the areas of improvement. Moreover, they should also listen to their concerns and assure them of appropriate remedial measures. It will help prevent the issues from aggravating and ensure the sustenance of employee engagement and productivity.

Promote inclusiveness in decision-making

As a project manager, you should always make sure that you are unbiased and give equal importance to all the members from different departments. For this, it is vital for you to ask for regular suggestions, feedback, and opinions about the project to maintain equity among your team members. You can involve them further via regular stand-ups, brainstorming sessions, meetings, etc. Allowing employees from different backgrounds, age groups, communities, etc., in your team to voice their ideas is also a good practice. It will let everyone feel comfortable, valued and contribute to decision-making in crucial matters. This way, you can ensure that all the critical decisions in the course of a project reflect fair representation from all departments.

Encourage change and innovation

A well-developed change management framework is an integral part of a successful organization. It helps you enhance your cross-functional team’s efficiency, stay relevant, and maintain a competitive edge. That’s because a definite roadmap allows members to adopt new technology and tools, processes, workflow restructuring, etc., at ease. Besides fostering change management, you should also aim for a sustainable innovation management process. It encourages out-of-the-box thinking, collaborative effort and helps increase ROI. Innovative and pathbreaking ideas help transform the processes and make them more efficient and resilient, thereby ensuring business sustenance. Thus, integrating these two vital processes will future-ready your workforce and help them tackle the evolving demands and uncertainties with ease.

Monitor and improve processes regularly

A cross-functional team leader should make sure to stay on top of tracking the project’s progress on a regular basis. Constantly analyzing and determining if the methodologies and workflows set for the project are effective is also necessary. Regular audits of these processes and operations help identify the ones that did not yield the expected output. If and when these setbacks are identified, managers should critically analyze the reasons like excessive time consumption, negligence, mismanagement behind its inefficiency. Accordingly, they should also take the teammates’ feedback and then devise a more effective and efficient alternative method. It will aid resources to perform better and seamlessly execute project tasks.

Leverage advanced tools and technologies

Equipping your cross-functional teams with the latest tools and technology is imperative to streamline project execution. Advanced technology such as AI, ML, IoT, ANN, among others, elevates the automation of routine admin tasks and makes room for creativity. One thing worth considering here is that a tool inventory is unique to every organization and its needs. So, you should choose the one that aligns with your requirements. However, certain tools are a must-have in this inventory. Project management apps and workflow automation software, for example, help outline to-do tasks, streamline their execution, and reduce redundancy. Furthermore, video conferencing apps help connect with teammates across various geographies in real-time. Finally, one of the most important tools for an enterprise is resource management software. It gives enterprise-wide visibility of resources which makes it possible to manage the workforce efficiently. You can add more to this list based on your domain and industry needs.

The following section explains in detail how resource management software helps empower cross-functional teams and utilize them efficiently.

How resource management software boosts the productivity of cross-functional teams?

A resource management tool can be a potential enabler in empowering cross-functional teams by providing myriad functionalities and forming a strong team. We have discussed some of them here.

The 360-degree visibility gives an overview of all the resources’ profiles, including competency and skills. Using the advanced filter of the resource management tool, you can pick the best-fit resources and create your cross-functional team for a project. It, thus, helps prevent the allocation of over/under skilled resources to projects. Besides, when the employees work on a project that aligns with their competencies and interest, it enhances their engagement, and eventually, productivity.

At the same time, comprehensive utilization reports can help assess the workload and distribute it uniformly, thus preventing over or under-utilization. Managers can use optimization techniques like resource leveling and resource smoothing to maintain this uniformity. These techniques help prevent overutilization and burnout and let resources limit their attention span to only critical tasks. It elevates their work rate and also ensures the quality of the deliverable.

With foresight into pipeline project demand, managers can gauge the skills gap and take proactive measures to bridge it. For example, initiating upskilling and training programs will allow resources to acquire new skills and fill these talent gaps. It will help them diversify their existing portfolio and promote them to work on multi-faceted projects. This will, in turn, enhance the sense of belonging in them and empower them to be more productive to attain project and career goals.

Additionally, managers can empower employees by letting them select the tasks of their preferences and interest. They can create a vacancy against a particular project task and allow members to volunteer and opt for it. Based on their profiles, managers can then select the best-fit resource.

All these functionalities will enable businesses to maintain the resource health index and motivate the resources and teams to add more value to projects and perform better.

Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced technology-driven business landscape, organizations are striving hard to sustain the fierce global competition due to ever-evolving skill demands. Therefore, companies have now realized that they can no longer rely on the structure of siloed departments and are embracing a culture of cross-functional teams to gain a competitive edge. Cross-functional teams are a great way to look beyond matrix boundaries and break silos. They help foster and strengthen an open-work culture where employees with diverse skills, expertise, and perspectives converge to achieve a common goal. It also boosts innovation, helps save resource costs, nurtures a high-performing culture, and increases profitability. With the above-discussed practices, you can empower your cross-functional teams, raise their productivity, and achieve your company-wide milestones. So, how do you empower your cross-functional teams?

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM has over 20 years of experience helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients meet their specific business goals. Saviom also provides tools for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software. So, SAVIOM can help your business to establish an efficient system geared towards your specific business challenges.

A sudden shift to teleworking compelled organizations to revisit their workflows and processes and introduce new norms to navigate seamlessly through the transition.

Businesses started forming a robust tech repository that comprised tools for collaboration, real-time project and resource management, virtual onboarding, and so on. These trends made remote working hassle-free, and both employees and organizations began to appreciate the benefits that came along the way. Subject to this, work from home became a preference from just being a mandate.

Gartner’s research states that:

Almost 50% of employees will continue to work remotely in the post-pandemic era.

This blog highlights the journey and evolution of remote work from the pre-pandemic times to the post-COVID era and the work trends that will continue to rise. Let’s begin with diving deep into the history and emergence of remote work.

Throwback to the pre-covid times & why remote work wasn’t a norm?

Multiple factors led to the resistance in adopting the remote work model. However, over time the benefits and presence of modern tools and technology overruled the concerns. Here is a glimpse of this journey:

Companies were wary of moving their data outside their premises

Due to a dearth of cybersecurity infrastructure in the previous decade, data security and privacy was a major concern. Companies were daunted by security breaches, spyware, or malware attacks during those times.

They were also concerned about hiring third-party vendors for data management because they would have less control over data in their distribution centers than over on-premise data. So, businesses refrained from moving their data or providing access to it outside their premises.

Evolution of the onsite-offshore model for non-critical activities

In an onsite-offshore model, an on-site team takes up the project, and part of the work is outsourced to off-shore teams. As the off-shore team is often from a low-cost county, it incurs fewer costs and expenses than the on-site model. At the same time, employers have the liberty to hire talent from across geographical boundaries.

Looking at the benefits, organizations took a step forward and adopted the hybrid delivery model. However, they initially started outsourcing only non-critical tasks to off-shore employees as data security concerns were still prevalent.

Creation of captives for critical activities with secured environment

While outsourcing non-critical tasks was their first step towards saving costs, organizations were yet to find a way to increase profitability. They, thus, felt the need to devise a plan to outsource critical tasks to off-shore low-cost locations in a secured manner. Eventually, they introduced the concept of captive business units.

A captive center is a client-owned service delivery center, generally in an off-shore and low-cost country. It provides service resources to the client organization.

The client unit conducts critical operations as a part of its own. Despite being performed remotely, these activities are not outsourced to the vendor’s premises. Hence, the client has better control over risks associated with intellectual property theft through advanced security measures.

Reluctance to adopt the work-from-home model

Companies thought that remote work would be a deterrent to team members’ productivity. They were also skeptical about giving autonomy to the workforce while working remotely due lack of complete trust in employees.

As employees weren’t acquainted with the work-from-home model, they also were equally hesitant to embrace it and doubted its viability. So, although access to data outside offices and outsourcing of business tasks had started, the evolution of remote work to its present form was still far.

How Covid-19 changed the global landscape of work culture?

When Covid-19 struck, worldwide lockdown, strict travel bans, import-export restrictions, etc., turned the business environment chaotic. Global business leaders had to shun their routine work culture due to mandated office shutdowns. Despite significant data security and productivity concerns, they had to resort to remote work to survive the crisis. Besides, the work culture and management practices evolved in several ways.

For instance, organizations embraced video conferencing applications like Zoom and business collaboration tools like Slack, MS Teams, etc., to streamline communication and exchange necessary documents. They also leveraged resource management tools to manage and keep track of the workforce dispersed across boundaries. Virtual onboarding and team-building sessions became part and parcel of the work culture to foster a sense of belonging and keep the team connected in a distributed workspace.

Future work trends to look out for in the post-Covid era

The mandated work from home model brought forward a myriad of workplace trends that will continue to grow even in the post-covid era. The reason is they provide end-users with multiple benefits, including workplace flexibility, reduced infrastructure costs, better work-life balance, location independence, and more.

Below is the list of the trends most likely to last in the post-Covid era due to their high utility.

Growing preference for a hybrid work model

Glassdoor’s recent survey states:

Nearly 9 in 10 employees say they would prefer remote work for part of their person-days even after offices reopen.

The fact highlights that inclination to hybrid work arrangements among employees has soared globally. Organizations are catering to this growing demand as it provides mutual benefits to both employees and employers. Businesses can save a significant amount on infrastructure, maintenance, and utility costs. At the same time, employees have the flexibility and time to fulfill their personal commitments better. When employees strike a better work-life balance, they feel valued, which directly influences their engagement level, and increases their productivity, thereby benefiting the company.

Increased importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE, &I)

As businesses moved online, companies realized that they could consider expanding beyond domestic boundaries to hire talent. Now that enterprises are hiring employees from various countries, ethnicities, and cultures, it has diversified the workplace further. Remote work emerging as the new norm has also brought about myriad job opportunities for differently-abled individuals.

Moreover, more employees bringing their expertise to the table has also opened the door for innovations. All these changes have compounded to make the working culture all-inclusive, collaborative, and high-performing. Due to all these benefits, enterprises are ready to sustain this reinforced diverse and all-inclusive culture in the future.

Higher investment in employee wellness programs than ever

Gartner’s survey finds:

Over one-fourth of the employees surveyed are mentally depressed as a result of the pandemic.

Isolation, anxiety, and a sedentary lifestyle have led to increased mental and physical health issues amongst individuals. As a result, they have become more health-conscious and started taking initiatives to lead a healthy lifestyle. This growing awareness for physical and mental well-being led organizations to revamp their employee wellness strategies accordingly.

They are offering paid-day offs, fitness sessions, career counseling, and so on. For example, Starbucks announced to provide 20 free mental health sessions every year to its U.S. employees and eligible family members.

More job opportunities for professionals from small cities/country towns

Earlier, companies would often hire all their employees to work on-premise. As their offices were typically in tier-1 cities, professionals from country towns would find it challenging to relocate there. The reasons often comprised monetary constraints, family priorities, health issues, etc. However, the upsurge of remote work has brought about a monumental shift in their careers.

As a result, remote job roles gained more impetus. Several giants like Amazon and General Motors rolled out permanent remote jobs to adapt to changing times. Small-scale businesses also followed suit. This change paved the way for more job opportunities for professionals from small cities and country towns. It, thus, provided them with a fair chance to grow in their respective careers.

Better preparedness for business continuity

One of the vital lessons that companies learned from Covid-19 is to develop business resilience alongside business efficiency. They have, therefore, started drafting a business continuity program to detect potential threats and eliminate them ahead of time with efficient strategies. They first pick critical resources in various departments, including marketing, finance, etc., to act as risk managers.

They then create a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify and quantify critical risk threat scenarios next. Next, a plan for alternative actions to mitigate the impacts of risks is formulated. For instance, a manufacturer can identify secondary suppliers to serve as backups in cases of primary supplier constraints. Finally, team members are trained to form a business continuity plan to make them resilient and ready to tackle risks head-on. They are also trained to hone their emotional intelligence, teamwork, and other soft skills to stay calm and confident during adverse situations.

Minimized operational costs by adopting cloud infrastructure

The mandated work-from-home has escalated the prominence of cloud computing. Enterprises are now looking to replace physical tech infrastructure with cloud deployment models. Cloud computing doesn’t require a large in-house IT staff solely to install, repair, and maintain storage infrastructure. It, thus, helps a company cut down on huge upfront installation and maintenance costs, unlike traditional on-premise systems.

Additionally, as cloud computing enables seamless and secure data sharing, businesses consider it a trend they can keep following. Moreover, a company can allocate IT resources to more technology-intensive tasks and align their efforts with its long-term goals to boost profitability.

Emergence of new tools to facilitate virtual team building activities

As employees are dispersed across varied geographies, the need of the hour is staying well-connected to ensure smooth functioning of the team and completion of projects. Hence, organizations are using several management tools to enhance collaboration and bring remote team members on the same page. Enterprises are also implementing tools to streamline business processes like resource management, project management, and others.

They are taking steps to keep their remote team members’ engagement levels high using virtual conferencing tools like Zoom and Skype for team-building sessions. Further, virtual employee recognition programs and celebration events are being held extensively to enhance communication, strengthen relations, and develop a sense of belonging to raise productivity.

Conclusion

The Covid-19 outbreak forced companies to rethink their organizational framework and policies and adopt new work culture trends. It also re-emphasized the importance of focusing on not just business efficiency but also resilience to stay afloat amid a crisis.

Over time, they experienced that the adopted work trends are the best fit for the “new normal” post-Covid. So, while things may have started becoming normal again, large-scale work culture shifts and trends are here to stay.

What workplace trends would you follow post-Covid?

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