The Future Of Hybrid Work

Every so one hundred years, the human race experiences an unprecedented event that causes us to reimagine how we once did things. In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution moved many in Europe and the United States from fields to factories. Then, In the 1940s, World War II brought women into the workforce at unprecedented rates. 50 years later, the explosion of PCs and email drove a rapid increase in productivity and the speed of decision making, ushering in the digital age as we know it today. Lastly, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic drove employees out of offices to work from home.

Thus, was born the work from home era. This era, like many others, has completely switched things around. Several studies over the past few months indicate that productivity while working remotely from home is better than working in an office setting.

On average, those who work from home spend 10 minutes less a day being unproductive, work one more day a week, and are 47% more productive. As time progressed, work from home slowly evolved into hybrid work, providing an even better opportunity for the workforces to be more efficient, with less stress.

This leads us to understanding that for the ultimate performance from employees and employers alike, there must be optimum balance. This balance, according to research, can be achieved by combining remote work with office work, this what is known as hybrid work.

“The trends towards a more distributed work force continues to strengthen and grow. Some organisations have stated there is no return to work policy,” pointed out Kelvin Mugambi, the the Technical Solutions Architect at Cisco.

Kelvin was speaking during a webinar in conjunction with Computech. “Work from home benefits both employers and employees, including a higher level of productivity and efficiency,” averred Kelvin, before continuing “Yet, despite this, cyber security remains a top concern.”

Kelvin then went on to describe how cyber risks are present during work from home and hybrid situations, one of the biggest cyber risks is when credentials are stolen, this led him to talking about how verification of user identities must remain critical, with all security protocols in place.

With the Cisco Webex platform, employees who work from home and in hybrid situations, are fully protected by the systems’ advantages, which revolve around enabling frictionless global collaboration, flexible options for business needs, app integration for increased productivity, single point of IT admin and user generated content that is encrypted.

“Security should not be an afterthought, it should be talked about transparently, right from the start,” concluded Kelvin.

Threat detection in an era of work such as this, should be paramount. As work from home becomes more integrated into the lifestyles of people, so does the rise of attack perimeters. If you want to secure your workforce the solid way, Computech is your go to.