employment

Employee experience crucial in hybrid work environment – Cisco

Gelo Gonzales

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Employee experience crucial in hybrid work environment – Cisco

Shutterstock

'You need connectivity, collaboration, security – all the capabilities you have at the office, you should have at home,' says Dave West, president of IT firm Cisco APAC and Japan

MANILA, Philippines – Dave West, president of IT firm Cisco in the Asia-Pacific and Japan regions, discussed recently the challenges that hybrid work faces now at one of the sessions at the annual Cisco Live conference held last June 12 to 16, 

“Hybrid work is here to stay,” said West. “It makes our employees happier. And if we think about the great resignation, employees want choice. They’ll look elsewhere without [that choice for hybrid work].”

In a recent survey by human resources solutions company Sprout, hybrid work or the combination of work-from-home and work-at-office setups has become the preferred work arrangement, with 65% participants expressing their preference for it. Sprout’s CEO Patrick Gentry also said that 2022 is the year that hybrid work “becomes the rule rather than the exception, and tech has a huge role to play.” 

Certainly, Cisco, which dominates the enterprise network infrastructure segment, with a market share of 55% followed by Huawei at 9.3%, has a huge role to play for companies in the era of hybrid work. 

West explained that in a hybrid environment, “every home office is a branch office.” 

“You need connectivity, collaboration, security – all the capabilities you have at the office, you should have at home.” He stressed the need to make hybrid work “inclusive” regardless of whether you are working from home or working at the office, meaning employees are properly equipped with reliable connectivity free from disruptions; a level of cybersecurity that ensures an employee is protected from threats wherever they choose to work; and equipped with the tools that make collaboration seamless. 

In every office meeting now, for example, there will at least be one person that will be joining the meeting virtually. West stressed that the experience, as far as the usage of technology is concerned, must be incredible for both physical and virtual attendees to keep them engaged, and prevent disruptive moments.

“[Employee] experience is absolutely fundamental. You have to create those experiences, and these experiences rely on reliable, secure connections. If these are not reliable, it will jeopardize the experience. Experience must be fantastic no matter where you are, and it is fundamental to success.”

Among the new products that Cisco launched at the conference geared towards supporting hybrid work experiences is the ThousandEyes WAN Insights technology, an automated network monitoring tool that “proactively alerts IT teams to issues before they happen and harm user experience.” 

As many cybersecurity experts have also noted, the hybrid work environment opens up the workplace to more threats, particularly because people may use personal devices that aren’t secure, and work devices for personal use. 

On this, West said that over the past few years, 56% of small and medium businesses in the Asia-Pacific region have suffered a cyber incident. Seventy-five percent of those 56% lost customer data as a part of those cyber attacks. The threats may continue to grow said West as the overall “attack surface” or possible points of entry for cyber attackers is expanding exponentially, especially in under-protected hybrid work setups.

From a technological standpoint, security remains a crucial component in hybrid work. But the whole user experience for the employee – the devices, software, connectivity among others – is just as important in such a setup. – Rappler.com

Add a comment

Sort by

There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.

Summarize this article with AI

How does this make you feel?

Loading
Download the Rappler App!
Clothing, Apparel, Person

author

Gelo Gonzales

Gelo Gonzales is Rappler’s technology editor. He covers consumer electronics, social media, emerging tech, and video games.