| |9 November 2019HIGHERReviewWhile IT makes the purchasing decisions for technological products, it is other departments like Human Resources (HR) who are often privy to employee habits and needsNiloy Mukherjee, Vice PresidentNiloy Mukherjee is Senior Executive with over 26 years of experience in Marketing & Sales, Strategy. He has worked for McKinsey, Dell, HP / Compaq & India's TATA group. He is considered as a thought leader in the industry, especially in Strategy & Planning, Product Management & Marketing, Pricing, Sales Excellence, Marketing Operations, Commercial Transformations and Capability Building.quire a smaller, lightweight laptop with longer battery life for offsite meetings, while a "big data" analyst may require a 15-inch laptop with higher computing power and monitor docking options to edit and run complex documents. Using this approach, employees can be matched easily with the right technolo-gies according to their needs and work-ing habits, better enhancing efficiency and improving productivity. Drive Synergy Through Stronger Collaboration Though it seems easy to adopt work-place technologies with a user-ori-ented approach, it is often easier said than done. Assessing user habits alone is a rather daunting task as it calls for closer collaboration between differ-ent functions in the business. While IT makes the purchasing decisions for technological products, it is other departments like Human Resources (HR) who are often privy to employee habits and needs. Hence, it would be important for the HR team and other departments to develop effective pro-cesses to work closely with IT to en-sure user roles and business needs are taken into consideration during IT pur-chases. Such processes would include regular review of workplace technol-ogy and timely updates on changes in business needs.Enable Flexibility In Working HoursIn addition to technology, we also have to evaluate policies that support a ful-ly remote and flexible workforce. Al-most nine in 10 APJ leaders surveyed through Realizing 2030 research be-lieve that this is a crucial component impacting digital transformation at the workplace. Working remotely brings about benefits like saving time on com-muting, providing better care for de-pendents, or achieving healthier work-life balance. In the Realizing 2030 research, half of the business leaders in APJ expect to have a more globally con-nected yet remote workforce by 2030. In fact, many of the younger em-ployees value the balance of productiv-ity and quality of life, with almost half of them believing that automated sys-tems will help to free up their time and increase their job satisfaction through offloading undesired tasks to machines, according to Realizing 2030 research. In APJ, there have been a number of public and private sector initiatives that recognize the benefits of remote, flex-ible work arrangements, such as the Tripartite Standards on Flexible Work Arrangements led by Ministry of Man-power in Singapore and the national "Telework Day" campaign launched by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan. This flexibility will be achieved by equipping your employ-ees with technology that provides them with access. In this digital era, organizations have to adopt a holistic and collabora-tive approach to fully leverage tech-nology and improve on job satisfaction amongst their workforce ­ all eventu-ally helping the enterprise to improve their productivity and bottom line. IT, HR and other business unit lead-ers must work together to ensure that the technologies complement working practices and are a positive draw for new employees with different technol-ogy expectations. Taking these steps towards achieving workplace transfor-mation will go a long way in setting your enterprise up for success till 2030 and beyond.
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