Thankfully, 2020 keeps getting smaller in our rear-view mirror. But it doesn’t look much better in hindsight than it did as we were living through that unimaginable year.
Despite the professional and personal challenges we all experienced, I bet your teams managed to perform terrific work in the face of adversity and disruptions created by the pandemic.
But we also need a bit of a reality check. The hard fact is that many of those problems are just rolling into this business year – and will continue to be with us for the foreseeable future. They didn’t just disappear as the calendar changed. It’s a new year with the same issues.
Yes, there’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel as vaccines become more widely available. But for now, our companies, our people, and our customers will grapple with ongoing obstacles – and perhaps new ones that we can’t even envision. (Extreme weather, anyone?) Who knows when life returns to normal. And what even is normal anymore?
Work has profoundly changed. We see that in our own lives. Interactions with colleagues now are limited to video screens. Our workspaces are living rooms, kitchens, or wherever else the WI-FI works best.
To better understand the depth of this change, we conducted the “Boomi Connections Survey” of more than 1,000 workers and 200 IT decision-makers who suddenly found themselves working remotely. Here’s some of what we learned:
Workers are feeling the impact of remote work.
- 58% of employees feel more isolated and disconnected from their work and teams, and 49% want to see improvements in remote collaboration tools and systems.
- 41% of workers have increased their use of technology, and 38% added new apps or processes to help them get their work done.
- C-suite respondents said remote work affects their ability to innovate and be creative, with 60% citing lack of in-person contact among colleagues as the reason.
IT has become the hero of the moment.
- Reliance on technology for remote work is driving a new appreciation for IT teams. Nearly 80% of IT leaders said their teams feel more valued. The feeling is mutual as 78% of senior leaders said IT has been helpful or extremely helpful, while 58% of workers shared that sentiment.
- IT leaders cited two areas topping their agendas as they address information silos: IT Architecture and Design (47%) and Collaboration Tools and Data (40%).
People are coping in different ways.
- Both self-described introverts (48%) and extroverts (55%) miss personally connecting with their peers. At the same time, 85% of workers have some level of concern about returning to their offices.
- With no water cooler to chat around, 20% of workers said they sometimes talk to their pets to cope with isolation. In fact, interaction with our furry friends ranked higher than digital meditation (18%), professional development (17%), or professional therapy (9%).
These results highlight something often said throughout the pandemic. While we’re all caught in the same storm, we’re in different boats. We’re experiencing this challenging moment in our own ways. And again, we’ll be dealing with this for months to come.
So, how can organizations like yours respond? And how can we help you respond?
At Boomi, we think of it as Work Reimagined.
I don’t need to tell you about the increased emphasis in recent years toward making our organizations more agile, fast, and flexible in dealing with challenges. Well, as each of us has seen, the pandemic kicked all of that into overdrive. “Digital transformation” is no longer just a long-term vision or process. It’s here. Now. Businesses are making it happen – on the fly – out of sheer necessity. Or else. They keenly appreciate the risk of not adapting.
For your organization to navigate this uncertain environment – and beyond – you need a digital fabric that connects all of your data and critical systems, so you can maintain business continuity.
We also understand that the essential outcome of products and services we provide is the real-world impact on people’s lives. People create organizational success. As all of us continue to live and work differently, we need to be thinking about how technology can best support our people and our customers. It’s simply not possible for anyone to be at their best today if they’re feeling disconnected.
The Boomi AtomSphere Platform is uniquely capable of keeping your organization together even when everyone is apart by creating what we call integrated experiences – instantly connecting everyone to everything. That enables you to simplify the lives of your customers, employees, and partners – and even grant wishes.
For example, we used our platform to create easy-to-implement application templates to automate critical processes and help keep your people safe, healthy, and productive through these times of rapid change. Return to site. Employee Onboarding. Health status. Supply and logistics. It’s all in flux, and right now, none of it is easy. Boomi can help you manage all of it quickly and automatically.
None of us know what will come next. Are we all going to return to our offices at some point? Is remote work our future? Will it be a hybrid of the two? But what we do know for sure is that our organizations need to adapt to whatever may come.
That’s where Boomi can help.
Contact our experts to learn more.