Technology has allowed a substantial portion of the workforce to move beyond the walls of a traditional office. This technological revolution brings many benefits, including a more realistic work-life balance and borderless talent recruitment.
Our new report, Riverbed | Aternity Hybrid Work Global Survey 2021, found that 88 per cent of Australian business and IT decision-makers believe that at least one-quarter of their workforce will remain hybrid post-pandemic.
Yet, while most organisations were swift to embrace the digital shift brought on by COVID-19, others were slow to modernise their IT environments, presenting a risk to their future growth.
The report found that many organisations are not fully prepared to deliver a seamless hybrid work experience, risking the loss of top talent and market opportunities. Only 44 per cent of Australian businesses believe they are ready to support the shift to hybrid work. While 91 per cent are concerned about the digital disparity between in-office and remote employees.
But there is good news. Ninety-three per cent of respondents plan to invest in technology in the next 12-18 months to support their hybrid workforce, and organisations that make the highest expenditure are set to see greater returns. In fact, those in the highest quartile of investments were significantly more likely to say they have already realised tangible value, according to KPMG International research.
Organisations need to make smart investments in IT infrastructures if they’re to succeed in the medium-to long term - those who don’t threaten their own survival. Below are three reasons why IT investments are essential and why underinvestment poses a significant business risk:
Human and technology barriers
Our survey shows that to build a sustainable and high-performing hybrid workplace, companies must address both human- and technology-related challenges.
The top barriers to Australian businesses adopting a hybrid work model include employee motivation and well-being (43 per cent), lacking the right technology and equipment (38 per cent), and poor home or remote network performance (37 per cent).
Further, more than 87 per cent of business decision-makers believe that technology disruptions negatively affect them, their teams, and employee job satisfaction and blame lack of acceleration technologies (46 per cent), no end-to-end visibility (44 per cent) and hybrid working (41 per cent) for poor network or application performance.
Visibility and cybersecurity
The need for transparency and actionable insights intensifies in a hybrid workplace, with 70 per cent of respondents believing that gaining visibility will be even more challenging in a remote environment.
Security risks also increase. Ninety-five per cent of local business and IT decision-makers say it’s critical to have visibility to identify, remediate and protect against cybersecurity threats. Of those surveyed, 64 per cent say it would be disruptive or business destroying if their organisation suffered a cybersecurity breach due to underinvestment in visibility technology. Further, 79 per cent agree that their organisation struggles to glean actionable insights from data generated from their technology infrastructure.
According to the survey, the top challenges with monitoring solutions include lack of visibility into the availability, performance, and usage of cloud resources (50 per cent), several tools providing conflicting data, delaying root cause analysis and issue resolution (49 per cent) and too much data, not enough context or actionable insights (44 per cent).
The findings reveal a significant gap in operational resources. For the stakeholders driving the organisational goals we know that end-to-end visibility and rich data are more important than ever to ensure productivity, end-user experience, high-quality digital experiences and security.
Network and application performance
Our findings showcase that when networks and applications operate at peak performance, so do employees and the business.
The respondents believe performance contributes to delivering better critical services to employees and customers (48 per cent). It also helps drive innovation (40 per cent), enables hybrid work models (39 per cent), and prevents and reduces downtime (34 per cent).
Choosing to underinvest in technologies that ensure IT services are successful and secure can lead to a decrease in performance and, thus, severe business consequences. This includes increased difficulty in engaging customers or clients (50 per cent), decreased customer satisfaction (46 per cent) and reduced quality of service to customers or clients (43 per cent).
In a fast-moving hybrid environment, organisations should embrace digital tools to make processes seamless, visible, and user-friendly. Businesses that thrive are the ones that are quick to read and act on signals of change.
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