SharePoint Online can help your team confront an uncertain future.
2020 will be remembered for many reasons. Certainly, it has already been a year indelibly marked by the impacts of pandemic. But 2020 will also be remembered as a year of ingenuity, resilience and courage. Above all, we will look back at 2020 as the year things changed. How we work, travel, shop, interact, entertain – everything we think, say and do will have changed in some capacity. Some changes will be significant while others will be subtle.
The Promise of the Modern Workplace
For many, the most fundamental and ongoing changes will be how work gets done. As Americans eye reopening businesses that have shuttered, some of those that have remained open through the pandemic have done so via remote work. One question organizations with remote workers will have to ask is, when employees are able to return to the office, will they? Leaders within organizations need to ask themselves an even more important question – when employees are able to return to the office, is it even necessary that they do?
If you’ve been in the technology sector for any period of time, you’ve seen your share of big promises followed by vaporware. The remote workforce of the future has been promised for decades. While for most organizations a remote workforce never materialized, that didn’t stop the technology that makes it possible. That’s why 2020 might be the year to migrate to SharePoint Online.
While it is being done under duress, organizations are proving they can successfully work in a remote setting. Necessity is the mother of invention – only in the case of remote working the inventions already existed. SharePoint Online is one such invention.
Last week we wrote about the likelihood that, once employees are able to return to the office, some will eagerly return and some will not, leading to a hybrid environment of both onsite and offsite workers. For state and local government, the remainder of 2020 and perhaps 2021 as well will be an exceptionally challenging time. Critical services still need to be delivered to citizens, vital systems must stay up and running. But budgets are going to be impacted, objectives are going to change and targets will be moving. Migrating to SharePoint Online can be part of an effective solution to address these challenges.
The Benefits of SharePoint Online
A SharePoint Online environment allows your organization to build around four pillars – collaboration, team sites, intranets and workflows. Those four pillars are essential in a remote work or hybrid environment. We have a terrific, free white paper that delves more deeply into the four pillars to help you get the most out of SharePoint.
SharePoint Online provides the essentials to help your organization adapt to rapid-fire changes and disruptions. Whether your employees are in the office again soon or not, you and your team still need to communicate, collaborate, grow together and build toward your organization’s objectives. That’s what SharePoint Online makes possible.
For a distributed workforce, the technology is here (and has been). The impetus, unwelcome as it is, has arrived. How you respond is important. If SharePoint Online is to be part of your plans, let Kiefer’s expert consultants help you design the workplace of your future.