Connect talk hybrid working with Business Reporter.

Enabling an effortless employee experience and rethinking the network for hybrid working.

The past two years have placed huge strains on UK businesses and employees – but they’ve also shown new ways forward. As we return to offices, it’s readily assumed that the tools we’ve become so familiar with over recent months will now support a “hybrid” working model – with some colleagues at home and some in the office. In reality, however, rather than blending easily, office culture and working from home culture may well clash. And because so many solutions and networks are fundamentally designed for office working, technology may be part of the problem.

The hybrid meeting.

To explain why, let’s start in the meeting room. Four of you are around the table. Now you need to link your remote colleagues in.

Switch on the spiderphone (remember them?) and one colleague is waiting to be admitted. Another’s having tech problems. It’s disjointed and awkward, and you’ve not even started.

With the meeting underway, those in the room are exchanging views naturally, picking up cues from body language. By contrast, those at home are struggling to get a word in – and when they do, voices keep breaking up.

An effortless employee experience will consistently save time for the business. And in a world where your people can choose to work literally anywhere, taking away some basic frustrations could even help with retention and attracting new talent.

At this point, the colleague with tech problems finally joins…

Hybrid isn’t just about location.

Over the coming months, scenarios like this will be replayed across the country – unless we adapt our technology.

Businesses have a lot of what they need already. Tools such as Teams, WebEx and Slack have been designed, or rapidly enhanced over recent months, to enable collaborative, multi-location working. Now, they have to be brought into the office environment.

Connect’s CTO Martin Cross appears inthe Business Reporter, (distributed with The Guardian) with his thoughts on ‘The Future of Work’. – See more below on page 11.