Flexibility and the digital employee experience

Ivanti’s solutions cater for IT departments, but also business units for example human resource, and procurement. According to Ivanti’s EVP and GM of International Sales, Helen Masters, the technology Ivanti offers ultimately could be perceived as  artificial intelligence or AI-driven, which via agents can enable self-healing, for example.

If the IT department sees tickets consistently being opened, the system will be able to detect this, understand that there is an issue that is setting it off, and kickstart an “investigation” process.

“In other words, it will go and address the situation so that we do not continue having tickets. So, that’s what we call self-heal, and there is a lot of AI going on in the background,” said Helen.

A new way of working

Due to this powerful capability, organisations are inclined to loosen the reins a little bit more and enable remote working for their employees. Indeed during the past two years, remote working featured hugely for a majority of organisations that sought to break coronavirus infection chains by sending their employees home.

Liam Ryan, Ivanti’s VP of Sales in APAC added, “The everywhere workplace is a (trend) that is happening very quickly. What we want to do is take that same working experience out from the office, and take (the experience) everywhere instead.”

This experience which Ivanti calls the digital employee experience, requires looking at how to take those those basic processes that an employee does, like running a report, or doing up an inquiry and more, and then automating it effectively.

Due to this powerful capability, organisations are inclined to loosen the reins a little bit more and enable remote working for their employees. Indeed during the past two years, remote working featured hugely for a majority of organisations that sought to break coronavirus infection chains by sending their employees home.

“And this happens through that process of just capturing that data time and again, to understand those basic processes. 

“So regardless of whether you’re in the office, or in the airport, or in a cafe, or at home… bringing that same experience back to users, anywhere, anytime. This is basically the theme of what we are looking to do.”

Helen emphasised, “So a consistent approach because as we saw from the Everywhere Workplace reports that we’ve done, users are now attending to be nomadic.”

Full immersion

One key feature of the Everywhere Workplace is the consistency of experiences across different type of devices. “It does not matter where I am, as I bring up my work on my screen, whether it’s on my laptop or phone, it is the same interaction, and same response time,” Helen said.

This also means the same level of assurance of security no matter where the remote worker may be, no matter what device they are using.

“(Security) is the top (priority) for employers because as an employer I can be confident that no matter where my business user is, he is secure and I am not opening up my network to any ransomware or cyber attack risk.”

This security assurance is important to achieve as especially today, organisations are hiring talents from not only remote locations that are not within their own corporate networks, but also from foreign countries.

Visibility into where workers and their devices are located is important, but so is understanding where devices are moving to and from. “That’s highly sensitive at the moment, understanding where they are, and understanding whether they are continuing to be secure.”

Trends that pop up

If before employees wanted the flexibility of working from home or from outside the office, now employers are pushing back and starting to say they want to see more of their workers.

Helen commented, “Over six months ago, the power was with the employee – what with the era of the Great Resignation in 2021, and the huge nomadic trend amongst workers.

“Now, as market dynamics change, for example Meta making over 11,000 workers redundant, I believe the power is coming back to the employer.”

Interestingly, Ivanti’s report picked up on how employees in Europe see the benefits of going back to office during winter, because it is cheaper than working from home which will incur higher electricity and heating costs.

This may not play out in Asia as there is not as much of an energy crisis in this part of the world, but Helen admitted it was interesting to note.

“Overall, we would like to see people come in to work more and more because of better collaboration and that teaming environment they can get,” she said, adding that different genders are also feeling the impact of being away from the office, albeit in different ways.

Interestingly, Ivanti’s report picked up on how employees in Europe see the benefits of going back to office during winter, because it is cheaper than working from home which will incur higher electricity and heating costs.

For example, male employees find they are disadvantaged from not being able to meet their executives face-to-face from a career and promotion perspective, while female workers are having difficulty juggling the two hats they tend to put on at home – that of a caregiver and an employee.

Flexibility and hiring decisions

Does the flexibility that Ivanti’s solutions turn on for organisations influence the latter’s hiring decisions?

There is flexibility to provide both ways of working – at the office or remotely.

But there is another way to look at this – Ivanti’s solution can further provide an edge in helping to retain top talent within the organisation.

Liam opined, “I think a lot of what we’re having in our social or private lives is driving what we expect from a work perspective. This generation and the next just expect that’s the way that we work, and that it is the standard and norm.”

Ivanti’s role in this for the past two years, and for the mid- to long-term at least, is to give the relevant tools to organisations’ employees, and especially their top talent.

“We want to make for our customers that digital experience, that work experience that people expect, so that you can attract and retain the top talent.

“Ivanti’s stance is to make it a really good working experience for all of our customers so that they can get the best people and keep them,” he concluded.