Forum21 Europe
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Overview > Meeting the Demands of the Modern Workforce
Meeting the Demands of the Modern Workforce
Driven by the response to the global pandemic, modern European workforces have experienced change on an unseen scale. Notions of work being an activity more than a location have solidified into a new reality. This change has fuelled discussions around all aspects of trust and the workforce. For both employers and employees, this new workforce freedom comes with greater responsibilities.
Companies must become digitally fit to thrive in the new era, with enabling and securing hybrid teams among the top technology challenges: IDC forecasts that 35% of European workers will work from home at least some of the time post-COVID.
But organisations won’t succeed unless they put their people first. Work experience parity is critical and the digital experience will be make-or- break for employee retention. This is driving the adoption of cloud-based productivity suites as a top technology investment, along with team collaboration solutions and secure remote access.
The future of the modern workforce is fluid, simply requiring the right people in the right teams at the right time. Such organisations have agile working, cross-functional collaboration and end to end accountability at their core. This is leading to a new organisational paradigm, characterised by tool democratisation, lifelong learning and the creation of a culture of trust. With this comes a new leadership model based on passion, vision, transparency and trust.
Remote work during the pandemic has evolved to dynamic work now, where employees are empowered to work where, when and how they want. From this comes the ultimate flexibility of trust@work, with organisations technologically equipped and optimised to support their everyday operations and a mutual trust between businesses and workers.
There are three pillars to delivering the trust@work model:
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Optimise remote enablement. Now more than ever work is about your people, so put digital support structures in place to build in flexibility and also empathy
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Treat identity as a control, rather than an IT service. It’s about determining who your user is and why they need access
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Adopt zero trust security to deliver the right people with the right access to the right resources, that is continuously assessed
Establishing trust at work requires placing identity at the heart of your IT architecture, allowing your people the freedom to work wherever works for them – and you.
Vistra is a professional services company for the financial services, private wealth and capital market sectors. It has grown significantly through acquisition in recent years and its focus now is on consolidation, harmonisation, and bringing disparate technology systems and strategies together.
When Covid hit, the company faced big challenges - more than 80% of its workers were still using desktop computers. People were used to simply asking the office IT team for support. Rolling out Okta has been a gamechanger, enabling self-service, simple login through Single Sign On and accelerated access to apps via the Okta integration network.
Since rolling out Okta and implementing key infrastructure changes, the company has created a shift in the concept of the ‘back office’. Technology has been brought into the heart of the business, with operations, business and IT working together to deliver against a common purpose.
On zero trust, the company is committed to maturing its security posture. Through continual training and board reviews, it seeks to raise the profile of security and optimise its perception among colleagues, with the ultimate goal of realising a true ‘always verify’ model.
