New research has revealed a 41% increase in the proportion of employees across EMEA who see remote working as a prerequisite rather than a perk, rising to 53% among Gen X workers. This is according to a new global study conducted by VMware, a leading innovator in enterprise software, with business, HR and IT decision makers.

Almost two thirds (64%) of all respondents recognise that their organisation is realising the benefits of remote work and can’t go back to the way they used to be – yet there is a concern that company leadership and management are not putting in the work to adapt in offering their employees greater choice and flexibility.

“The challenges in the past six months have forced businesses to quickly adapt to new working practices where ‘work’ doesn’t equal ‘the office.’ The future of work has arrived in the form of a distributed workforce, bringing with it, tangible business benefits, from productivity and employee morale, to greater collaboration and enhanced recruitment opportunities,” said Kristine Dahl Steidel, vice president, EUC EMEA, VMware.

“And with this digital foundation companies need to instil the right culture and leadership approach to create a new way of work. The digital workspace solutions that enable distributed workforces to be collaborative, engaged, visible and productive have already helped thousands of businesses and millions of employees – and VMware is continuing to innovate.”

Adapting Company Culture to the Requirements of the Distributed Workforce

More than four in ten (41%) decision makers surveyed worry their team won’t stay on task when working remotely. More than a quarter (28%) also feel their boardroom culture discourages remote working, and over half (59%) feel more pressure to be online outside of normal working hours. These factors indicate a need for a top-down shakeup of traditional management thinking and practices.

This is despite the clear business and employee benefits of flexible working, including organizations being able to capitalize on more diverse talent and skill set pools across the world.

Since working remotely, more than three quarters (76%) of employees surveyed believe personal connections with colleagues have improved, 66% feel more empowered to speak up in video conference meetings, and 69% say their stress levels have improved. Employee morale (30%) and productivity (34%) have seen an increase.

Furthermore, 67% say recruitment of top-tier talent has been made easier, specifically for working parents (83%) and minority candidates (68%). When it comes to generating new ideas, almost three quarters** (72%) agree that innovation is coming from more places within the organisation than before.

Dr Carl Benedikt Frey, director Future of Work Programme at Oxford University, comments: “For organisations to truly embrace the ‘work from anywhere’ model, managers will have to move away from monitoring inputs to focusing on output, all from within an environment of mutual trust. Striking the right balance will be key to ensure employees are motivated and while being in an environment where creativity can flourish.”

IT is no longer thought to be an inhibitor to distributed working practices, where employees can work from headquarters, a local office, home, on the move or a combination of locations, as standard–with only a third (33%) of those surveyed believing that IT is not equipped to manage a remote workforce.

“Companies and board-level executives need to look at three primary driving forces to implement effective remote work strategies. Firstly, employee experience and its effect on staff productivity; secondly customer experience and its effect on customer attraction, retention, and growth; and lastly the move from capex to opex to lower operational costs and increase revenue,” comments Jeremiah Chunge, head of alternative channels at Genghis Capital, Kenya.

“Once this is mapped out, employee involvement is key to get the buy-in and know-how of this new way of work and the benefits that come with it. At the same time aligning it to accomplishment of the overall business strategy.

“At the start of the pandemic, we followed the above steps and leant on our VMware Cloud and saw an immediate improvement in productivity, work flexibility and resilience to office disruption. On the technology front we experienced seamless deployment and monitoring of both cybersecurity solutions and threats as well as our virtual private network infrastructure.

“Today our staff are the biggest advocates of technology and have been proactively thinking of how they can use it to innovate in their own departmental processes to keep up with the benefits of a distributed workforce,” adds Chunge.

Holistic Vision for the Future of Work

Enabling a distributed workforce is fraught with challenges ranging from remote employee on-boarding, visibility and compliance, security, employee safety, and more. The scale of today’s distributed workforce, due to the pandemic, has amplified the proliferation of digital technologies and platforms in use.

While organisations try to stay operational, they are moving more applications to the cloud which is driving new information silos. As workforces shrink and grow and some employees opt to remain home, the anywhere organisations’ device mix is increasingly heterogeneous as they adopt more flexible BYOD arrangements.

As a result, every new device connected to an enterprise network represents a possible attack vector for would-be hackers. All these factors break down the enterprise security perimeter, catapulting the need for zero trust security models even further.

At VMworld last month, VMware announced VMware Future Ready Workforce solutions to provide exceptional workforce experiences, end-to-end Zero Trust security controls, and simplified management. The Future Ready Workforce solutions combine VMware Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), Digital Workspace and Endpoint Security capabilities to deliver any application from any cloud onto any device, so organisations can unlock the value of this holistic approach – enabling powerful workforce experiences, no matter where one is working.