The business landscape has witnesses radical changes in the past few years, and organisations need to change accordingly in order to stay ahead of the market.
So said Bernd Oliver Christiansen, CTO for online services at Citrix, during the Citrix Synergy Conference, in Barcelona, yesterday. “[The] top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004,” he said. “This points to the changes that business is undergoing, and jobs have been created to cater for this change,” he said.
He noted that collaboration is becoming strategic for organisations, which need to keep pace with the change. Defining collaboration, Christiansen said it is work, not just a tool for work. “Collaboration needs to enable engagement across the entire organisation and ecosystem,” Christiansen pointed out.
Highlighting the state of collaboration, he said that while some organisations buy collaboration solutions in silos, others make use of unified communications.
However, he indicated that unified communications were not designed to cater for anyone who drives the business. In that vein, he said: “We need ubiquitous collaboration. Collaboration has to evolve and become people-centric, mobile, social, integrated and simple to use.”
According to Christiansen, incorporating mobile in collaboration enables 'work-shifting' - the ability to work from anywhere other than a traditional office, through the use of Web-based technology.
“Workplace flexibility can save employers up to $20 000 per employee, per year,” he said, adding that work-shifters save between $4 000 and $21 000 per year in travel and work-related costs.
“Companies with telework policies realise an 18% savings in real estate, electricity and office expenses. Half-time telecommuting would spare the environment the equivalent of taking 10 million cars permanently off the road,” he noted.
Besides cost-savings, Christiansen also believes work-shifting is capable of boosting business performance and employee satisfaction.
“Work-shifters are 55% more engaged than non-work-shifters. When telework policies are introduced, companies report a 25% reduction in employee attrition, and work-shifting increases productivity by 27%.”
He also noted that 72% of employees say flexible work arrangements would motivate them to choose one job over another, while the expected turnover rate for employees who do not have such flexibility is almost twice the rate of those who do.
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