equally , and that will enable people to mimic the ‘ watercooler ’ moments remotely . Even if a vaccine is produced , ‘ the genie is out of the bottle ’ and many people will want a blended remote and on-site working lifestyle . Organisations will need a technology infrastructure that creates for remote employees the collateral learning that comes from sitting next to someone and the collective engagement that comes from office camaraderie .
Create digital resilience
Technology leaders did too good of a job when lockdowns forced everyone to work from home . In many cases , it took a matter of days to transition thousands of employees , whole sales teams and customer services into new operating environments . This is an obvious positive but the lasting fallout from this will be an expectation from company boards that technology can provide swift resilience against future crisis . As a result , CIOs will need to help transform their organisations so that they are capable of switching between physical and virtual channels to engage with employees , sell to customers and provide remote services and products . This evolution will depend on sector and size but could include anything from digital education of employees and building a network of IT contractors to flex at need , to increasing the capture of data and regularly modelling crisis scenarios and how the organisation responds to them .
Manage the new impetus for change
Expectations about technology will cause more challenges . Pre-pandemic , a Digital Transformation programme ( depending on size and scope ), could take months or years to implement , going through lengthy conceptualisation , planning , reviewing and stress-testing processes . When governments enforced lockdowns however , many organisations implemented large-scale Digital Transformation programmes in a matter of weeks . It ’ s created an impetus for change throughout organisations and particularly at the board level , where board members have become less risk-averse to digital technologies as a result of the pandemic , there is now a
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CIOS WILL NEED TO CONSIDER THE SORT OF TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL MAINTAIN TEAM COHESION .
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