Hybrid work still involves challenges

The pandemic has served as a catalyst to transform ways of working in a sustainable way across all business sectors. This is one of the lessons of a survey on hybrid work carried out by the publisher Riverbed Aternity in eight countries and seven major sectors of activity. According to this study, 42% of the 1,500 decision-makers surveyed expect to see at least half of their staff pursue hybrid work in a sustainable way, an even higher rate in certain sectors such as manufacturing (51%). A majority of respondents (94%) also believe offering such a model would help them recruit talent and stay competitive. However, only a third of decision makers, both on the IT and business side, believe their company is fully ready for this transition. As a result, nearly nine in ten decision makers (89%) have planned technology investments in the next 12-18 months to support hybrid working.

The decision makers surveyed are particularly concerned about technological disparities and performance gaps between remote and on-site employees, a concern for 88% of them. On the IT side, respondents point to risks in terms of security (32%), but also network performance problems for remote connections (30%), a lack of appropriate technologies and equipment in the office (26%) or home (26%) and technological breakthroughs (26%). Business managers also fear impacts on well-being at work and the employee experience (35%), in particular increased frustration (37%) and lack of motivation (33%).

Improve infrastructure visibility

To solve the difficulties encountered with the implementation of hybrid work, IT managers need visibility and actionable information, which they struggle to obtain with the monitoring tools in place. Thus, 42% waste time reconciling data from multiple sources and 37% lack visibility into the use, availability and performance of resources in the cloud. 35% deplore an excess of data that they cannot exploit; 34% do not have a unified vision of their infrastructure and in 33% of organizations, data is not accessible to everyone who needs it. Because of these various issues, 93% of respondents agree that their company would benefit from having greater visibility into its networks and systems in order to identify performance or security risks.

Among the initiatives planned to meet the challenges of hybrid work, IT decision-makers cite the strengthening of cybersecurity technologies and software (39%) and increased use of SaaS and cloud environments (also 39%). Updating company workplace strategies and policies also rank high (38%, and even 44% in industry), along with improving visibility into network performance and apps (37%).