A new networking for a hybrid era
Large, real-life gatherings can seem overwhelming, and many people are rethinking how to re-establish professional connections.
The past two years have reassured Matt Ballantine, director of technology and transformation at RHP, a housing association, that his favorite part of a conference is addressing delegates from the stage on the topic of technology and the future of work.
His thinking seems quite interesting to us when he states that “I don’t like large groups of people. I enjoy when I talk to people, but being able to speak at an event is about having control over the situation and then, in the end, expecting people to come up to me. The irony is that no one does. My wife really struggles with the idea that I’m anything other than an extrovert.”
After months of social isolation, he is trying to be bolder. She “she has made me more aware of the fears that she had before. I appreciate more the time I spend with people. The social events that happened in the last six months have felt so much richer. If I’m going to make the effort to travel, I need to make the most of it, be a little less of a killjoy.”
As social restrictions ease and employees return to the office at least part of the time, formal work events have begun to make a comeback, prompting a heady mix of dread and enthusiasm for professional networking surrounding the panels. discussion and conferences.
We have lost the practice of conversing
Many of the employees and managers, after two years of intermittent confinement and a social life that has sometimes centered on park benches, have lost that practice for conversation. Like the case of a woman who talks about being so used to Zoom meetings that she assumed her face-to-face meeting would be online and automatically sent a video conference link instead of arranging a place to meet. Another woman says she drinks too fast at networking events because of her nerves and she feels dizzy after months of sober lockdown.
Questions about clothing to go to an event instead of the event itself
Vaishnavi Sharma and Sonam Sikka, co-chairs of the Deloitte Hindu Network, hosted a Holi celebration for the group’s first in-person event. “When we were planning, we weren’t sure if people would come because of the hybrid work,” says Sharma. “We planned it for 80 people, but we got around 120.” What is surprising is what these senior executives say about the questions that were asked before the event, since most of them (of course asked in advance) did not refer to the lateral flow tests but to the dress code. Lateral flow immunoassays (IFL) are based on the use of nitrocellulose membranes to support immunological reactions. They are tests used to detect the presence or absence of an analyte of biotechnological interest in a liquid sample. And in this circumstance it happened that there were many people who joined the confinement and had not had face-to-face events for a long time.
Steve Nobes, head of partnerships at Tembo, a mortgage broker, says of their initial real-life encounters: “You’re so used to a Zoom presentation and you’re so immersed in it that you almost forget about the preamble and small talk. . There was a bit of hesitancy to mingle and talk to people.”
Networking already had a dubious reputation before the pandemic
In the 2014 article “The Polluting Effects of Building Instrumental Bonds: How Networks Can Make Us Feel Dirty,” published in a Cornell University journal, researchers found that “unlike personal networks in search of friendship or emotional support [or] spontaneously arising social ties, networking instrumental in the pursuit of career goals can . . . make an individual feel dirty.”
This kind of discomfort is exacerbated by asymmetry in workplace relationships, which means that those who are least likely to network stand to benefit the most.
What is the best way to restart our formal working life and get used to talking to strangers again?
And should we take this time of re-entry as an opportunity to rethink everything about the practice of networking? Dorie Clark, author of “The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World,” says the idea of Networking as transactional “would make anyone feel dirty” and needs to be reframed to see the possibilities of finding companionship or collaboration in the workplace.
Pros may need to be gently repositioned according to Clark, as “like any muscle, it’s a bad idea to overexert yourself early in the game.” Which is to say that people need to build a kind of backup of their capacities, because for many people physical reunions can be uncomfortable and over-stimulating, so many believe that you have to keep up and choose to go to fewer events as people return to their offices.
They are so used to a Zoom introduction and that directly facing a small or even a large audience, they forget to have to give the preamble and small talk.
A literary agent says that in preparation for the London Book Fair, he had to devise a strategy. “I really enjoy seeing people in person again, after all, it is very much a relationship business, but I find, especially after the last two years of the pandemic, that I feel quite connected and over-excited when I go to events so it can be hard to relax.” So avoid getting too caught up in the daily and try to create moments of peace and calm.
Return to human contact
Julia Hobsbawm, author of The Nowhere Office, says that going back in is hard. “People are out of practice, their latent shyness is accentuating.”
The pandemic has given people a chance to reassess their work patterns, and for some, like Clark, it has emboldened them to avoid large social gatherings. “Great events happen because extroverts like them and plan events themselves. It’s enormously difficult and stressful unless you’re inherently motivated to talk to strangers, dive in without context and reach out to people you don’t know and try to find common ground where there may not be any.”
Author Julia Hobsbawm says employers should consider creating a networking director, as networking before the pandemic was restricted to large conferences, but in a hybrid environment, simply going to the office or meeting one one or in small groups can be considered networking. “Employers should consider creating a network manager, someone who is in charge of how people interact with each other,” says Hobsbawm.
In this way, she is highlighting a double objective for the offices and that is going to be very good: social networks and learning. Since people have been out of the office, the last thing you want them to do is send them to a conference.
Zoom sessions on a global scale
There may be aspects of pandemic life that are worth maintaining, such as Zoom sessions with colleagues from around the world. For some, particularly parents of young children, the pandemic has created virtual networking opportunities as they have to get home early after work.
It is necessary to observe what will be the new pattern in the workplaces
Anthony Painter, policy director at the UK’s Chartered Management Institute, notes that hybrid work patterns have complicated the issue of networking. He notes that everyone is feeling their way back to some of the activities that are part of their work practice. But there is concern that certain groups with responsibilities will be left out. What is yet to emerge is a pattern for how people should behave in this new world. It’s a really complex thing how you can exclude people, from chance encounters or from long projects. We are all still learning and need to keep a close eye on it.
Networks in the metaverse
While real-life networking is picking up again, workforces remain distributed as we emerge into a world of hybrid and remote work. Less time in the office means there’s still demand for new ways to connect with people beyond basic video chats.
Professional services firm Accenture’s solution is a virtual office in the metaverse, Accenture Nth Floor (on the N floor), where employees come together to learn and network.
After testing Nth Floor, the company expects 150,000 new employees to work in the metaverse on their first day this year, as they are invited to attend events, such as working in small teams to complete games. New members also attend social gatherings to meet their colleagues and other people in the company.
Staff can access the space with a virtual reality headset to fully immerse themselves. As part of a pilot program, Accenture is shipping 60,000 headsets to employees around the world. However, the metaverse can be accessed through various devices, such as laptops, and employees are trained to know how to access the applications.
According to Accenture, the best thing about virtual meeting spaces is their versatility, whether you’re hosting an event, showcasing new technology, or conducting training.
Hybrid era: the importance of connectivity
Hybrid work looks different depending on the size of companies and industries. In general, organizations are returning to the office, while employees working from home continue to use bandwidth and applications to collaborate. Connectivity has never been more crucial for society than now.
The outbreak of the pandemic has put a spotlight on mobile and broadband technology, the enabler of many of the services we now depend on.
3 Ways to Prepare Organizational Networks for the Era of Hybrid Work
Manoj Leelanivas, COO of Juniper Networks, offers three tips for preparing organizational networks for the era of hybrid work.
As organizations continue to evaluate their work models, flexibility remains a top priority for employees. For IT-centric organizations, this means preparing networks to ensure employee productivity wherever they are. Manoj Leelanivas offers three suggestions for preparing organizational networks for the era of hybrid work.
– Greater flexibility in people’s workplaces.
– Although it was a trend that was already underway before COVID-19, as a consequence of the pandemic it was massively accelerated and has become a permanent fixture.
– In employee surveys going on right now around the world, and especially at tech companies, flexibility comes only after compensation in terms of the top criteria employees are looking for in a job.
While for IT organizations, this means that ensuring employee productivity wherever they are on any given day has become a mission-critical priority for the foreseeable future, his approach to strategy and methodology is applicable to any sector of activity. Flexibility and connectivity that guarantee a high-quality work experience go hand in hand. It is an absolute necessity.
Believe it or not, this requires a whole new way of looking at IT: moving away from just checking all the traditional metrics of a network that is “up there” with a mindset focused on delivering real results and experiences.
The manual processes and outdated tools common in legacy architectures built for the old world of centralized offices and local IT systems simply cannot keep up with the scale and performance requirements of this new paradigm.
Three things to do to be prepared for a hybrid world
So what specifically should companies be doing right now to be ready for a hybrid world? Here are three suggestions.
a) Look at the network from the point of view of the employees and try to make the experience essentially seamless. For example, you can imagine Morgan, a marketing manager for a major retail chain. As soon as he is safe, Morgan intends to generally work three days a week from home and spend two in the office for in-person collaboration and the Pizza Thursday tradition that the executive team plans to bring back.
Whether Morgan is remote or on-site, frequently used marketing apps like Apptivo and Hootsuite should be a seamless click away. Video conferences with teammates from all over the world and should go smoothly.
The problems of the past that no longer exist
In the past, it might have been dismissed as “stuff happens” if Morgan found himself with a spinning circle on screen instead of the latest social media analytics needed for a 10am meeting. m. with the director. Morgan could have filled out a support ticket and waited for an overburdened IT staffer to address the issue, so he goes with IT systems.
Not anymore. Working from anywhere means the network must deliver a first-rate experience anywhere, anytime. Organizations no longer have leeway for anything less. In fact, market analysts are predicting the rise of a new tier of workers: microsite workers. Workers will no longer work from the main campuses or their homes.
Microsites will be on the rise, where a few workers in one location want to have some in-office experience in terms of collaboration. So the job of creating a seamless digital experience across headquarters, large campuses, microsites, and remote workers at home is fast becoming the new IT challenge.
b) Give IT what they want: Embrace automation and intent-based networking. Networking used to be all about hardware. The right networks for today are also about software; they take advantage of the software to auto-heal, auto-configure and auto-provision themselves. This allows the network itself to proactively find errors, determine their cause, and automatically correct them.
Intent-Based Networking (IBN) is an emerging philosophy that requires IT teams to decide from day zero the precise purpose they want their network to achieve, and then use higher levels in the future. intelligence to eliminate manual processes and increase efficiency and reliability. IBN is a great model for meeting the challenges of the new flexible world of work, and companies should embrace it.
For a digital environment that needs to support multiple levels of workers seamlessly, automation is vital
Those who do not embrace this autonomous driving network will be left behind.
It’s an approach that’s perfectly suited to the new flexible working model. Therefore, organizations must ditch the old manual-centric approach to network operations and embrace automation.
c) Also gather information from the data
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) analyze metadata to understand network behaviors, perform predictive analytics, provide recommendations to network operations teams, and self-heal.
In a new window survey of 700 IT professionals, 95% said they believe their organizations would benefit from incorporating AI into daily operations, products and services. About 88% wanted to use AI as much as possible. Some 59% of respondents said that AI has given them improved end-user and network operator experiences. What is the lesson to be drawn from this? AI is not a distant vision to improve the network experience; it’s here and IT professionals appreciate the value.
The more quality data metrics AI-powered networks collect, the smarter they get. Therefore, organizations need to collect all telemetry data points to correlate LAN, WAN, and cloud information in one place, so they can find mistakes before they happen, make mistakes before they happen. In this way, provide an impeccable end-user experience. More than half of the executives who responded to the above survey said their company is likely to collect telemetry data to improve AI and improve user experience.
Increased productivity tops the list of reasons for the flexible working trend, but that productivity will suffer if businesses can’t deliver a stellar IT experience wherever employees are.
If ever a wake-up call was needed, the most recent surveys indicate that more than 50% of employees at most companies are open to new jobs that provide a better digital experience that allows for flexibility at work. In the event that you ignore the three previous steps, it will be at your own risk.