With more than two decades of experience in Enterprise Applications, Solution Consulting, Customer Management, Pre-Sales, and Leadership, Deepak strikes for fore front of revolutionary ‘Cloud Computing’ wave in India.

The past year has transformed the world more swiftly than anyone imagined. As we reflect on the year 2021, no one could have prepared us for the challenges we faced. Nevertheless, leveraging technology to prevail was the only common thread across every situation, be it the distribution of vaccines, remote working, or catering to customers across multiple touch points. The pace of digital change continues to accelerate in the coming year. As we step into 2022, it has become imperative for organizations and decision-makers to plan their approach considering all probable scenarios. It is now more important than ever for organizations to meet the expectations of their employees and customers or run the risk of falling behind their competitors. This can be observed in the technology trends emerging across varied industries, focused on delivering improved user experiences and innovation at speed. Digital transformation is enabling organizations across industries to recognize the importance of adopting digital tools, omnichannel approaches, and data driven decision making to succeed in today’s work from anywhere world. Today, digital and work from home models are creating great opportunities to bring more people into the workforce.

Future of Work
Before COVID-19, working from home (WFH) wasn’t particularly a preferred option as the trust in employees to finish tasks away from a designated office space was very low. The global lockdown enabled us to leverage the digital tools and capabilities available today to succeed from anywhere. The use of these solutions rocketed during the crisis. Gartner estimates that use of collaboration platforms alone surged 44 percent between 2019 and 2021. The future of work will come in many shapes and forms, including hybrid working culture, where employees work from their office desks for a few days a week and are able to WFH for the remainder. McKinsey estimates that more than 20 percent of the global workforce although mainly those in high skilled roles in verticals such as finance, insurance, and IT could work most of the time away from the office without any impact on productivity. Yet to make this a reality, organizations need to double down on digital transformation. This essentially means that they need to expand beyond short-term investments in new collaboration platforms, to initiatives that create fully connected workplace experiences. Organizations will therefore need to create a frictionless hybrid working environment. This will be almost entirely enabled by new digital initiatives where aside from the social aspects, their employees don’t notice any difference between working from home and being in the office.

Evolution of Employee Policies
The global pandemic has undoubtedly changed the way we work forever, where an all digital, work from any

where world is the new norm. The key priority for companies today is to keep their workers safe and healthy not just physically, but psychologically as well. Companies need to imbibe HR policies that will create flexible, resilient, and adaptive workforces. In 2022 companies that create an environment for greater employee commitment and engagement will enjoy significantly improved top line growth rates. This is probably the most opportune moment for organizations to relook at their concept of work spaces, reimagine work, and the very definition of productivity. It is imperative to create the right environment where your employees feel valued by giving employees what they most want i.e flexibility, autonomy, and choice about where they work when they work and how they work.

“Create targeted policies that are conducive to the diverse work routines of employees choosing to work from the office, remote employees still following the 9-5 routine and remote employees following flexible work hours

Currently, we have the unique opportunity to hire people from anywhere in the world who fit the role, and that is where the real power of a strong hybrid culture policy will come into play. Creating a smooth virtual hiring and onboarding plan, ensuring real time collaboration and providing a level playing field for all employees, irrespective of their geographies and background will become an essential part of improved employee policies. If your policy provides for smooth virtual hiring and onboarding, realtime team collaboration, and a level playing field for all employees, irrespective of geography or gender the world is your talent pool. Create targeted policies that are conducive to the diverse work routines of employees choosing to work from the office, remote employees still following the 9-5 routine and remote employees following flexible work hours.

Innovation is the Constant Change
In the past year, we saw organizations tackling new challenges and opportunities, such as hybrid experiences, distributed environments, hyper automation, and an explosion of data. In 2022, it will become imperative for organizations and IT teams to embrace the challenges of this new reality, leading them to find new and more sustainable ways to deliver the rapid change those businesses, customers, and employees now expect. In terms of driving collaborative innovation, organizations should look to a strategy that combines API management, integration, and automation that will enable the composable business and increase the speed of work. Across a distributed workforce, effectively harnessing digital capabilities and data will be instrumental to create connected experiences.

The coming year will be one of composability, where organizations increasingly shift to agile architectures that enable both business and IT teams to effectively harness digital capabilities while accelerating employee and customer experiences to another level. In the year 2022, as people continue to work from anywhere, a digital HQ will continue to be more significant than our physical HQ and it will become imperative for employee experiences to be seamless. More and more organizations will seek to implement strategies that empower teams across the systems with easy access to collaborative tools and apps and data they need to effectively do their jobs. Moving ahead, it will become important for CIOs to drive collaboration in the organization by enabling both IT and business teams to access, unlock, and integrate data and apps in a secure, governed manner.