Skip to content
Tiatra, LLCTiatra, LLC
Tiatra, LLC
Information Technology Solutions for Washington, DC Government Agencies
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact
 
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact

Taking the Friction out of Work

As organisations seek to re-establish long-term working models, it’s becoming increasingly clear that business cultures must fundamentally change.

To create a productive and motivated hybrid-working model, companies need to actively increase empathy, according to a recent CIO virtual roundtable entitled “Taking the Friction Out of Work”.

At the forefront of this move towards a more people-centred company culture is Slack, which names empathy as a core corporate value.

The firm’s software is used by leading companies including Allianz, Moonpig, PwC, Sainsbury’s and Wise to drive alignment and engagement.

Workplace empathy involves creating an environment where staff feel confident to share their feelings as well as acknowledging that hybrid work blurs traditional work/life boundaries.

The mass adoption of hybrid working has introduced compelling benefits for both employees and employers. Productive, friction-free working, however, isn’t as easy as issuing staff with laptops.

Company culture, and specifically empathy, is key in the new work-from-anywhere era. The CIO roundtable heard from decision-makers in the pharmaceuticals, medical, financial services and logistics sectors, who explained their hybrid working challenges.

These leaders identified a range of issues including on-boarding new employees, unifying employee experience after mergers and acquisitions (M&A), ensuring team members can collaborate wherever they are based on any particular day and ensuring a seamless transition between on-site and remote working for employees who split their time between the two.

“We find team members are less likely to ask questions about a project if they’re working from home, because they don’t want to look like they’re out of the loop,” said one roundtable participant from the financial services sector. “Questioning and interrogating a brief, however, is really important if you want a project to develop and evolve.”

Louise Holmes, Regional Sales Director at Slack, explained that her company’s solutions enable organisations to “build their digital HQ” – a single, virtual space connecting people, tools, customers and partners for faster and more flexible work.

“This approach breaks down organisational silos, making work faster and easier by introducing common processes, uniting people from across the organisation and increasing the accessibility of the tools you need to be productive by placing them in one central location,” Holmes explained.

“The digital HQ is not a replacement for a physical HQ, but it is the one place every employee visits each day and enables the whole organisation to focus on what matters most: delivering quality products and services,” she added.

For example, platforms such as Slack make it possible to set up specific “newbie” channels for new-starters and create workflows that streamline the process of onboarding new starters. “Ask me anything” channels can also be set up for the wider workforce to ensure mission-critical information is always to hand.

For Slack and its parent company Salesforce, however, success isn’t just about technology and where people work; it’s also about how people work.

A study by Future Forum found flexibility ranks second only to compensation in determining job satisfaction. Workers who have full schedule flexibility show 29% higher productivity than workers with no ability to shift their schedule.

Ben Kennedy, Senior Manager for Solution Engineering at Slack, explained that hybrid working blurs the boundaries between work and employees’ private life.

Adopting an empathetic, people-first approach helps both employees and employers navigate these new boundaries more successfully.

Kennedy maintained that an empathetic approach enables a top-down culture of openness, transparency and inclusion among employees – for example, team members feeling comfortable enough to share their real-time status, so colleagues get a sense of where they are geographically, intellectually and emotionally.

“Whether you’ve set time aside to work on an important project, you’re busy on a call, you’re caring for a sick relative, walking the dog or you just don’t feel great that day, an empathetic culture enables employees to be open about where they are at. When you are at your best it is easier to give your best and be more productive,” added Kennedy.

The roundtable also discussed how the nature of work has changed dramatically post-pandemic, with tried-and-tested linear workflows increasingly rejected in favour of a more fluid iterative approach, which is heavily reliant on collaboration for success.

“It’s no longer a case of giving a team member a task and expecting them to do it. Modern working should be about innovation – working together to find new ways to unlock value,” said one roundtable participant from the pharmaceuticals industry.

“In this complex and often ambiguous environment, an empathetic approach, where employees feel safe and their input valued, can increase engagement and help ensure success,” Kennedy said.

Both Holmes and Kennedy said Slack had discovered that empathy is about more than just boosting hybrid teams’ throughput, it’s about taking positive steps to make work-life simpler, more pleasant and ultimately more productive and friction-free for everyone.

Find out more about Slack’s digital HQ solution.

Artificial Intelligence, Remote Work


Read More from This Article: Taking the Friction out of Work
Source: News

Category: NewsFebruary 14, 2023
Tags: art

Post navigation

PreviousPrevious post:Florida Crystals concentrates SAP in hosting sweet spotNextNext post:CIO Leadership Live with Mandy Simpson, Chief Digital Officer at Z Energy

Related posts

SAS supercharges Viya platform with AI agents, copilots, and synthetic data tools
May 8, 2025
IBM aims to set industry standard for enterprise AI with ITBench SaaS launch
May 8, 2025
Consejos para abordar la deuda técnica
May 8, 2025
Training data: The key to successful AI models
May 8, 2025
Bankinter acelera la integración de la IA en sus operaciones
May 8, 2025
The gen AI at Siemens Mobility making IT more accessible
May 8, 2025
Recent Posts
  • SAS supercharges Viya platform with AI agents, copilots, and synthetic data tools
  • IBM aims to set industry standard for enterprise AI with ITBench SaaS launch
  • Consejos para abordar la deuda técnica
  • Training data: The key to successful AI models
  • Bankinter acelera la integración de la IA en sus operaciones
Recent Comments
    Archives
    • May 2025
    • April 2025
    • March 2025
    • February 2025
    • January 2025
    • December 2024
    • November 2024
    • October 2024
    • September 2024
    • August 2024
    • July 2024
    • June 2024
    • May 2024
    • April 2024
    • March 2024
    • February 2024
    • January 2024
    • December 2023
    • November 2023
    • October 2023
    • September 2023
    • August 2023
    • July 2023
    • June 2023
    • May 2023
    • April 2023
    • March 2023
    • February 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • June 2022
    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    Categories
    • News
    Meta
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    Tiatra LLC.

    Tiatra, LLC, based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, proudly serves federal government agencies, organizations that work with the government and other commercial businesses and organizations. Tiatra specializes in a broad range of information technology (IT) development and management services incorporating solid engineering, attention to client needs, and meeting or exceeding any security parameters required. Our small yet innovative company is structured with a full complement of the necessary technical experts, working with hands-on management, to provide a high level of service and competitive pricing for your systems and engineering requirements.

    Find us on:

    FacebookTwitterLinkedin

    Submitclear

    Tiatra, LLC
    Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.