As plans for the post-pandemic hybrid workplace take shape, organisations have a unique opportunity to reset the “future of work” model in a way that makes work more purposeful, productive, flexible, and agile.
However, the complexities of having knowledge workers split across in-office and remote working – with teams infrequently together as a whole – puts greater emphasis on harnessing effective collaboration, processes, workflow, and automation in what will become our next “new normal.”
Given this shift, how exactly should companies that center around knowledge work – from law firms and financial services, to accountancies and consultancies – focus their efforts in order to make their hybrid workplace fire on all cylinders?
Start with the Foundation
AI has a big role to play in delivering the positive business outcomes that knowledge workers seek in this new hybrid model, but that technology can only be “layered in” once a strong foundation is in place. Technologically speaking, that foundation should be a modern cloud platform.
A cloud-based document and email management system, for instance, provides a centralised repository for the complex work product that characterises knowledge-centric organisations.
While essential to effective collaboration even before the COVID-19 pandemic rippled across the globe, this cloud-based approach is non-negotiable for the new normal, where people might be accessing files from home, the office, or someplace else altogether.
Once an organisation’s knowledge is centralised on a modern cloud platform, it is not just easier for people to collaborate with one another, regardless of location – it’s also easier for individual knowledge workers to search and find the documents, emails, or other files they need in order to do their best work.
Don’t Forget Security
A modern approach to security must underpin this approach in order to protect what is the most important asset for many organisations – their data.
At a base level, this means selecting a modern cloud – one that not only incorporates a zero trust framework, but also adheres to zero touch principles that automate out human vulnerabilities. Additionally, knowledge-centric organisations should incorporate need-to-know security policies and information barriers that can segregate content and limit the potential impact of a breach.
Securing sensitive information at the highest levels also involves advanced threat protection that can continuously monitor users’ interactions with files to quickly detect any out-of-the-ordinary behavior and neutralise any malfeasance by internal bad actors or external hackers.
With more endpoints in more locations than ever – and not just in one physical office – this comprehensive approach is essential to the trouble-free functioning of a hybrid workplace.
Add AI to Work Smarter
Having a secure and centralised work platform in place provides an opportunity to deploy AI and make even deeper use of the knowledge within the organisation, regardless of whether people are remote, in office, or some combination of the two.
Knowledge management (KM) is one area in particular that benefits from the application of AI in this new workplace. For example, AI can automatically identify where experts and expertise reside within the organisation by picking up on a variety of “signals,” such as who has entered the most billable hours towards certain industry-specific clients, or what particular template has been downloaded the most times for use by other members of the firm.
Identifying experts in “the before times” might have been a matter of popping your head over the top of your cubicle and asking the person next to you who the resident specialist in Italian property leases might be, or sending out an email blast to the entire firm.
With today’s hybrid work model – when it’s just as likely that the cubicle next to you is empty on any given day because your colleague is working remotely on a full-time basis or simply coming into the office on different days than you do – this approach doesn’t yield the results it once did.
Fortunately, AI can pick up the slack, automatically curating valuable knowledge assets and expertise for professionals to tap into. AI can immediately discern, for instance, what individual within the real estate practice has billed the most hours towards Italian clients, and it knows which lease agreement has been accessed and used as a starting point most frequently.
Just as AI can automate key aspects of legal work, it can significantly streamline tasks like contract review. Rather than having to physically gather a small army of humans in a conference room to review a mountain of documents, AI can be trained to understand the presence or absence of key clauses within a contract, thus reducing the amount of paperwork that actually requires human attention down to a much more manageable size.
It’s worth asking: How does automating repeatable processes affect the overall value that can be contributed by highly skilled knowledge workers? Simply put, it increases their value by freeing them from repetitive tasks and allowing them to devote even more time to the high value knowledge activities, creative strategy, advice, and counsel that their clients sought them out for in the first place.
The future of work is still being shaped and molded, but the hybrid workplace is sure to be an integral component of it. As long as it is, AI – in conjunction with a modern cloud platform and strong security – will have an important role to play in helping organisations to find their footing in this new landscape and confidently take big steps forward.
