VMware : The Future of Work Has Changed Forever. Now What?

A Period of Learning Through Change

The lasting impact of this past year may be a better world of work. In fact, it accelerated changes that were already under way and highlighted areas that need improvement. Now, more people will have more flexibility over when, where and how they earn their living. The shift to a 'hybrid' model of work, with some taking place in an office and some at home, is already forcing managers to become better communicators.

Remote work raises a vast array of issues and challenges for employees and employers. Among a host of other thorny questions, companies are pondering how best to:

• Keep employees engaged.
• Reaffirm company culture and values.
• Boost morale and productivity.
• Configure workspaces to enhance employee safety.

Employees are also trying to find the best home-work balance and equip themselves for working and collaborating with distributed teams.

The potential for remote work varies across geography and job roles, a reflection of the sector, occupation and activity mix. Our recent experience working remotely broke through cultural and technological barriers that prevented remote work in the past, setting in motion a structural shift in where work takes place, at least for some people.

For most companies, having employees work outside the office will require reinventing many processes and policies. Some forms of remote work are likely to persist and will require major changes, such as:

• Investment in digital infrastructure.
• Rethinking office space.
• Structural transformation of cities, food services, commercial real estate and retail.

Consumer Simple, Enterprise Secure

While we all transitioned to remote working, it came with a myriad of security challenges, particularly with many employees using personal devices to exchange and share data. The vulnerable attack surface thus increases exponentially as organizations are faced with opening their firewalls through additional VPNs and loosening policies for unmanaged devices as a tradeoff to employee productivity. How do companies extend security profiles to endpoints which are now in new locations and on the corporate network?

Enterprises are moving from simply supporting remote work to becoming distributed, anywhere-organizations. Companies are rethinking where teams work, how they work and how they support customers from wherever they are. To be successful, this means investing in technology and a long-term strategy to be a stronger, more focused and more resilient organization.

A Modern Approach for a Modern Workforce

VMware believes that the way forward is through an Anywhere Workspace solution, which:

• Builds trust for today's distributed workforce.
• Enables highly engaged employees.
• Reduces silos, disparate tools and operational overhead.
• Offers more effective security that follows users, data and apps.

VMware is in a unique position to provide an integrated solution to address these challenges holistically. When we bring together VMware's innovative unified endpoint management, desktop and app virtualization, SASE or secure access service edge, and endpoint security technologies, we can help our customers meet their technology needs and help them successfully embrace the future of work.