Canadian HR Reporter

www.hrreporter.com 55 issues will reap significant benefits over those who take a passive stance. Employees will show the way to a better employee experience To enable employees in the age of engagement, organizations will have to take a hard look at their technology stack and check if they are equipped for the challenge. One indicator: at the onset of the pandemic, many employees had to adapt at record speed, often using what- ever worked to be productive, collabo- rate, seek support or learn new skills. Their experience should serve as a guide — examining what they were able, or not able, to do; which of the company's platforms, they reorganize their ways of working. And, most important of all, within teams, people adapt to each other's differences: their cultural differences, their personal situations and the best ways for them to communicate and organize their time, among others. That is why this may be a decisive moment to make the workplace more inclusive. To do this, organizations will have to tackle some complex issues head-on — from their onboarding and training experience in a remote world to the accessibility of tools or the best ways to support mental health. But, in the age of the engaged employee experience, those who do tackle these toolsets they used or left aside; and what risks they may have created. Employees will come out of this period with new expectations and, in particular, appreciate that the tools and platforms that they use at work offer an experience just as good as the best consumer apps. In the era of productivity apps and no-code platforms, they will also expect tools that are not limited to execution, but also allow for creativity, collabora- tion and automation of their tasks. In a word, smart working. The good news: with cloud-based solu- tions, it is now possible to bring those changes at scale, within a much shorter time frame than before. And today, such tools are propelling the employee expe- rience into a new era where the combi- nation of cloud platforms, analytics that rely on machine learning, and agile, data-driven development help companies learn fast, detect problems early and deploy solutions before issues become widespread. A frictionless experience must be a highly secure one There is, of course, a condition for all of this to work: digital security. The pandemic and, in particular, the When you give people a personal stake in their work, combined with the right tools to accomplish it, they do amazing things. They create, they learn new skills, they adopt new communications platforms, they reorganize their ways of working. massive shift to remote work, have elevated the attack surface and level of risk across the board; some countries reported a doubling of the number of cyber-attacks in the first six months of the pandemic. And, 85 per cent of data breaches now rely on a human element, according to Verizon's 2021 Data Breach Investigation Report. In this domain as in others, the recent period has accelerated, rather than caused, changes. As employees freely switch between personal and profes- sional devices, networks and tools, the traditional model of the "fortress" — where the main focus is on protecting the perimeter against unauthorized entry — has proven increasingly inef- fective. Just last year, eight out of 10 companies suffered from a successful cyber-attack. As the workplace evolves, companies need to update the way they protect themselves, with far-encompassing tool sets such as managed detection and response, and a broadened focus that covers not only cybersecurity, but also cyber-resilience. As in any moment of change, the coming period is ripe with challenges and complexities — but the prize is well worth it. We have a rare opportunity to change the workplace for the better, and make it more flexible, inclusive, engaging and secure. And organizations that are willing to be bold and explore these new frontiers will turn their employee experi- ence into a competitive advantage. CHRR Élie Girard is CEO of Atos in Paris, provider of digital solutions and consultancy services. For more information, visit www.atos.net.

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