5 Apps That Are Enabling The Hybrid Work Model
Desk Management

5 Apps That Are Enabling The Hybrid Work Model

It’s been one year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, last year, most organizations across the globe were scrambling to enable their workforce and get remote work going as the world went into lockdown. Today, we have adjusted to the new normal …a normal characterized by the acceptance of the hybrid work model.

A Hybrid Work Model – What Is This All About?

A hybrid work model allows organizations to offer a mix of remote as well as office work arrangements. According to this work model, some employees can work remotely while some work on-premise. The remote employees could come to the office on occasion for specific needs. Flexible floor plans and hot-seating will become more necessary. This work model has been in effect for a long time now, but of course, never at this scale. 

Providing hybrid work models is now imperative, a keystone, to corporate reopening plans. In fact,  research suggests that we could be in this hybrid situation permanently. 

One of the major draws of the hybrid work model is the flexibility it offers. However, flexibility cannot be free-form. Organizations have to identify which employees will have to come to the office and which teams will work remotely, manage assets, and optimize visitor management according to COVID norms. Facilities management will have to do more now as enablers of this hybrid work model.

That apart, organizations have to also look at tools that help drive productivity and collaboration, allow organizations to serve external customers easily, give their workforce solutions and platforms to solve IT problems, and also drive employee engagement initiatives from them. 

Here are five apps that organizations need to get this hybrid work model going. 

Facility Management App – SeQure 

The SeQure App is perhaps the most versatile workplace management software that helps Facility Managers and organizations deliver enablement at work, where work happens, irrespective of location. This user-friendly app gives organizations the confidence to bring back employees to a safe and compliant workplace by focusing on providing everything necessary but shying away from unnecessary bells and whistles.

Using this app, organizations can:

  • Comfortably manage desk management using real-time location awareness and occupancy analytics. 
  • Reserve workstations in advance, and gain insights on space usage to optimize building and operational efficiency 
  • Enable on-premise people detection and counting to ensure only the desired number of people occupy an area
  • Along with robust facility management features, this application can also help organizations manage their internal IT helpdesk and asset management departments:
  • Track and manage organizational assets efficiently and get full-stack visibility into all assets on a single platform 
  • Get a comprehensive view on asset status and maintenance history to enable predictive maintenance 
  • Make asset management and business asset tracking easier using Auto Asset Tagging with a Unique Identification Number and eliminate complexities in managing IT assets.
  • Provide a feature-rich and functional IT helpdesk to accelerate internal ticket resolution and address the concerns of the remote workforce at the earliest. 

With everything important available in one place, the SeQure app makes it easier for the organization to completely transform how their teams work and drive productivity and efficiency in this hybrid work environment. 

Customer Service Helpdesk– Freshdesk 

With customer service being so crucial, how can remote employees address customer needs? Freshdesk is a great solution for startups and SMEs to serve their external customers. Freshdesk is a helpdesk platform perfect for handling tickets as they appear on the system. Freshdesk offers a free version that you can try out before taking the plunge with its paid plans (which are also quite affordable).

Unlike applications that are aimed at serving internal customers, Freshdesk is focused on processing service tickets from external customers. So, what makes this a great app to manage a hybrid workspace?

  • A user-friendly dashboard that gives detailed insights into the number of unresolved tickets, tickets due for the day, open tickets and tickets on hold as well as the number of unassigned tickets. 
  • Detailed trend analytics available in a clickable graph format for easy perusal.
  • A customizable dashboard and widgets to customize everything according to the group, status, category wherever applicable.
  • A unique gamification feature, the Freshdesk Arcade, brings gamification to ticket resolution. It has leaderboards for ticket resolution and badges for top performers and agents. This feature is also extremely customizable and helps organizations encourage effective ticket management. 
  • Easily auto-manage how tickets are handled as they come into and sit in the system
  • Offers social streams to monitor for particular keywords and handles and allows agents to create a ticket from a tweet, direct message, or Facebook post and respond directly on social media without leaving the system
  • Supports customized customer-satisfaction surveys, advanced ticket assignment methods (round-robin and load-balanced), shared ticket ownership, multiple SLA policies, dynamic ticket forms, support for multiple products. It also provides access to Freddy, Freshdesk’s AI support bot

The main caveat with Freshdesk is that it is geared towards serving only external customers and the key features like the team dashboards, chatbot, social signals are only available at the highest pricing tiers.

ITIL Service Desk – Vivantio Pro 

Process automation is still crucial for efficiency and performance but it could become harder with distributed teams. The Vivantio Pro is a great enterprise-oriented, ITIL-compliant service desk offering to address this challenge. It is a mature application that adheres to almost all ITIL help desk standards. A host of usability features and customization options, an updated user interface, and high-end management and reporting features for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standard for IT support operations and also helps organizations solve internal IT service desk issues easily in this hybrid environment. 

Along with these features, the Vivantio Pro also provides 

  • An integrated knowledge base, role-based security, and IT asset management that is more than just a bolt-on solution
  • Comprehensive and customizable configuration management database (CMDB) and asset discovery capabilities
  • Flexible integration with other apps such as customer relationship management apps, social media, or analytics tools
  • Strong asset audit trails, interactive reports, and a self-service web portal to stop tickets from getting past teams
  • A full-fledged custom report builder that is not relegated to simple CSV or PDF exports of your data. Its reporting engine has data visualization capabilities and allows customers to view reports in a variety of charts or exportable dashboards and can display data in real-time or on a scheduled basis. 

Attendance and Time Tracking – QuickBooks Time (Formerly TSheets) 

Attendance management and time tracking are essentials for the hybrid work model to work. QuickBooks Time is a great app for businesses for labor and time management in a hybrid work environment. This app is compatible with time tracking applications and allows the users to log in both in-office and when not. 

With a clean and easy-to-use interface, the app has an automated system but also allows users to update timesheets manually. Perfect for SMEs, QuickBooks Time can be set up on the employee devices, and the training and set up can be done via chat or phone. 

Whether online or offline, the app can track time, as the iOS and Android apps are GPS enabled. The timestamp audits are also DOL and DCAA approved. It also allows administrators to check in real-time who has logged in and out. This application further allows integrations with other apps such as Zendesk, Zen payroll, Paychecx, Intuit Quickbooks, and more and offers a free trial and competitive pricing. 

Productivity and Employee engagement– Numly

With annual office parties and fancy perks going out of circulation because of the pandemic, managing employee engagement is a tough battle. Since employee engagement and productivity are inextricably linked, organizations have to identify new ways to enable the employee.

An AI-enabled coaching platform, the Numly app helps organizations increase employee engagement by investing in their employees’ growth. With this application organizations can:

  • Coach employees on critical and technical skills needed to navigate the skills gaps. Choose from a comprehensive catalog of 225+ hard skills and 185+ soft skills all packaged into tailored programs for key enterprise functions and disciplines.
  • Help employees discover work-life balance and deliver greater productivity by overcoming challenges 
  • Cultivate diversity, equity, and inclusion and help grow leaders who infuse collaboration and empowerment within diverse teams
  • Foster a work environment steeped in fairness and equity 
  • Help new hires assimilate the corporate culture and build trusted relationships even in a hybrid work environment 
  • Supercharge sales coaching programs and help reps meet and exceed quota, and sales executives manage more effectively.
  • Identify your high-performing employees and help them become successful leaders of tomorrow
  • Improve employee and organizational resilience 

In Conclusion 

Organizations have to accept that while the workplace is evolving, it is also fundamentally changing the way people work and collaborate. These apps (and many others) help in laying the foundation of the next-gen workplace and play an important role in supporting people and organizations and thereby make this hybrid work model possible. 

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