3 ways to reinvent your workplace-as-a-service experience

Talent retention. Market pressures. Technology. Lifecycle burdens. The way you manage your workforce’s device experience must continually change.

Why? Because according to Unisys research, while 86% of employers and employees agree that hybrid work can be effective, as much as 73% of the workforce is losing up to five or more hours a week due to IT issues. Remarkably, over half of employees consider having the right technology at their fingertips a top retention factor, second only to compensation and training.

Is there a way to address your workforce needs and meet your financial objectives? The answer is yes!

With workplace-as-a-service (WaaS) solutions, you can balance costs, experience and productivity in today’s next-gen hybrid working world. For example, Forrester research shows that a “device-as-a-service” solution can streamline IT processes while reaching payback within a year of implementation. On average, companies saved 11 days of procurement/deployment lead time and 6 days of resolution time, all while achieving a 20% reduction in their device lifecycle costs.

It's imperative that organizations invest in technology to ensure talent retention and enable an effective hybrid working environment. Forget huddling together in a room looking over someone’s shoulder. Now organizations must ensure experience parity no matter where collaboration occurs – which can only be accomplished through delivering technology where and when your employees need it.

Not sure what your workforce needs? No problem. Too much of a burden for your IT support team? WaaS can help. Is flexibility key? Scalability is built in. The bottom line? WaaS can be tailored to meet your unique persona needs while shifting responsibility from your IT staff to a managed service provider so that you can focus on your core business priorities. Here are three ways to get started.

1. Determine your workforce needs

Begin by taking your workforce profiles and establishing a reasonable set of intelligent personas. Then consider what problems each persona is facing today. Do you have frontline workers who are constantly on the go and therefore need their technology to keep pace? Are your researchers in need of the latest and greatest performance-driven technology to enable their next breakthrough? Do you have producers tethered to a desk while collaborating within a larger project team? Is information technology failing them?

Think about how you can solve for their productivity aspirations through a combination of right-sized technology and solutions that embody the spirit of hybrid work. Meet their needs head-on where some employees may need rugged devices or tablets while others may need the latest performance desktop. Others still may require slim-line mobile laptops for constant travel, and for the remainder, a virtual desktop could be the best fit and the most economical path forward.

2. Translate problems into solutions

Once you understand your workforce’s problems in ways they individually experience, turn those problems into answers that enhance their hybrid working capabilities. Leverage a Device Subscription Service to deliver a tailored combination of persona-driven devices, peripherals, and services that deliver positive, proactive support experiences. Use this same approach to supercharge your managed meeting room and use of augmented or merged reality.

Don’t overlook virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) as a solution to secure your data while getting out of the device game entirely. VDI can be a great fit for your contractors, seasonal workforce, or where you want to deliver a secure BYOD policy. You can even do all the above if it fits your business objectives!

And always consider key use cases that effective workplace solutions must tackle, such as new joiners, proactive and reactive break-fix, device refresh, replacement, and recovery. The goal should always be to deliver a positive experience tailored to the situation, especially that first impression of new joiners.

3. Do the math: 1 + 1 = 3

Now take it a step further. Realize that WaaS results in a greater outcome than the sum of its individual contributions. It addresses your workforce’s needs and transfers the IT burden to an expert partner that can deliver with scalability, avoid supply chain pitfalls, and enable flexibility in your IT spend. Plus, a WaaS partner can flatten your existing, complex supplier footprint by acting as your single point of contact covering the end-to-end digital workplace ecosystem.

And let your data tell the story. Expert hands can provide insights about your data that you may never have considered before. Quell silent dissatisfaction by utilizing telemetry data to discover poor user experiences and address them proactively through persona validation and dynamic, intelligent refresh planning. Get your employees into right-sized devices based on their needs when they need them.

Revolutionize your workforce’s digital workplace experience before it’s too late!

WaaS is the key to unlocking new possibilities for your business. It will transform your workplace into one that empowers your hybrid workforce in ways that maximize productivity and realize your talent retention goals. Incorporating WaaS into your business can help streamline your operations while enabling greater flexibility of your IT spend by normalizing your costs into a more predictable budget.

Plus, with a trusted partner’s guidance, you can enjoy the benefits of WaaS without worrying about the staffing to make the magic happen. You can learn more about how WaaS solutions can drive your workplace modernization by reading more information here.