Understanding The New Work Nucleus: What It Is & How to Adapt
The shift to the digital workplace is here. And the way we work is changing faster than anticipated.
A recent study by Avaya found that 72% of businesses in the US are rethinking how they work. Companies are rapidly adopting new technology to improve employee collaboration and communication.
Also, 8 out of 10 businesses updated their tools to provide better customer and employee experiences.
Massive changes such as the global health crisis, the changing demographic of workers, and the increased use of AI and automation for everyday workplace tasks have made it necessary for businesses to adopt new technology or risk dying out.
A 2019 Gartner report named this rapid adoption of new technology, the “new work nucleus.”
In this post, you’ll learn what the term means and how your business can adopt it successfully.
What is the New Work Nucleus?
The new work nucleus is an emerging group of cloud-based personal and team productivity applications replacing older on-premise tools.
To paint a clear picture of the new work nucleus, we have to revisit the old work nucleus. In the old work nucleus, employees use separate on-premise tools to collaborate, communicate, and connect. Communication and collaboration take place over office suites like Microsoft Office, emails, web conferencing, and instant messaging tools. Local drives serve as storage units for company information.
User fatigue usually emerged as employees struggle to manage too many communication and information tools. Projects and tasks are difficult to manage and track. Also, with information stored in local drives, workers had limited access and can not share data easily.
In contrast, in the new work nucleus, information is stored on cloud-based SaaS platforms like Dropbox and Hive. As a result, information is accessible to employees from anywhere at any time.
Employees no longer have to meet in the same room to collaborate and connect. Cloud and SaaS-based tools support cooperation among workers in different locations and timezones. Repetitive tasks are automated and important information is prioritized with the help of AI.
With the new work nucleus, the shift to the digital workplace is accelerated. However, the existence of this new way of work does not translate to immediate benefits for businesses. Unlocking the limitless possibilities of the new work nucleus relies on collaborative work management.
The Role of Collaborative Work Management Tools in the New Work Nucleus
The tools in the new work nucleus are ever-expanding. There is no-one-size-fits-all software to handle every problem. As such, your employees have to use different applications to get work done. 30% of 17,000 respondents in a 2019 Slack study on app usage said they use 6 or more workplace apps. 77% of workers in technology expect that number to rise in the next five years.
While the use of these applications helps workers, they also create new problems. The use of disparate applications according to Gartner results in “team members and managers finding it difficult to have a comprehensive and common view of current plans and the state of execution of collaborative work when context and artifacts.”
Switching back and forth between apps reduces productivity and makes collaboration difficult. To solve this problem, you need a tool that unifies workplace apps and reduces context switching: collaborative work management tools.
In its report, Collaborative Work Management in the New Work Nucleus, Gartner describes collaboration work management (CWM) tools as task-driven workspaces that support business users in planning and coordinating their work.
In simpler terms, on CWM applications like Hive’s powerful project management tool, you can manage tasks, projects, and workflows. In addition, these tools support application integration, providing access to data and functionality from a single point. Consequently, the number of applications employees use diminishes, which enhances productivity.
Information and activity can be viewed from a central dashboard giving you powerful oversight. To sum it up, you need the open communication channels and integration capabilities of collaborative work management to leverage the numerous tools from the new work nucleus without losing core benefits.
Next, let’s move on to how you can prepare your business for the future of work.
How Teams Can Successfully Transition to the New Work Nucleus
Transitioning to the new way of work does not involve the adoption of tools also. It also requires a shift in workplace practices.
Here are some recommendations from experts on how to adapt to the workplace of the future.
Identify and choose the right mix of personal and team tools
With so many options, what workplace applications should you choose?
Dave Jones, CEO of Instinctive Solutions, an information management marketing consultancy, suggests picking tools that will support the way your employees work.
“One of the key things about the new work nucleus is that it promotes the idea of flexible and adaptive technology. The important nuance here is that in this new world staff and teams should not need to change the way they work to adapt to technology. The technology should be flexible and smart enough to adapt to how the individual and team want to work.”
Clarify the needs of your employees by involving them in the process. Armed with the information they will provide you, you will be able to pick tools that solve existing needs.
Here are some important factors to consider in your selection process based on recommendations by IT professionals.
- Choose a tool that solves a problem you have. Don’t choose a platform because every other business is on it. Focus on picking a tool that fixes difficulties your business is facing.
- Select intuitive tools that every employee can use. Applications that are tough to figure out will hamper productivity and kill worker enthusiasm.
- Examine security features, options, and administrative controls to reduce the vulnerability of company information.
- Clarify the total cost of ownership.
- Ensure compatibility with tools already in use. A CWM that can’t integrate with essential applications is not a good fit.
To reduce risk test small and targeted deployments with a free trial before making the final decision.
Adopt flexible work structures
How we work is as important as the tools we use. Adopting the new work nucleus and clinging to rigid practices will lead to disaster.
For optimal results, you have to reevaluate the flexibility of your business’ work culture.
Jones points out that, “the new way of work needs a management culture that embraces a flexible and dynamic IT culture. This can only work if the HR side of the business adopts this too. Flexible tools encourage flexible working for example but many organizations (until COVID forced them to) did not embrace remote working.”
He recommends that organizations need to create a culture that is open to change – not rigid management hierarchies and IT stacks that crumble when change is imposed.
Embrace flexible work arrangements
A big change is coming. By 2025, 75% of the global workforce is projected to be made up of millennials. A younger workforce will lead to increased use of workplace technology, a strengthened emphasis on collaboration, and more demands for flexible work arrangements.
Businesses that do not change positions on how work is done will lose out on the emerging talent.
But the workforce will not be composed entirely of digital nomads. And not all businesses go remote. To suit the demands of different people in the workforce, companies should consider flexible work arrangements.
Meeting practices and rules about productivity and communication during work hours will have to change to accommodate the new workforce.
Ensure employee buy-in
Adoption of new technology will be harder in a workplace where collaboration and working out loud is not the norm. You might encounter pushback from employees when adopting the new work nucleus.
To counter this, businesses have to build employee digital dexterity. Digital dexterity is the desire and ability of employees to embrace existing and emerging technologies to achieve better business outcomes.
Your workers decide whether this deployment will fail or not. Craig Roth, Vice President at Gartner explains that no matter what new technology or process a company decides to switch to, change will not happen if employees do not fully engage with it.
To reduce the challenges that change brings, Gartner recommends the CIO lead the charge in creating a digital dexterous workplace.
Address governance questions
Deploying new tools brings up questions about how they will be used. Setting guidelines in place from the beginning will eliminate problems around usage.
You need to address:
- Access to the applications and the content and conversations produced on them.
- The organization, maintenance, and storage of generated content and conversations.
- Management risks in terms of compliance and legal discovery.
Decisions on how these issues will be addressed will form the basis of governance guidelines.
In the end, the shift from on-premises tools to the new work nucleus empowers employees and promotes collaboration and creativity. However, businesses that leverage collaborative work management will gain the full benefits of the new way of work.
