Across the globe, businesses are responding to the current climate by switching to remote working at scale – but this is a major challenge, not just for business leaders, but for individuals across the network.

Your employees may find it disruptive, unsettling and stressful. You need to do all you can to help them adjust, establish normality and feel confident and happy.

Reassure and motivate employees who are remote working

You need to ensure that you’re providing the support needed to give the most help to your remote workers. These three key areas a good place to start:

Social interaction

Communication is king. You need to make your presence felt across the network with regular interactions.

Encourage frequent dialogue between line managers and their teams to assess satisfaction and happiness in their working lives. Create forums and community groups to provide a platform for sharing ideas and providing feedback as well as enjoy some fun with work colleagues as they would in a normal office environment. Have your People teams provide guidance and advice on good working behaviours whilst at home. Overall, it’s vital to promote a message of support for health and wellbeing.

Overall, it’s vital to promote a message of support for health and wellbeing as providing this for the whole organisation as your number one priority. This will show to your people that despite the circumstances, they are most certainly not alone.

Setting collaborative goals

You as a business leader need to outline a clear vision for the organisation, share it with your teams and show them what their individual role within it is.

Group objectives and targets have always been a key motivator for employees. If they feel like they’re part of a team working towards something, they’ll be more productive – especially if they can see their own contribution to the collective effort.

And not only will they be more productive, but they’ll also feel less isolated through the additional contact with their colleagues – a vital factor in maintaining health and wellbeing.

Supporting a good work/life balance

One benefit to remote working is the greater flexibility it offers your people. Make sure they don’t think that, just because they’re not in the office, they have to sit at their laptop all day in case they’re needed.

There are many added pressures created by the current climate. Not only are they working in unfamiliar environments, they may have to look after their children or loved ones. You must assure them that they have absolute freedom and total support to fit their work around these needs.

And by allowing your employees a degree of autonomy over what they do, when they do it and who they do it with, you’ll motivate and empower them to work with their teams.

So, encourage them to find a work/life balance that works for them, trust them to meet their responsibilities and try to support and understand their needs and initiatives.

The challenge facing business leaders

As individuals face their own challenges with remote working, so too does the wider organisation.

One difficulty lies in the ability to communicate with your teams. Emails and video conferencing have their limits, one-to-ones won’t feel the same and social interactions are reduced. But it’s crucial that leaders find a way to provide support and motivation.

Technology plays a significant part in this – but it’s a double-edged sword. It provides functions that make remote working more feasible, but also complicate life by making devices more complex.

Ask the right questions, analyse the needs of your employees and business, and find the technological solutions that work for you. Then you’ll maintain productivity and enable future growth.

The questions you need to ask

These are tough questions to face up to, but doing so with an open mind will lead to long term benefits for your business:

• Are we adhering to the latest government advice and regulations?
• Is our IT infrastructure resilient to this sudden increased demand for remote working?
• Do our employees have everything they need to work remotely effectively?
• Do they have the necessary technical knowledge to use everything easily?
• What business-critical processes do we normally undertake in an office location?
• And does our IT team have the capabilities to provide support remotely?

Give each question due to diligence and work quickly to fill any gaps, or risk business continuity dropping.

Empower remote workers with technology

You might quickly discover that you may not have the right technology solutions in place to support effective remote working. So, what can you do?

Long-term you can complete a detailed experiential audit of your existing IT infrastructure and make a plan for its review. But in the short term, you may need to make some quick adjustments in order to address the most immediate and challenging issues.

For instance;

•   Can your people access online workspaces and documents?
•   Are they restricted due to a poor VPN experience or connectivity issues?
•   Is their device set up correctly for remote working?
•   Do they still need access to printing for documents such as orders and contracts etc?
•   Do they have the right digital tools to collaborate?

If you need help addressing any of these challenges, employ the expertise of a third-party company such as Ricoh – who offer a wide range of digital solutions, as well as insight into connecting with people and promoting collaboration. Also, working with leading technology vendors such as Microsoft means we can quickly deploy pre-configured devices such as Surface Pro 7’s and Surface Laptop 3’s ‘as-a-Service’ and on a monthly per-user plan with online support and assistance if needed.

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The 3 R’s of remote working

When planning for mass remote working, focusing on these three principles will allow you to adapt, and leverage your teams individual and collective strengths.

Role Clarification 

Prioritise the development of clear boundaries and guidelines for what you expect from people in your organisation.

Clarifying roles and expectations will give your people a firm foundation from which to meet expectations and aspirations, manage their time, and understand their requirements.

Not only will this help keep people on track, but it will also prevent the more ambitious or hard-working individuals from becoming burned out.

Regular communication

The best leaders are those who listen, communicate with trust and respect, inquire about workload and progress without micromanaging and regularly reach out to their teams.

Ask these quick questions each week: How are you? What have you done? What are you working on? And where do you need help?

This allows individuals to take ownership of their habits and behaviours and make major leaps in productivity of their own accord.

Don’t forget, there are differences between individuals in how they’ll view the challenge – some will relish it; some will find it daunting.

Promote a message of accomplishment over activity and make sure that every individual is given the same opportunity and attention.

Retaining connections

Remote working makes maintaining personal connections more important than ever.

Amidst today’s challenges, It’s easy to become overly focused on how you are going to deliver on various metrics for business success and delivery of work. But this would be a major mistake.

Think of innovative ways to provide ‘virtual water coolers’ – digital environments where your employees can talk about what they’re up to and express themselves. Collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams are ideal for this.

How Ricoh can help provide a smooth transition to remote working

Ricoh has a long history of empowering digital workplaces and optimising your people’s ability to perform both in the office and remotely. Our guide to Creating an Optimal Office provides practical guidance and advice to leaders and their key operational teams.

If you have any questions about the content of this article, or about how Ricoh can help you make the switch to remote working, don’t hesitate to get in touch at sales@ricoh.ie .

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The news was announced earlier this week at the 12^th annual CEO Breakfast Forum, hosted at the Mansion House in Dublin and attended by more than 250 business leaders. Alongside 13 of the biggest organisations operating in Ireland today, Ricoh Ireland was recertified to the standard. A total of 34 organisations have been awarded the Business in the Community Ireland accolade, which is based on ISO 26000 and valid for three years.

Seeing so many big brands focusing on the areas of corporate responsibility and sustainability showcases how important it has become for businesses in recent years – not only in terms of company principles and performance, but also employee engagement.

At Ricoh Ireland, we find our engagements with the community around us so rewarding. We have an ongoing partnership with LauraLynn, Ireland’s Children’s Hospice. As part of this, staff members volunteer for the organisation on a regular basis and we also provide print materials for events and fundraising. We also recently helped to raise vital funds for Alzheimer’s Research by participating in Ricoh’s company-wide 2019 Imagine. Change. Football Challenge in Spain.

Our commitment to the Low Carbon Pledge – which aims to reduce Scope 1 & 2 greenhouse gas emission intensity by 50% by 2030 – demonstrates our dedication to minimising the environmental impact of our operations by being more energy efficient and procuring renewable energy. This pledge also enables the companies that have signed up to share best practices to pool resources and exchange data to have a greater impact on sustainability.

The Low Carbon Pledge extends beyond Ricoh Ireland, as we also help to improve the energy usage of clients, supply chains and operations of the communities in which we operate. As a company, we are dedicated to adopting sustainable, environmentally-friendly approaches through our print and document management solutions and services.

At Ricoh Ireland, we are extremely proud to be recognised for our efforts in this area and I am incredibly proud of the team for all of their hard work in helping us to get three in a row. A number of our team members contributed to our efforts on this occasion and I would like to personally thank Eimear Hogan, Laura Barry, Anthony Vaughan, Gary Owens and James Deacon for helping us to hit the Business Working Responsibly mark once again.

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So, what does this mean for the future of work? It means businesses have to adapt their strategies in order to empower people and future-proof their organisation. If they don’t, they could find themselves struggling to retain talent, stay competitive and drive growth.

Understanding a 4G workplace

Employers nowadays are facilitating four different generations in the workplace, from digital natives to baby boomers. In fact, recent research by Ricoh (carried out by Coleman Parkes) found that 65% of workers agree that there are fundamental differences in how employees from each generation work.

Due to the fact that these generations bring different ideas and experiences to the table, thus boosting creativity and innovation, business leaders need to ensure that they create an optimal office which meets these individual requirements.

From technologies that facilitate flexible workstyles to communal workspaces that encourage collaboration, the key is understanding the needs of your team and empowering them to work smarter, in a way that benefits both them and the company.

Adopting the right strategy

Whether it’s Baby Boomers or Gen X, over half (52%) of workers say their employers are failing to meet the needs of different generations in the workplace. In other words, businesses are failing to put people at the heart of their digital transformation strategy and missing out on the benefits this brings.

Workplace digital transformation enables seamless communication, streamlines processes and allows people to do more with their time – all of which contribute to better business performance and growth.

It doesn’t have to be wholesale changes either, something small can make a huge difference. For example, for many employees who are travelling for work, face-to-face communication is not always the most efficient way of exchanging ideas. Having unified communication systems, such as video conferencing, allows them to collaborate on the go with colleagues and customers.

Reaping the rewards

Adopting technology that empowers and enables employees is a key contributor to the success of business performance. The numbers speak for themselves – across Ireland, €3.4 billion in GDP could be unlocked by creating the optimal office.

Furthermore, workstyle innovation could see 48,000 travel hours saved in one year. Therefore, not only does workplace digital transformation help to improve employee output and benefit customers with higher-quality service, it saves significant time and is also better for the environment.

By prioritising the needs of your employees and building your digital workplace transformation strategy around people, you can increase productivity, enhance service delivery and future-proof your company.

The first step is understanding the needs of your people and identifying the tools that can empower them. To find out more about creating the Optimal Office, read our essential guide here or contact the team.

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Not only is this stunting business growth, it is also having adverse effects on employee motivation and satisfaction. Needless obstacles when using technology leave employees feeling understandably frustrated and less productive. As businesses compete to retain talent, it goes without saying that employers should take measures to make everyday tasks as simple and time-efficient as possible.

So, what do employees find to be the biggest wastes of time and how can companies facilitate a more seamless and effective approach?

1. Scanning physical copies of documents into digital formats

Making the move towards digitisation is extremely important for businesses nowadays. Not only are digital documents easier to secure, protect and track, digitising documents also adds to the overall sustainability and efficiency of a company.

However, research shows that employees find the process of scanning physical copies into digital formats to be the biggest waste of time. In an era when both data protection and sustainability should be key pillars of business, and there are tools to facilitate the move from hard to soft copies, there is no excuse for having systems in place that make the digitisation of documents overly complicated.

For example, multi-functional devices and dedicated in-house print rooms can optimise document management processes – from printing to scanning to archiving – enabling employees to handle confidential documentation securely, focus more on business critical activities and complete tasks more quickly.

2. Upgrading applications and devices

With technology evolving at such a rapid pace, companies can find it difficult to constantly make sure their devices are up-to-date and often employees are left trying to install updates on devices or struggling with slow machines, instead of focusing on their responsibilities.

From fulfilling customers’ expectations to collaborating with peers, staff are reliant on such devices to effectively perform their duties. That’s why technology should be enabling, not inhibiting, team members and supporting business growth.

As well as automatically updated devices, the equipment itself also needs to be reviewed and improved. For instance, companies used to be reliant on phones and emails to communicate, but now they can use unified communications systems such as videoconferencing tools to collaborate across locations.

3. Bottlenecks caused by complicated systems and processes

Over half (52%) of Irish office workers are left feeling frustrated when forced to spend unnecessary time on tasks, while more than a third of workers feel less motivated due to needless bottlenecks caused by complicated systems and processes.

Bottlenecks can occur in any business, be it due to a tight deadline or lack of resources. However, when employees feel less motivated because of constant delays, organisations need to be active by examining and improving the efficiency of the systems they have in place.

So if your company has grown, chances are you will need to increase the amount of communal devices serving your team, otherwise backlogs will occur. Or perhaps your organisation needs more capacity at certain times throughout the year, in which case outsourcing may be the best option.

4. Finding items in devices and on the network

Whether they are in the office or working remotely, it’s necessary to equip your workforce with the right tools to allow them to access and work on company documentation whenever they want and wherever they are. Furthermore, it’s crucial that both employees and employers have peace of mind that such files and folders are secure.

Empowering staff in this way, be it by enabling remote access or simplifying document archives, makes sense from a productivity perspective and when implemented successfully, allows people to be smarter with their time and work on-the-go.

Digitisation shouldn’t complicate accessibility; it should streamline it. By storing files and folders in digital format on high-performing systems, it is not only easier to locate these items but also work and collaborate on them. Going one step further, Ricoh Forensics offers real-time visibility of the location of client files, ensuring traceability across organisations.

Time has never been so precious to companies – big or small – and our research shows that there are still everyday tasks that are impacting on staff productivity, as well as customer service and therefore business growth. With the right technologies now available, there is no excuse for not streamlining processes, improving efficiency, enabling people and propelling your company forward.

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1. Understand their priorities

There is no point in guessing what your employees need and want – consulting and listening to them is the only way of ensuring effective and impactful organisational change. As well as shaping company strategy, this process also makes people feel valued and should support in creating a more productive and transparent company culture.

Moreover, you may find that their priorities aren’t what you expected; perhaps communal office areas are vital for encouraging collaboration and creativity on work projects. Similarly, employees may feel that a social or sports committee would help them to get more out of their professional lives while also enhancing their personal wellbeing.

2. Make a real difference

The secret to engaging and empowering staff is implementing initiatives that actually make a real difference to your employees, based on what they believe is important. It’s about facilitating them in relation to what they want to achieve, not just in their careers but their lives. By engaging with the causes and activities they’re passionate about, you can motivate and inspire staff, whilst creating trust and loyalty.

For example, if people in your organisation feel that they want to contribute to wider society and perhaps don’t have the time to volunteer, a Corporate Social Responsibility programme would allow them to do this. Alternatively, if those in your business have families, a parental leave policy which gives them flexibility is vital.

3. Create a positive, productive workplace

A productive environment kitted out with the latest equipment enables staff to perform to their full capacity and work as effectively as possible. The optimal office is designed to empower people, providing them with cutting-edge technology and developing business processes that enhance and streamline how they work.

By focusing and improving the workplace with tools and strategies that boost efficiency and take care of time-consuming or menial tasks, employees can be better-equipped to handle their workload. This also prevents them from taking work home with them or staying late to complete their ‘to do’ list, helping to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

4. Enable mobile working practices

According to a Ricoh survey, conducted in association with TechPro magazine, only 37% of workers have the authorisation and remote access to enjoy mobile workstyles. Considering that increased productivity and improved collaboration are benefits of this approach, this is a rather surprising statistic.

Remote working practices, utilising the latest technologies, allow staff to work whenever they want and wherever they are, providing greater agility. This means that they can fulfil their responsibilities while on-the-go or from home – in other words, they can work smarter, not longer. Such bespoke workstyles can help to boost business output and customer service, as well as employee satisfaction and overall contentment.

5. Continue to innovate

For companies, innovation should be twofold. As well as providing customers with products and/or services that make their lives easier and enable them to reach their business objectives, they need to encourage and motivate staff by providing them with tools and technologies that allow them to fulfil the responsibilities of their role.

The organisation itself also has to progress and develop which, nowadays, means incorporating automated workflows and embracing digital transformation. As well as improving performance and proficiency, such capabilities also boost security and accessibility.

People are what make organisations successful and business leaders are quickly realising the value of investing in and enabling their teams. At Ricoh Ireland, we understand the importance of engaging and empowering employees in terms of achieving business objectives and company growth. To find out more about how we can support through our services and products, contact us today.

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Whether you own a local company with five members of staff or run an organisation with 5,000 employees spread across various countries, there are global ways of working that can transform and benefit your business. These solutions and systems have the power to enable flexibility, boost productivity and enhance the security of any size or type of organisation.

Flexible working

Most employees, regardless of their position or the industry in which they work, needs to have the flexibility of working on-the-go or from home. Staff need to be able to access, share and produce work materials and information in real-time via third party devices – made possible by a simple but secure cloud infrastructure. A flexible working solution can be tailored to your business needs and scaled to the size of your team, which means there’s no excuse not to empower staff through an agile approach.

Unified communications

Be it a compact videoconferencing system that can be carried anywhere or an interactive whiteboard in the conference room, being able to communicate and collaborate across locations is crucial for every organisation. Such audio visual solutions allow team members to share documents and discuss ideas with ease from wherever they are. Unified communications can also have an impact within the office with digital signage that can show room availability and software that creates an easy-to-use, centralised booking system.

Document digitisation

Despite the prevalence of technology solutions, the majority of companies still have to handle and store paper documentation. As well as issues around space and security, this area can also negatively impact the efficiency and productivity of a workforce with inputting, archiving and searching all taking up significant staff time. The digitisation of paperwork and workflows not only makes storage of confidential information more secure but also enables employees to easily locate and work on files, thus boosting output and service levels.

Strong governance

A data breach can be costly, both in financial and reputational terms, so it’s vital for companies of all sizes to review, maintain and strengthen internal governance processes to ensure information security. For example, utilising a data cleansing service means that data is thoroughly removed from end-of-life devices such as printers. Similarly, a document governance service allows you to take control of the management and monitoring of your document environment, ensuring processes are secure, sustainable and compliant.

Intelligent marketing

Promoting your own product and/or service offering can be key to driving business growth and staying competitive. From the traditional printed materials to more modern email marketing, being able to create and deliver targeted communication to existing and prospective customers can help you promote your company and gain an understanding of what appeals to your client base. Even if it’s on a minor scale, intelligent marketing services streamline this process and allow you to take more control of boosting your company profile, attracting potential leads and driving expansion.

Small and large, local and multinational, all organisations and their employees can benefit from more global ways of working. At Ricoh Ireland, we are experienced in implementing such solutions and helping to create companies of the future. Find out how by contacting the team today.

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An area that is arguably overlooked in creating a workplace such as this is sustainability. Increasingly, prospective employees and potential customers are choosing organisations that are ethical and sustainable. That’s not to mention that this kind of approach also makes financial sense for companies and helps them stand out from the crowd.

Here’s why sustainability ought to be high on the list of priorities for business leaders…

Leading by example

Being more sustainable helps to protect our collective future and is a great way for like-minded organisations to come together to share knowledge and develop new ways of doing business that benefit everyone.

We are proactive in this regard, having recently signed the Low Carbon Pledge.  Powered by the Leaders Group on Sustainability (launched by Business in the Community), this initiative strives to improve the sustainability of the Irish business sector.

As part of the pledge, Ricoh has committed to becoming more energy-efficient and aims to reduce our greenhouse gas emission intensity by 50% by 2030. We will also target improving the energy usage of clients and our own operations.

As one of a number of leading Irish businesses that have pledged to adopt practices to reach a lower carbon economy, this sets us apart and allows us to review and revamp processes which also benefits our customers.

Creating a positive culture

Establishing a positive culture, defined by transparency and sustainability, adds an invaluable layer of cohesion to an organisation; as well as building trust, it fosters employee wellbeing and can boost productivity.

In fact, our recent Economy of People study revealed that maintaining ethical values has a knock-on effect with 83% of respondents agreeing that culture, when effective, improves employee motivation. A positive company culture has also become a deciding factor for prospective employees on whether they will work for an organisation.

Moreover, the research revealed that 97% of business leaders said a commitment to ethical business practices, including transparency and sustainability, has a strong influence on employee and company performance.

In other words, an ethical and sustainable work culture has a direct impact on not only talent attraction and retention, but also on employee attitude and business performance; it is therefore both environmentally and financially beneficial.

Promoting a more efficient environment

As well as benefiting wider society, a sustainable approach can also help to streamline work processes and empower people whilst increasing overall efficiency and innovation within the workplace.

Providing technology that enables flexible and mobile working allows people to work where and when they want, thus reducing the amount of people travelling in cars and buses to work each day, as well as office upkeep costs like lighting and heating.

Similarly, within the office, multifunctional devices can assist in the reduction of paper consumption which has an impact on the environment, while unified communications systems prevent people from having to travel to meetings by enabling real-time collaboration across locations and time zones.

Ultimately, sustainability takes many forms – from the ways that people work within an organisation to the impact it can have outside of it. Not only does it cut costs, having a strong corporate responsibility directly impacts the culture of a company and technologies can also save employees time while also ensuring environmental sustainability on a larger scale. Whichever way you look at it, sustainability is not only good for the environment but also good for business.

To find out what Ricoh Ireland can do to help your company be more sustainable, visit the website.

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According to a piece of research that we conducted in partnership with Oxford Economics, the optimal office could unlock €3.4 billion in untapped GDP for Ireland by helping to empower and enable employees across the country.

The optimal office incorporates everything that impacts on the effectiveness of a workplace across the areas of culture (business practices and ethics), workspace (office design and furnishings) and technology (equipment and ways of working) – and when these come together in perfect harmony, it is the people that excel and the economy that benefits.

Regardless of the size of the company and the industry in which it operates, people are at the heart of every single organisation, which is why it is vital that employees and employers recognise and agree on the elements that drive productivity in the workplace.

In order to find out how businesses in Ireland can unlock their full potential, employees and employers were asked to give their perspective on what supports output in their organisation across the three main areas of culture, workspace and technology.

Here is what they said…

Office environment is essential

Among employees, the workstation is viewed as essential to productivity, with the other leading factors cited as office environment and collaborative spaces. While business leaders also appreciate the importance of office environment on business performance, there did appear to be a gap when it came to workstations, perhaps suggesting that employers need to reassess the layout and design of employees’ personal space to help them reach their potential and take advantage of the opportunity to boost business productivity and revenue.
Mobile working is a must
While having a fixed location was found to be a driver of performance and output, the research also explored the concept of mobile working, which continues to grow in popularity and is cited by workers as the key to efficiency. In light of this and the fact that companies are often spread across various locations and time zones nowadays, it is positive that over half of bosses feel they provide the necessary tools to assist remote working.

Technology is the ticket

Irish employees rate the improvement of technology as having the greatest impact on the amount of time they spend at work, how they collaborate with colleagues and those outside the organisation, and the generation of creative ideas. This shows how employers can use bespoke workstyles and digital transformation to enable and inspire employees through technology – from infrastructure that enables easy access, to processes such as the digitisation of information.

Ethics are key to effectiveness

Increasingly, the ethics and values of a company are having an impact on Irish workers in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace. This is something that is already recognised by business executives, hence why more organisations are focusing on transparent and sustainable approaches. The study confirms therefore that culture truly is the foundation of a company in terms of engagement and motivation as well as creative-thinking and innovation.

At Ricoh Ireland, we actively help organisations to gain a better understanding of their people and the way in which they work. By addressing the issue of productivity – including the drivers that enhance business output, aid employee wellbeing, encourage innovation and establish trust – Irish companies could not only take charge of their own growth path but reshape the trajectory of the Irish economy.

To download your copy of our report, The Economy of People, fill in the form to the right (or below if you’re on mobile).

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