Fostering accessible and engaged hybrid/remote work environments at KMWorld 2022

With millions of people entering and coping with the newfound hybrid/remote workplace every day, every industry has been catapulted into a holistically altering environment that demands for its members to adapt.

Arvind Jain, CEO and co-founder of Glean, and Jeff Willinger, digital experience director at Withum and Microsoft MVP, discussed the intricacies of hybrid/remote work environments and effective strategies towards maximizing its potential in their workshop, “Enterprise of the Future: Hybrid Work.”

Jain emphasized that the fragmentation of knowledge, its lack of singular truths, interruptions for workers, and attempts at “re-inventing the wheel” of knowledge tasks pose challenges towards embracing a hybrid workforce.

According to a recent poll, workers employ around 11 applications in their daily work, conduct 35x searches a week, and spend an average of 13 minutes per search before asking a colleague for help. Further, 81% of hybrid/remote workers admitted to feeling overwhelmed with information, and 60% said that they didn’t know how to find the information they needed when starting their current jobs.

Jain explained that advances in technology and the shortcomings of existing search and discovery approaches position Glean’s solution as a knowledge experience that amplifies remote/hybrid work, not complicating it.

“Glean serves as a discovery launch pad,” said Jain. “It’s a personalized feed that brings everything into one place so that way workers can focus on what matters.”

Glean allows its users to search across all  your company’s applications to find what you need, when you need it. The solution provides personalized answers instantly, combating the complexity of hybrid/remote search and discovery.

Willinger targeted engaging and motivating workers in an environment that is increasingly dispersed and distracted. Microsoft Viva, the employee experience platform within Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, creates integrated digital employee experiences focused on the future of work and improving employee development, purpose, well-being, and connection. With Viva Connections, users can leverage a desktop experience that centers your organization’s home site, supplying Dashboard, Feed, and Resource capabilities.

The ultimate goal for Willinger is to amplify employee satisfaction in order to engage and maintain engagement among hybrid/remote employees. By creating social connections between leaders and employees within communities of interest inside the company, attraction towards implementing Microsoft Viva is critical for its adoption.

“If employees don’t see value in going to a digital workplace, they won’t go,” said Willinger. “They’ll do their own thing.”

KMWorld returned in-person to the J.W. Marriott in Washington D.C. on November 7-10, with pre-conference workshops held on November 7.

KMWorld 2022 is a part of a unique program of five co-located conferences, which also includes Enterprise Search & Discovery, Office 365 Symposium, Taxonomy Boot Camp, and Text Analytics Forum.