Fittest Companies – Work Environment Transformation

Written by Mona Singh on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Remote working has significantly impacted various aspects of workspace culture, environment, and interaction across industries. Remote working was only available to few people from the IT industry before, but pandemic led changes have brought digitalization and induced rapid global transformation to many other industries which were initially perceived as traditional and required physical presence.

Though the remote working practices were adopted as a necessary measure during the pandemic; they seem to be here to stay. WFH (Work from home) / remote working is the ‘new normal’. There are many companies that have decided to switch to work from home permanently and many other companies have adopted the Hybrid Work model. Employees are not ready to return to the offices and this has forced companies to adopt technologies to support remote work styles. Orthodox work culture will not survive in the era of digitalization.

Global Competition: New technological advancement and adoption has opened the door of global opportunities for job seekers as well as employers. If someone is staying in Delhi (India) and is not flexible to move to another city due to various reasons, they had to look for options only in Delhi. This has changed and the employee can now apply anywhere and can work remotely. Likewise, employers do not have to look for talents only from the location of their office. This is bringing global talents to one platform.

Missing Human interaction: While this is good for many, there are other dimensions to be investigated. Many employees still prefer to work in physical offices and miss bonding with their team, gossiping with others! or just meet a new person from another team during coffee/tea break.

According to an article published in Forbes on 13th Oct,2021, a study by Condeco shows that “nearly half of U.S. companies offered remote work options already in 2019. In 2021, this number increased to 58.6%”.

Remote working can benefit the companies and can increase profits in many ways:

Reduced infrastructure cost: Remote work eliminates overhead costs like lease expenses, office furnishings, utilities, insurance, supplies, upkeep, and repair. Workplace cost and benefits statistics by Global Workplace Analytics reveal that IBM saved $50 million in real estate costs by allowing remote work.

Increased productivity: An employee’s productivity depends on his/her lifestyle. Same 9 to 5 work schedule might not work for everyone. This flexibility will allow employees to work during their most productive hours and this will certainly increase their productivity.

Employee Retention: Flexible remote work will help in employee retention by keeping them happy and healthy. Remote workers have better work- life balance which results in happy employees. Happy employees mean reduced attrition.

From the employees’ perspective, remote work has also created a different expectation where many companies expect the employees to be available 24*7. This is the other side of the same coin. There is a tradeoff here.

We should not hesitate to adopt new technologies if it makes our life easier and better. At the same time human interaction and emotions should not be missing. This is a time where companies are doing their best to be in the list of most employee friendly companies, while others are still clinging to 6 days a week work culture. For these orthodox companies, the well-being of their employees working for them does not matter.

But, in the long run, only the ‘fittest’ companies will survive.

RIP Access Cards

Written by Jagat Parikh on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Remember when you used to swipe your access card through the electromagnetic reader at the office door?

That norm will soon be done away with.

In the contemporary context, the world of access control and visitor management systems will be run by mobile-based credentials.

Instead of on a card, the visitors who come in will have their identity information on their smartphones, smartwatches, and other devices. This will be authenticated by the workplace’s physical access control system—be it a turnstile or digitally-lockable door—before allowing them access inside the premises.

In 2017, Gartner had reported that 1 in 5 companies would use smartphones as vehicles for identity management and access control by 2020.^[1] That number will only be set to increase as social distancing concepts gather momentum, and the need for contactless protocols rises.

^[1] Gartner Says That 20 Percent of Organizations Will Use Smartphones in Place of Traditional Physical Access Cards By 2020, Rob van der Meulen.

Access cards, while still handy, have several drawbacks which mobile access credential systems solve.

1. Reduced Costs

The cost of material, micro-wire, and printing for each card can dent a company’s revenue. Some companies in the U.S. pay as high as $15-25.

In the event that a company adopts mobile-access credentials, this whole cost process is eliminated. Due to the easy availability of smartphones in the world today, your employees will already have the bare bones of the protocol. Should identification be needed, there are several protocols available to a smartphone due to its versatility: QR code, One Time Passwords (OTPs), face recognition, and other biometrics.

2. Time Needed to Implement

When a new employee or maintenance staff is recruited, the process from production to obtaining their card can take 5-7 days! Employee codes have to be known, the data has to be entered into the card, and the material needs to be bought and paid for.

When you use mobile credentials, this process is whittled down to a 3-minute process. The analogy is the process of onboarding an employee into your company: you send them a company laptop with usernames and passwords. Similarly, you only need to send them an email with the directions to download a company app that has their access credentials ready for smartphone usage whenever they make a trip into the office.

3. Contactless Process

Access cards often required the visitor to swipe through a card reader or place it face down on a different type of card reader. This process involved contact with surfaces. While this is not a major plot point in the prevention of fatal danger, it can be salient to health standards.

With a smartphone, on the other hand, you do not always need to make contact with a surface. There are a variety of technologies out there that allow remote and contactless entry.

One such example is near field communication (NFC), which has already been used in access control, due to its ability to operate on low frequency, proximity and provide selective access. NFC devices can also record the access information, time of access, how long the access is granted and other security metrics. This information can be helpful to security professionals and HR managers alike. Other technologies like Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy can also be implemented to arrange a secure and safe protocol through personal area networks (PAN).

4. Complete User Experience

Physical access control systems are often closed systems and have an inability to integrate with other IT infrastructure. But with greater availability of mobile and cloud technologies, the user experience is now superior. Employees and visitors can be notified of any workplace emergencies on their smartphones through the integrated visitor management app. Credentials and other identity information that need to be updated (such as promoted designation, higher clearance, etc.) can be easily undertaken on a mobile phone, which avoids the lengthy process of creating a new card with new credentials.

Mobile phones are also just more valuable to people and are less likely to be lost than a card!

In the world of visitor management systems (VMS) and identity and access management (IAM), it is becoming clearer and clearer that mobile-based credentials have too many advantages to not dominate the future. Smartphones, due to their quality, are conducive to several multi-factor authentication parameters which can only people to feel secure, safe, and efficient over time.

The views in this article are Jagat’s personal and not endorsed by any organization.