While some companies are starting the transitioning back to more precedented times like returning to offices, more and more have decided to continue hybrid office model. Thankfully, Salesforce continues to make it easier and easier to collaborate and succeed no matter where work happens. Here are some tips that we collected last October.
Kitchen counter desk space, Friday comfy conference calls, afternoon naps, it’s no secret companies are embracing remote work. We’re familiar with it, but what we’re still learning is how to remain productive in our slippers, creating an optimal employee work life balance.
In an attempt to better understand how companies that use Salesforce are addressing remote work challenges and a possible return to their physical location, we decided to survey our customers and other businesses to determine how they are approaching their work during the pandemic.
The survey results indicate that the pandemic has had little to no impact on their productivity for the majority of respondents (blue and green sections). This indicates that the majority of businesses were well-equipped to handle the shift to remote work.
Nonetheless, 54% of respondents (red, green, and blue sections) consider returning to a physical location to be either mission critical or important for select individuals or certain teams. These results show that while there has been a significant shift in the adoption of remote work, there is still a strong need for work in physical locations. Some of the main reasons to return to work were for the culture, in-person work, and a less disruptive work environment.
After reviewing the responses, we came up with some tips for how you can adapt to remote work, overcome the challenges you might be facing today by getting more out of Salesforce and ensure success for your business.
Four Helpful Tips:
1. Improve efficiency and accuracy
Automation – As the pandemic increased higher demands of technology and support hours, automation became more of a requirement than ever before. Identify your most frequent Salesforce processes and find a way to automate these. Adding just one automation could reduce stress and save your employees enough time to focus on other activities.
Productivity – Time management is one of the most common issues in the way of productivity under normal circumstances. But we are operating in strange times. Using tools to reduce time will help reduce the busy work and increase productivity. Take advantage of native case functionality to track work and escalate work when needed. Using cases is a great way to reduce the chance of things slipping through the cracks
2. Remote work with your team
Collaboration – Consider utilizing tools that enable better collaboration while working together from anywhere. In general, your company should make sure to have set up an IT infrastructure that enables employees to work virtually. A new Salesforce feature to keep on your radar is Salesforce Anywhere, which brings real-time collaboration features directly into Salesforce.
Check in with your team – Setting clear standards of communication for remote teams is going to be vital for success. It’s important to have daily and weekly touchpoints for remote team management, as well as communication strategies and platforms that enhance the experience. In addition to a clear communication strategy, make sure to check in on your team’s well-being on a personal level to see how they are adapting to the new environment.
3. Utilize your metrics
Make sure you are tracking the right metrics with everyone working remotely. Evaluate your metrics and consider if they are effective for your new work environment. For example, Vicasso pivoted to tracking cash flow as opposed to revenue in response to the pandemic. Read more about how Vicasso adopted AI to predict cash flow.
4. When is it time to reopen safely?
Companies are adjusting to working from home and forming plans on how to reopen safely. Salesforce developed a new tool called Work.com in the interest of supporting businesses with their plans on getting back to work with features such as health assessments, contract tracing, capacity/shift management, and more. We at Vicasso want to see how we can help businesses during this time.
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The survey results showcase to us that for the majority of respondents, working in person is more ideal than remote work and not much can substitute the advantages of working in person. With that said, many businesses have been able to operate successfully in a virtual environment.
We at Vicasso want to help you on your journey of getting back to work, whether that be in a virtual or physical environment. Please reach out to us to learn more about how you can get more out of Salesforce and optimize your Salesforce investment during this time.
