A Digital Workplace for the Flexible Workforce

A Digital
Workplace
for the
Flexible
Workforce

AN EVER-CHANGING
WORKFORCE NEEDS
FLEXIBILITY
The workforce has changed. We no longer have
9-to-5 employees working Monday to Friday.
Enterprises now employ contract workers as well as
full-time employees, who work on an as-needed basis.
But how do enterprises precisely allocate varying
work tasks around this flexible labor model?
Companies must be able to expand their reach and
productivity by allocating the right jobs to the right
people at the right time.
This SlideShare explores the ever-changing workforce,
and how a flexible workforce with the right tools helps
businesses be more efficient and profitable.
A Digital Workplace for the Flexible Workforce

37%
Source: 1
Gallup. “Work and Education poll.” August 2015.
THE WAY
WE WERE
Technological innovation,
changing demographics and
increasing employee
sophistication about workplace
ﬂexibility are creating a new
world of work. People can work
from anywhere, at any time, and
they increasingly do.
As people begin to contribute to
businesses across time zones,
the traditional workday is
becoming obsolete.
OF THE WORKFORCE.1
IN THE UNITED
STATES ALONE, REMOTE
WORKING HAS CLIMBED TO

19hr.
46.7hr. a week
Source: 2
Deloitte. “Workplaces of the Future. Creating an Elastic Workspace.” 2013.
EMPLOYERS
BENEFIT WHEN
WORKERS CALL
THE SHOTS
Employers ﬁnd that workers can be more productive
when they decide where, when, and how their work
gets done.
THE AVERAGE
REMOTE WORKER IS
WILLING TO PUT
IN WORK EACH WEEK.2
AVERAGE TIME WORKED BY FULL-TIME
NON-REMOTE EMPLOYEES IS
ACCORDING TO A 2014 GALLUP POLL.

31%
Source: 3
PricewaterhouseCoopers. “The Future of Work: A Journey to 2022.” 2014.
THE
PORTFOLIO
CAREER
Employees increasingly seek more ﬂexibility
and more varied professional challenges by
acting as contractors for a number of
diﬀerent organizations.
Rather than working in one role for one
company (or in a series of similar roles for a
series of similar companies), workers are
building their own entrepreneurial “brands”
and selling specialized skills to whoever
needs them.
PricewaterhouseCoopers calls this the
“portfolio career.”
OF COMPANIES ARE
ALREADY CREATING TALENT
ACQUISITION STRATEGIES
AROUND THE RISE OF THE
PORTFOLIO CAREER.3

40%
5
PricewaterhouseCoopers. “The Future of Work: A Journey to 2022.” 2014.
Source: 4
Ernst & Young, “Study: Work-life Challenges Across Generations,” 2015.
FLEXIBILITY IS
CRITICAL
Workplace flexibility has become table stakes for
attracting and retaining these “portfolio” workers.
Freedom to select which hours—or even days—to
work, and choosing where to work is now
considered a requirement by these entrepreneurial
workers. 75 percent of millennials want the ability to
work flexibly and still be on track for promotion.4
Rather than just viewing it as a worker entitlement,
companies must align their long-term business
strategies with possessing a flexible workforce.
OF PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT
TRADITIONAL EMPLOYMENT
WON’T BE AROUND IN
THE FUTURE.5

38%
54%
Source: 6
ManpowerGroup. “2015 Talent Shortage Survey.” 2015.
7
Ibid.
HOW
PORTFOLIO
CAREERS HELP
BUSINESSES
This move toward the portfolio career beneﬁts
companies, too, as skilled workers are scarce and
can be diﬃcult to recruit into full-time jobs.
OF EMPLOYERS AROUND
THE GLOBE HAVE
TROUBLE FILLING JOBS.6
SAY THEY HAVE
TROUBLE MEETING THEIR
CUSTOMERS’ NEEDS.7

http://www.bmc.com/it-solutions/hr-case-management.html
Businesses must:
CHALLENGES OF THE FLEXIBLE
WORKFORCE MODEL
Bridging the gap between today’s workplace and contract employees raises challenges.
Management should be prepared to nurture and grow an effective flexible work environment—it
can’t be left to chance.
Enable employees and
contract workers to
access HR serves
anytime and anywhere.
BMC’s HR Case
Management, for
example, automates HR
processes with self-serve
and best practices
Efficiently match
skills needed to
contracted talent
Leverage social capital –
who people know - and
relationships with
contractors to provision
job tasks as required
Adequately cover
times of peak
workloads, surprise
spikes in work
volume, or
undesirable shifts
Create sophisticated
people-measurement
techniques to monitor
and control performance
and productivity

http://www.bmc.com/it-solutions/myit.html
% of respondentsBase: 304 information workers at enterprises in the US, UK, Germany, and France
I can access all of my business
data on my mobile device
I can access the work applications
I need on my mobile device
It is harder for me to collaborate with the
team members when I am outside the office
My organization provides me with all of the
technology I need to do my job
“How much do you disagree with the following
statements about working outside the office?”
19
Communicating with team members would
be harder if they worked outside of the office
39
38
50
44
Source: 8
Forrester Consulting. “Maximize Productivity and Security With Mobile Workplaces.” March 2015.
WHAT WILL DETERMINE
SUCCESS IN THIS NEW WORLD
Technology is key
to success for the
flexible workforce.
Workers need to be equipped with
the right devices, communications
technologies, and remote access to
key data and systems and IT. Self
service is essential like the one
offered by BMC’s MyIT.
However, a Forrester study found that
half of remote workers can’t even
access their business data.8

IT SUPPORTS
A CRITICAL
PIECE OF THE
WORKFORCE
PUZZLE
All these technologies—some of them quite
complex—will need to be supported round the
clock. This job falls to IT.
Businesses will need to build the right IT
infrastructure for a ﬂexible workforce. Don’t
assume the organization’s current IT support
technology can do it.

http://www.bmc.com/it-solutions/myit-service-broker.html
THE SECOND IS THE NEW MINUTE
Speed and efficiency when supporting the new workplace are essential. That’s why a digital enterprise
management system that offers formless requests, context-aware services, and crowd-source knowledge
sharing is essential. Here’s what you get:
Formless Requests.
Workers use social technology to interact with IT,
to request help with devices, access to a VPN or
report a network outage. MyIT Service Broker
provides a consumer-style experience for IT
requests, for example.
Context-aware services.
Workers can add assets to location-aware
maps with a few clicks.
Crowd-source
knowledge sharing.
By building a repository of crowd-source
solutions, IT becomes an information
powerhouse, where workers can find answers
to all their questions with little effort.
“If you can put your staff
first, your customers second,
and your shareholders third,
effectively in the end the
shareholders will do well,
the customers do better,
and your staff will be happy.”
- Richard Branson, speaking at the
“Creating New Ways to Work”
conference, October 2015.

START PREPARING
FOR THE FLEXIBLE
WORKFORCE NOW
Managers should start learning how to harness the benefits of
a flexible workforce to increase employee productivity and
engagement—no matter how, from where, or at what time a
worker contributes to the business.
To do this, however, a business requires the right IT support
to help businesses be more efficient and profitable.

http://dsm.bmc.com/real-talk-employee-engagement-works/
http://dsm.bmc.com/the-workplace-of-the-future-is-not-a-place/
http://www.bmc.com/it-solutions/hr-case-management.html
http://www.bmc.com/it-solutions/myit-service-broker.html
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP
ENTERPRISES UTILIZE FLEXIBLE WORKFORCES IN THE DIGITAL
AGE, VISIT THE FOLLOWING SITES:
REAL TALK FOR IT: WHY EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT WORKS
THE WORKPLACE OF THE FUTURE IS NOT A PLACE
BMC HR CASE MANAGEMENT
BMC MYIT SERVICE BROKER

A Digital Workplace for the Flexible Workforce

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