Employers go far in the flexibility they allow employees today. Not only is the location and time they work allowed to vary, so do the devices used to do so. Expectations for the IT department are sometimes unrealistically high.
“Employees expect a lot,” notes Andreas Van Puyenbroeck, Category Manager North West Europe at HP. “They want to work on a laptop of their choice, at a desk they have set up themselves at home with the screen they prefer, their own mouse and keyboard, possibly another webcam of their choice. IT departments today facilitate all that, but sometimes encounter incomprehension when support when there is a problem then becomes a little more difficult.”
Andreas joins us around the table with Sven Den Uijl, Channel Manager Benelux Smart Collaboration at Lenovo, Willem Magerman, CTO at Dilaco and Stefaan Arryn, VP People at Silverfin. Together, the gentlemen talk about the challenges and benefits of hybrid working, now that it has become the norm after the Covid pandemic.
Own budget, own choice
Magerman supports the idea that everyone gets to work on the equipment they prefer. The company provides a generous budget every three years. “With that, employees may furnish their home office as they wish,” he says. “What they buy and where, we don’t care. If they want something really special, they have to impose themselves, but conversely, they can’t spend the budget if they don’t think it’s necessary either.”
What they buy and where, we don’t care.
Willem Magerman, CTO Dilaco
Den Uijl and his colleague at HP are a bit startled by that freedom. “So there is no curated list of allowed hardware?” Magerman says there is not even a list of web shops: people are really allowed to buy whatever they want. With this we immediately see a great example of the consumerization of business IT: manufacturers such as HP and Lenovo today have to convince not only IT buyers of their equipment, but increasingly also the end users themselves.
Silverfin employs a similar strategy, in that the company does not force hardware on employees. “Even before the covid pandemic, we tried to recruit employees wherever we could find them,” Arryn explains, “as long as it was no more than a time zone or three away from Belgium.” Although Silverfin employees are treated as full staff, they often have some sort of freelance contract. Again, that means, above all, that they have a great deal of responsibility for their own hardware.
Taking responsibility
So how does the support run? Can the IT team cope? For Arryn, that’s a problem that doesn’t pose itself too much. “Actually, we get by with one IT person,” he laughs. “That’s the advantage of a company made up primarily of IT people. Those people want to solve their problems themselves, whether in consultation or not with colleagues.”
Actually, we get by with one IT person.
Stefaan Arryn, VP People Silverfin
“Other than that, in a modern environment there is very little that can go wrong,” Magerman notes. We use mostly SaaS applications. There’s not that much that really needs to be installed on a laptop anymore.” Even if a laptop dies completely, an employee can log on a little later with a new one without too many problems.
Dilaco also does not concern itself too extensively with internal support. “If something doesn’t work, we expect employees to come to the office,” Magerman clarifies. “If they can connect their screen, mouse and keyboard there, then we know there is no problem with the laptop. The rest is their responsibility.”
That approach seems to be working well. “We find that those who are not so sure of their piece look very closely at the setup at the office and replicate it at home,” Magerman says. Those who choose a different unique interpretation of their home office are on their own but he says that’s not a disaster either. “People who choose something special are usually quite capable of solving a problem on their own.”
Total support through a partner
Den Uijl notes that the seminal approach of Silverfin and Dilaco is somewhat at odds with another trend in the market: DaaS. With Device-as-a-Service, companies pay a monthly cost per employee for complete peace of mind. A partner provides devices for employees and handles maintenance and support.
For large companies, the predictability of the cost of DaaS is a huge advantage
Sven Den Uijl, Channel Manager Benelux Smart Collaboration Lenovo
“For now, mainly large companies are embracing DaaS,” he admits. “For them, cost predictability is a huge advantage. A piece of software on the computer keeps track of all the parameters and can sound an alarm when something is in danger of going wrong. So an employee can make an appointment at the office within a week or two and everything is fixed, before there’s really a problem. And if something does go wrong with the laptop, you get a new one right away.”
(Not) only for the big boys
Dilaco provides IT support to other companies as one of its core activities. “The smallest DaaS customer we have in Belgium has about 3,600 employees,” he knows. “In my opinion, DaaS usually does not come out cheaper in the long run, but for such large companies, an additional cost outweighs the predictability they get.”
Van Puyenbroeck sees another category of enterprises embracing DaaS. “You do see small businesses opting for DaaS,” he notes. “These are companies where productivity is vital. For some enterprises, there’s just no way a device can go down and someone can’t work for a day. Think of researchers, who might see data from experiments lost, but also other companies where the cost of someone not working is very high. Those want an immediate switch with a new device.”
You do see small businesses opting for DaaS
Andreas Van Puyenbroeck, Category Manager North West Europe HP
Always on standby?
However, DaaS and other forms of support face new challenges, and not just in terms of telecommuting. “People not only work in different places, but also different hours,” Magerman notes. “They may go to the bank during working hours, or pick up the kids from school, and then continue working in the evening.”
Arryn also sees that. “We don’t look so much at hours, but at performance.” For in-house support, that can be handy. “If someone once goes to the media market to replace a device, it can be done during working hours.” But for large organizations with complex problems, IT support has to stretch out with them.
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“We are increasingly getting requests to make our service desk available outside business hours,” Magerman knows. “Sometimes companies have their own IT departments and want us to take over after five in the evening, or we get the request to provide support until 10 in the evening. In some cases, customers even ask us to go on site to solve a problem, regardless of the hour.”
New paradigm
Thus, it is notable that hybrid work has changed the nature of support. Employees are sometimes given more responsibility, but DaaS is also becoming more interesting. In turn, the role of external support increases, so that employees are helped wherever they work, whenever they do.
At the same time, it is notable that hybrid work has not created a new consensus in terms of support. Employees’ expectations remain very high, and different companies have different strategies for dealing with them. The entire table does agree on one thing: a clear policy with clear expectations between employer and employee is the key.
This is the final editorial in a series of three on the topic of hybrid working. Click on our theme page to see all the articles from the roundtable, the video and our partners.