The Challenge of Smart Working in the Public Sector
Do more with less. Four words every government worker now know by heart, whether you work centrally, locally or regionally. For many it’s meant increased stress and workloads. For others, it means difficult decisions on which services they’ll be able to provide citizens. But for most of the ever-resourceful civil service, it’s seen as a challenge: encouraging new levels of creativity and collaboration. For those who embrace the challenge of “do more with less” here’s a statistic for you: the right smart working strategy can have £1,200+ benefit per user per year.
According to the global research and advisory firm, Forrester Research, businesses can add £758 per user per year through increased employee productivity. The same study found that with the right smart working strategy, organisations can save £485 per user per year. So how does a government organisation achieve these benefits? According to a recent Microsoft survey of senior stakeholders across local and central government, the key to achieving these benefits boils down to two things: using technology employees trust, and supporting the cultural change needed to adopt this new technology.
The need for smart working
From a strategic perspective, attaining these benefits can be achieved by creating a decent working environment for all staff, with modern workplaces enabling flexible working, substantially improving IT tools and streamlining security requirements to be less burdensome for staff. While the vision of a mobile workforce may seem like part of a long-term strategy for many in government, there’s a much more practical reality that may drive smart working adoption: according to a recent UK Civil Service blog article, there are plans in place to reduce the amount of government buildings by 75% before 2020 and replace them with shared offices and commuter hubs.
Both the strategic and practical aspects of smart working can be achieved with the right device strategy – adopting the kinds of devices that are familiar yet intuitive, highly mobile yet fast and powerful, and devices that can provide open collaboration without sacrificing first-class security. In short, smart working starts with the Surface family of products. Whether you’re a mobile worker who needs an ultra-thin and portable device, or a civil engineer elected official who needs the computing power to quickly manage with big data sets, or a team that needs to collaborate over information and ideas in real time, there’s a Surface product that’s right for you.
In our new report, Culture and confidence: smart working challenges for the public sector, we examine some of the underlying challenges and solutions for smart working, giving you practical insight into how you can leverage the right devices to truly make it possible to achieve more.
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