Trust is the key to hybrid work – Microsoft Hungary
The work has become more flexible, colleagues and managers more cooperative and accepting since hybrid work has become commonplace at T-Systems. An essential element of this is the trust that managers and team members give to employees in advance. Companies that are willing to give this trust to their employees can achieve greater employee satisfaction with reduced performance and know good points from talented young employees. Zoltán Verkmann, Head of IT Support at T-Systems Hungary, talks about the lessons of hybrid work.
T-Systemset was not unexpectedly affected by the restrictions imposed by the epidemic: it has the equipment (notebooks, monitors for home use, free mobile bandwidth up to 100 Gb, secure VPN knowledge connection) and the experience that was essential for teleworking . The company was in the phase of moving to cloud technology during the transition, Teams was introduced in parallel, using a series of training courses to train employees.
Nearly 20,000 Teams meetings at T-Systems each quarter
Hybrid work, which is now becoming commonplace, is therefore a particular breakthrough than before, with many returning to their jobs. “I drive less, I get up later, I can work more deeply”- described Zoltán Verkmann, T-Systems Hungary, responsible for IT support at his company, briefly and spiced with some humor. He added that they had been in contact with remote sites for a long time via video conferencing, and their negotiators were perfectly prepared for this. Of course, the number of such negotiations has multiplied not only with them but also with other partners recently. There are hardly any meetings that some people don’t join online. According to Zoltán Verkmann, almost 20,000 meetings are currently organized on this surface on average.
“We ask our colleagues to keep the camera turned on during online meetings”
And how has working, the new way of communicating, affected the corporate culture? According to Zoltán Verkmann, colleagues work much better together, managers have become more accepting and flexible. They can also afford it because today it is no longer difficult to monitor and control work processes – thanks to new collaboration solutions. Teams has become the primary teamwork application, and it has also played a role to ensure that data and files can be securely accessed from anywhere, anytime, from any file server in the cloud.
“We have learned a lot lately. For example, today we prefer to ask a colleague to keep the camera turned on during online meetings because we have found that this is how discussions can take place.”Adds the IT manager. The framework for flexible working has also developed over the past year: workflows, guidelines for collaboration and communication, use of home devices have been developed, workers and managers have been prepared to deal with new challenges and, of course, physical barriers to hybrid work have been dismantled. would be.
Generations Y and Z can be won with this
According to Zoltán Verkmann, it was also necessary to take these changes because the members of the Y and Z generations expect that the existence of those working conditions, the hybrid work, will also be possible. It could reach even more young and talented jobseekers, and many of their employees say they want to work from abroad or even from a holiday home. “In my opinion, the Budapest-centricity of the labor market will ease as a result of all this”Says the leader.
For those who are considering the introduction of hybrid work, Zoltán Verkmann recommends the following: “In order to implement such flexible work, it is essential that managers trust their employees. Therefore, I think that the the most important component of hybrid work is trust. Once you have that, you just have to cut into the thing and see if it really brings the expected results.“