Enabling virtual work and operations is essential for defining and managing an effective approach to conducting remote work seamlessly. The value of this practice lies in maximizing delivery effectiveness and efficiency while simultaneously reducing the impact and expenses associated with travel and in-person activities.
To achieve this, the organization identifies, assesses, manages, and addresses virtual needs and constraints in a consistent and effective manner. This includes coordinating virtual work, teams, projects, and communication channels. Virtual work encompasses various considerations, such as personnel, processes, technical aspects, and security. A comprehensive virtual work approach entails identifying the right stakeholders, tasks, needs, and constraints, while also addressing security, privacy, confidentiality, and data protection requirements.
The approach involves implementing appropriate communication controls and protocols, ensuring the availability of necessary resources, and enabling personnel, projects, systems, and organizational resiliency. Providing tools, techniques, and measures to manage virtual work effectively is critical for its success. It also involves keeping the virtual approach current with evolving customer and business needs and constraints and continually assessing the organizational approaches to virtual work to identify improvements and innovations.
Typical virtual needs and constraints include establishing criteria for virtual delivery options compared to in-person or hybrid delivery, ensuring delivery effectiveness, efficiency, and quality, and addressing security, privacy, confidentiality, and nondisclosure concerns. Workarounds and mitigations are considered to address potential interruptions in delivery. The approach emphasizes considering people, processes, infrastructure, and tools/systems while establishing standardized collaboration platforms, protocols, and processes to support organization-wide communication and collaboration, especially in scenarios like teleworking or hybrid delivery that combine face-to-face interaction with online activities. By embracing an enabling virtual work approach, organizations can achieve optimal productivity, adaptability, and resilience in a digital and remote work environment.