Why your business needs to get collaborating in the cloud

Have you heard of The Great Resignation? It’s a phenomenon brought about by employers failing to show up in the right way for their people during the pandemic.

Reports show masses of people are taking action and quitting businesses that they feel don’t value them. But what has this got to do with cloud computing? More than you might think.

An unwelcome wake-up call

For many organisations, the past 18 months have been an unwelcome wake-up call when it comes to digitising their business. It’s estimated that 5 years’ worth of change was concentrated into 2020 as businesses everywhere raced to be able to accommodate remote working. And, with a hybrid working solution set to continue, this is no time to be looking to get ‘back to normal’.

One of the biggest challenges with remote working is how to keep your employees engaged and feeling as thought they belong somewhere. It’s important from a productivity perspective, to engender a sense of team spirit and, of course, for the mental health of those who work for you.

This is no time for workarounds. If you are operating in the cloud, a whole host of apps and systems become available to you which facilitate remote working and mean your people can chat and collaborate virtually.

Feeling valued in times of crisis

When people are put under pressure as they have been, productivity always gives way to procrastination and distraction. People are worried about their families, their health and their future. They don’t need to be worrying about how they can access the file they last worked on or how to keep in touch with their manager. If these issues exist, people are bound to ask “why am I giving my best to this business when they give nothing in return?”

Now that the concept of such disruption is on our radar, it’s there to stay. The workforce of the future will look to this time to see how a business invested in their people and how flexible the company can be should this happen again. If cost is a concern, it needs to be weighed up against the cost of onboarding new employees: this process can take 6-9 months, during which time productivity and turnover are reduced.

Creating a strong, robust virtual existence will become an imperative for companies in the future. Why? Because they’re likely to be operating in this space increasingly.

Money matters

Cost savings aside, people want flexibility in their lives and remote working gives them that. It’s rare that such a huge phenomenon as the pandemic of 2020 results in changes that don’t become permanent. If you’re still in doubt about migrating to the cloud, here are some reminders:

• Continuing your corporate culture will depend on being able to collaborate virtually
• In times of crisis, people need to feel they belong and a simply collaborative or listening app will give them this
• With remote access to files becoming a prerequisite, your data is far safer in the cloud than not
• Weigh up the costs of migration against those of continuing without the cloud. We’ve already mentioned recruitment costs, but what about cost of IT staff, cost of real estate for servers, risk of lost equipment or data?

Cloud computing also supports a more environmentally friendly way of working so it’s a winner on many levels. If you’re not already considering it, now is definitely the time to start working the numbers and building a business case for change. And, if you need help with that, you know where we are.