Why businesses should still have faith in Citrix

Guest post by Shane O’Neill, who is the Principal EUC Architect at Enterprise Solutions with over 15 years’ experience in the IT industry.

As the pandemic threw our lives into complete disarray, we were forced to re-evaluate our understanding of ‘normal’ on so many levels: physically, emotionally, personally and professionally.

Where remote working had been a rare and special privilege, it was now not even optional. Employers were forced to trust that their staff would do their work, with nobody watching over their shoulders.

And in general, most people were actually doing their jobs to the best of their ability under the worst working conditions (anyone with small children could attest to that) during one of the wobbliest times we’d ever known.

Why businesses should still have faith in Citrix

While remote work had previously been a privilege, we realised how we missed the moments around the water cooler, the ability to speak to someone face-to-face, to feel a sense of collaboration and community. It changed our working life forever.

Businesses realised that productivity and efficiency were not limited to staff’s presence in the office, and technology had been ramped up to ensure the same productivity and efficiency remotely.

So three years on, where do we stand?

Employees now want the flexibility to which they’ve become accustomed. Working remotely is no longer a perk; it’s become standard. And any employer that refuses to move with the times, will find themselves unable to appoint the best workforce. It’s a recipe for disaster.

While it sounds simple and utopian, it’s not that straightforward. Employers need to maintain the benefits of hybrid and remote working, while also making sure their managers feel supported to lead their teams effectively. An article in Forbes magazine in 2021, said that it fundamentally boils down trust.

A culture of trust

To have trust sounds easy, but it’s not something one just ‘has’.

It’s a growing belief, built on good communication, transparency, psychological security, a culture of accountability, and so on. It provides a sense of safety, allows for appropriate risk-taking, exposing vulnerabilities.

Some people have an in-built sense of trust, where others tend to be “evidence-based trusters”, according to the article in Forbes.

Using the analogy of football, the more successful the team, the higher the levels of trust between players. Camaraderie, team-spirit, a sense of community: they’re the positive qualities that bring about agility, flexibility, accountability.

Once these are baked into a company culture, the benefits to the bottom line are evident, as well as less tangible benefits like staff morale, job satisfaction, and working towards the greater good. The spirit between employees will improve, as well as that flowing between the organisation and its people.

According to a Gartner report, employee experience is directly linked to business results. Simplifying team communication and collaboration can achieve a 38% more engaged workforce, 30% higher productivity, and 30% greater efficiency.

Can technology help?

As well as levels of trust, a successful remote workforce is one that’s empowered through the right technology tools.

Workers need secure, on-demand access to necessary apps, files, and data to complete their jobs. This helps to keep frustrations low, while providing the flexibility that remote work offers. Organisations that focus on technology solutions as well as cultural attitude, will be high on the wanted list by good employees.

Citrix provides the technology tools to empower the remote workforce, create better collaboration and drive better business outcomes. However, technology is only an enabler. An organisation’s culture is more than its moving parts, and depends on how it’s developed, communicated, and implemented. Leaving it to chance is a dangerous approach – culture should be nurtured and directed.

However, an integrated platform that provides employees with an easy and secure way to find information and perform tasks, will minimise frustration in their jobs.

Workers need to be able to do their work from any location, over any network, using any device, just as if they were in the office. Complexity can hamper ease-of-use and efficiency – for example, the average employee accesses 36 cloud services.

Citrix has a protocol called the Citrix HDX protocol. It is widely considered to be the best in class for remote access protocols. It’s optimised for low bandwidth and high latency connections. In addition, it supports high intensity graphics, be that CAD or medical grade diagnostic imaging technologies. It allows for seamless integration with many peripherals.

Further enhancing trust, Citrix has continued to innovate with new technologies such as adaptive authentication and Citrix Secure Private Access. Anti-Key Logging and anti-screenshot capabilities also exist.

The necessity to switch between systems has a huge effect on our cognitive load and on mental (and physical) productivity. The Harvard Business Review says it decreases productivity by 40%.

It’s impossible to just do away with the many apps used by employees. Gartner says that “the new work nucleus is a collection of ever-changing, multivendor, SaaS-based personal and team productivity applications that replaces decades-old on-premises applications and empowers teams to collaborate, create content, analyse data, and consume information.

Furthermore, these applications are “inherently mobile, collaborative, analytical and integrated, and increasingly infused with AI services — a sharp departure from their on-premises predecessors.” They’re technologies that drive accountability, transparency, autonomy, and efficiency. They enhance business outcomes through digital skill, a more engaged workforce resulting in higher productivity and greater efficiency.

The winning combination of technology and culture

Companies that use technology as an enabler for a culture of trust woven into the fabric of the business, will define the workplace of the future. Business is still ultimately about people, and people thrive on a sense of community, collaboration, and purpose.

While this may have been diluted over the various lockdowns, we saw that technology, implemented correctly, can bridge the gaps to some extent. While nothing beats face-to-face interactions, the advantages that a hybrid set-up grants us in flexibility, is worth the sacrifice. And with the right technology in place, it becomes easier to create a supportive and trust-rich working environment where engagement is high.

Author bio: Shane O’Neill is the Principal EUC Architect at Enterprise Solutions with over 15 years’ experience in the IT industry. Shane holds a status of Citrix Technology Professionals (CTP) and is one of sixty CTPs worldwide.

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