“Everyone has a plan until they’re punched in the mouth,” says Ron Guerrier, the Secretary of Innovation and Technology for the State of Illinois, while discussing the rapid and urgent transition of 25,000 employees to remote work, all with the help of Citrix, in a matter of days.
Before the pandemic, the majority of frontline state employees in Illinois worked in government offices. They had a variety of different devices at different ages running on different operating systems. They weren’t what you would consider a mobile workforce. Such a massive and complex transition would span across several years, allowing for a steady shift of their 25,000 employees in a way that allowed for testing and optimization. They never expected to only have a number of days to achieve such a feat.
When the pandemic hit, the State of Illinois quickly took a step back to assess their tools and develop a move forward plan. They decided to expand their Citrix product suite to allow for employees to work off their own personal devices at home with the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops solution. Such a dramatic shift in planning meant a new strategy, with most of their attention focused on details regarding security. Second to that, the team was hyperfocused on the psychology of change and the remote employee experience.
Like many of us, the employees’ day to day look a lot different now. It isn’t just the nine to five anymore; work life has fully blended with home life. This new way of working has many asking questions and searching for solutions. How do you prepare your employees to adjust to such an unexpected change? How do you make sure you’re covering all your bases? How do you motivate and manage a team from afar?
The State of Illinois isn’t the only one who has an interesting journey to a flexible workforce over the past few months. For more on their business continuity plans and transition to remote work, listen to Illinois Goes Big and Goes Home, episode 3 in our Remote Works podcast. Beyond the State of Illinois, learn directly from Tammy Bjelland, Founder and CEO of Workplaceless, a company that specializes in teaching remote professionals and companies how to effectively operate. Plus, Kestrel Linder, co-founder and CEO of GiveCampus, tells us how he managed to transition his small workforce of 34 employees to fully remote and the challenges he faced along the way.
Looking for more? This episode is one of many. The Remote Office Frontier tells stories we can all relate to, diving into those very first moments of the pandemic and exploring how those moments impacted the newly remote workforce, all the way from Shanghai to England. Keeping Your Team in Tune gets a little more specific: How do you manage a disparate orchestra? Hear from The Colorado Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra to see how they found technology to be the most important instrument to enable remote work. Subscribe to follow the stories.
