It’s no surprise that the traditional workplace has been turned upside down by COVID-19. Well over a year into large-scale remote work, it’s clear that leaders must prepare now for the long-term changes to business operations catalyzed by the pandemic.

As some workers begin moving back into shared physical workspaces, a new workforce dichotomy will be established between in-office and remote employees. For in-office employees looking for a return to “normal,” there will be some frustration in needing to accommodate those workers who choose to stay fully remote. And for remote employees, feelings of disengagement are likely.

But the majority of workers don’t want to choose one or the other; data from our Future of Work survey found that most employees want a hybrid model where they can choose to either work remotely or from the office each day.

In this uncharted territory, businesses will require a unique set of tools that will work for their unique circumstance. As such, channel partners must tailor their approach to individual customers by diversifying their knowledge base and increasing investments in industry specializations and domain expertise. The good news is that channel partners have pre-established experience with hybrid work infrastructure and can advise organizations on how to prepare their networks for the future of work.

A Tailored Approach

Defining what the future of work looks like is different for every company depending on their specific industry, challenges, and needs. However, the common thread is that their solutions must be custom fit to them and cannot be rubberstamped from other companies of similar size or work.

While some remote employees have expressed that collaboration tools make work more complex (71 percent think so), there are businesses who are using these tools in a way that simplifies hybrid work and makes employees’ lives easier.

Our partner Envision IT, for example, builds custom microapps as well as general-purpose microapps that are available on the Citrix Ready Marketplace. One of Envision’s microapps is for an office-tracking log within Citrix Workspace. The integration helps organizations manage the use of their office spaces in consideration of safety and health protocols. With the microapps, employees can request an office visit, log their time in and out of the office, and communicate their concerns of COVID-related symptoms. Administrative users can then approve or reject requests for office visits, generate illness reports to assist with contact tracing, and provide data to understand office use in consideration of space requirements and preferences. Envision IT’s biggest challenge was navigating new work routines, and the microapp integration proved to be the right solution for their business.

While Envision IT was looking for tools to help from an office, safety and employee experience perspective, other businesses might be looking to build out cybersecurity measures to secure endpoints. In this case, channel partners should focus on solutions such as zero trust network access infrastructure that offers organizations a secure alternative to traditional VPNs. The zero trust approach helps organizations proactively identify abnormal behavior and revoke access accordingly, which reduces human error and keeps networks safe without intruding on the working experience of the employee.

As employees continue in this largely hybrid work model, channel partners should also capitalize on the combined message of flexibility, usability and security. One reason Envision IT was so successful with their microapp was because they centered on its usability and ease of use. Users didn’t view it as yet another task, rather they saw it as an easy-to-use tool that made their workday simpler and better.

And with a large portion of the workforce likely to remain remote, securing environments while maintaining the flexibility of working from anywhere is going to be an important driver for channel partners. We’ve traditionally been thought leaders in where we work and what we work on, and the new frontier will be how we work.

Moving forward, consultants must come together to think about “mini-ecosystems” to consume solutions, rather than selling the latest and greatest of a given product line. This will offer a simpler approach to stitching technologies together and will be easier to consume, which ultimately drives efficient work and business outcomes.

Growing Pains Now Lead to Future Success

Channel partners are the bridge between unique business needs and the innovative solutions that are needed to solve them. They must take a holistic approach and start the conversation with, “What problem are we trying to solve?” When channel partners focus on wearing the hat of the customer, it’s a recipe for success.

For organizations innovating on the fly, building these muscles can be painful. But the truth is that the businesses that put the effort in now will be bigger, faster, and stronger in the future. They will be set up for success in this new world.