Remaking and rebuilding Injazat 4.0

The Covid-19 pandemic is a reality check for businesses that have been reluctant to embrace digital transformation and now find themselves woefully unprepared. Business leaders are now facing the new work shift reality, traditional office setups, work scheduling, and in-person meetings have become less ubiquitous, making remote and distributed workforces the norm.

These changes are becoming a permanent part of the future of work, and the future is now. The focus of business leaders is now on how to empower remote employees for effective outcomes.

The benefits of remote work can be tremendous. Reports have shown that it can increase flexibility, improve productivity, and the elimination of legacy boundaries which can lead to better outcomes for employees, customers, and ultimately, the business.

However, it is also true that as users are accessing more end-devices and connecting from different networks often unsecure through remote work, they are presented with new threats. Our enterprise clients are quickly realising the need to ramp up their security infrastructure and are therefore on the lookout for cyber security tools and solutions that oversee every component of enterprise architecture as a whole.

At Injazat, we have already begun to build Injazat 4.0. We are evolving into a new culture, one founded on agility, operational speed and operational excellence.

A successful organisational work culture can be the one where there is:

• A start-up mindset to encourage agility and accountability, for instance, daily check-in meetings and regular reviews.
• Executing with speed to get ahead of the competition and acting with urgency.
• Agility in everything that is done, and this can be achieved by rebuilding the operating model.
• Redesigning the organisational structure.
• Thinking about how businesses can be empowered to be faster and flexible to achieve outcome.
• Ecosystems and adaptability, it is important to enhance the supply chains and channels.
• Human at the core, by thinking of the best ways to utilise staff and enhance capabilities.

Post the pandemic, top executives will need the following skills:

Building strong and cohesive teams, even with employees working remotely. Regardless of an organisation opting for a full-time or hybrid work-from-home schedule, granting workplace flexibility can improve productivity and decrease overhead cost. Managers should work with their teams to decide when they will have meetings, how meetings will be run, and which communication methods should be used for which purposes.

Navigating and manage change quickly. Covid-19 impacted individuals, businesses, and the economy at large. Leaders must be able to navigate these changes and whatever else may come, both logistically and culturally, to foster work environments where each person, feels safe, secure and valued.

Fostering a sense of belonging. Along with embedding wellbeing into the workplace, managers need to foster a sense of belonging within their teams. Everyone wants to feel they are respected, treated fairly, included within the group, and connected to the larger goals of the organisation. Remote work can increase feelings of isolation and loneliness, and managers of virtual teams should make an effort to combat that by fostering connection and belonging.

Stress seems to be a part of every job description, particularly when you reach the C-suite. But that does not mean it gets to take over your life. When handled correctly, stress can be contained, minimised and conquered. In my opinion, the best 3 steps to beat stress are:

Learn how to deal with your stress. When you experience stress and believe it is something that will harm you, it is more likely to put you in harm’s way. Whereas when you perceive stress as something closer to a performance enhancer or simply a natural response to pressure, you are less at risk of the more negative effects of stress. Watching your language is a good place to start.

Take time to transition. Give yourself time to process and come down from a stressful moment or experience. Give yourself 10 minutes to transition from work to home to change your mode and be ready to meet those who matter most to you.

Build recovery into your workday. Support your system to recover itself by:

• Eating healthy food
• Exercising daily
• Ensuring enough and good quality sleep
• Learning to delegate
• Meditating
• Picking up a hobby you love

KEY TAKEAWAY

• Stress seems to be a part of every job description, particularly when you reach the C-suite.
• Along with embedding wellbeing into the workplace, managers need to foster a sense of belonging within their teams.
• When you experience stress and believe it is something that will harm you, it is more likely to put you in harm’s way.
• Remote work can increase feelings of isolation and managers of virtual teams should make an effort to combat that.

Injazat has begun evolving into a new culture, founded on agility, speed, excellence, and using learnings where each person, feels safe, secure, valued.