Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index report should be a wake up for execs like JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon spouting, “We’re not going to pay your not to work in the office.” More than 31,000 respondents from 34 countries prove that “There’s no going back!” to pre-Pandemic Koyaanisquatsi cubicle work for professionals. The job security bubble has burst and 52% of Gen Z/Mellennials are considering changing jobs in the next year. The report dives into the changing attitudes and priorities across the generations and management hierarchy. While execs may want to pretend that all is ‘back to normal’, middle management feel that leadership is out of touch, leaving managers stuck between conflicting expectations. Who will win in the ongoing Great Reshuffle? I am betting that the pressure from a 3.6% unemployment rate and the need to cultivate talent will overcome the management nostalgia while recruiters rack up profits. What does a permanent remote/hybrid workforce mean for eDiscovery and compliance departments? As usual, I have a couple thoughts about the challenges and opportunities that I will parse out in reasonable chunks.
With half of professionals insisting on working remotely full or part time, corporations need to rethink data lifecycle management across their technology stack. Corporate ESI needs to live within enterprise and cloud systems instead of being scattered across laptops, mobile devices, thumb drives or other endpoints. IT departments stepped up in 2020 and supported entire departments suddenly working from home (WFH). I applaud them, because that was no small feat. Few companies had the time to revise policies, tech stacks or data management practices during that forced exodus. There was little appetite in 2021 to tackle the WFH issues as we all waited to see if Covid would vanish after vaccines rolled out. Microsoft, Google and hundreds of cloud apps stepped in to connect teams, customers and contractors with new collaboration-communication solutions. I interviewed a CEO last week who was proud that his departments used 30-40+ different ‘best in class’ apps to maximize their productivity and competitive advantage. To me that sounded like a preservation nightmare. Then I rechecked a few recent legal hold questionnaire reports and realized that custodians seem to be using a wider variety of apps than ever. I dove into the potential impact of cloud apps in a recent blog, so I will just add a recommendation to consider virtual desktops and mobile data archiving/collection as strategies to manage employee data segregation. More to come.
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Well said and timely. And from an Information Governance standpoint…scary!