COVID-19, seatbelt adverts, and cloud technology: the future of corporate culture

For the time being, remote working has become the new normal. However, the influence of remote working stands to continue long after lockdown ends – and the benefits of this influence extend far and wide throughout every aspect of an organisation’s finances. 

From the smallest company to the largest enterprise, everybody has been forced to use their software and infrastructure in new and exciting ways. We’ve been forced to take a giant collective leap towards new potential – enabled by modern technology.

So what will the lasting effects of the COVID-19 crisis be, and how can we turn these into a business advantage?

Unlocking your full potential

Before lockdown, many organisations weren’t leveraging their cloud-based financial tools and infrastructure to enable new ways of working. However, now, we all have to consider how software can be used to its full potential.

Most exciting is the opportunities for collaboration. Online processes and communication tools are going to take centre stage in this new business world. While they were always set to redefine the way we approach work, widespread implementation wasn’t due for a few more years at least.

However, these changes have been forced on us en masse much sooner than expected, and organisations stand to reap huge benefits if they seize the opportunity to upgrade and evolve. Financial managers can communicate and collaborate on projects using the same data set in ways never previously possible.

This is changing the way business leaders think about remote working – for the better.

A dramatic shift in corporate culture

Remote working has always been seen as something of a dirty word or as a lesser option to on-location work – and for good reason. Before the last decade of staggering progress we’ve made towards effective agile working, it was nigh impossible to work effectively from your home office. For financial managers, homeworking was something to be sneered at.

This attitude stands to change. Much like how a deluge of seatbelt advertisements changed the way people think about seatbelts – you’d never drive without one, right? – the COVID-19 crisis has changed people’s perceptions of remote working. Now, it’s seen as a noble option rather than a cop-out – and savvy organisations will take advantage of this.

We’ve restructured the way we store and interact with our data and systems to react to the new normal imposed by COVID-19. So much can be accessed remotely, so there’s no reason not to do so.

And the benefits are numerous

For those employees who enjoy remote working, this will usher in a time of greater job satisfaction and a better overall mental outlook. These employees will reap the benefits of a better home-life balance, especially if they have children.

For organisations that embrace the shift in corporate culture, their employees will be enabled to work to live rather than live to work – and, ultimately, motivated and happy employees will always do a better job than those who only want to scrape through.

Organisations also benefit from reduced costs from decreasing the need for office space and even on-site computing power. This can be snowballed into a greater advantage over their competitors by investing these savings back into their infrastructure and employee wellbeing.

For finance managers, they can also get a much better view of their finances and, for the first time, view the same financial information as a team in real-time. Now, collaboration has been unlocked in a way that wasn’t possible with old, static systems, and it’s all thanks to a simple shift in perspective and culture.

How to leverage these benefits

If you want to be at the forefront of the new normal and revamp your corporate culture, you first need to decide what benefits you’re looking to see. This may include reduced office space, better collaboration, improving your employee’s lives and offering flexible working. For many organisations, it would be a huge advantage to pursue all of these benefits in some form or another.

Next, you should implement tools to help you achieve these goals. The best way to get started with this is to talk to an expert third-party about potential cloud-based technology and remote-working solutions.

We’ve been working in this space for over half a decade. Along the way, we’ve learned a huge amount about cloud-based finances and administration. In fact, we can set up a remote implementation of our PS Cloud system in days, not weeks.

If you’re interested in talking to us about remote working technology for your organisation, please don’t hesitate to get in touch; we’re here to help.