Four Years After the COVID Pandemic, What is the State of the Mobile Workforce Today?

By: Wesley Doyle

For my second blog entry, I read the article “What is a mobile workforce?” (IBM) published on IBM’s website and part of the company’s external newsletter. This article examined the aspects that make up a mobile workforce and some positive vs. negative aspects of instilling a mobile workforce in your company.

I chose to read and respond to this article because the workforce is transitioning and work-life balance among employees around the world has taken hold since the global pandemic several years ago.

“The objective of a mobile workforce is to make employees as productive outside of the office as when they are in it,” the article states. “With a mobile workforce, employees should be able to remotely access the same software applications and data as they would at a company headquarters (IBM).”

The Challenges of a Mobile Workforce Today

Assembling a mobile workforce is more than hiring remote workers and setting up some home office equipment–there is more technology to deliver and company/team operations to consider. In-office settings provide a much easier task of creating workplace culture and ensuring employees are adhering to the standards set by the company; mobile workforces, while rather flexible in theory, present an integral challenge for the company: setting concrete performance standards and creating a unified mindset when the environment is not a unifying factor (unlike in office spaces.)

Even though a mobile workforce may be agile, the lack of instilled company culture in a remote team presents opportunities for workers to easily find new employment opportunities, should they experience unpleasant conditions or working relationships in their current company. For instance, take the “Great Resignation” of 2021. Yaakov Shapiro, Chief Technology Officer at Tangoe, wrote the following as part of an article in Forbes Magazine in early 2023:

"Take, for example, the “Great Resignation,” discovered when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January that a record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November 2021. This was a phenomenon that we had not seen before, a societal symptom of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led more people to reevaluate what they want from their jobs and their lifestyles." (Shapiro, 2023)

Another significant challenge mobile workforce teams face is data security in utilizing personal devices or exposing company devices to personal data networks at home without the proper virtual private network (VPN) security. Shapiro explains how to mitigate some of these issues in the same article, writing:

During the pandemic, permitting employees to “bring your own devices” (BYOD) to work became a popular, expeditious way to cost-effectively expand hybrid work. Now that hybrid work is becoming a longer-term standard, we are seeing a trend toward a more managed, corporate-owned approach.

Offering a “corporate-owned, personally enabled” (COPE) approach can ensure that devices are preconfigured with security policies, as well as provide more holistic inventory and usage data to identify anomalies and alarms to questionable usage behaviors. Having the data to quickly inform smart security actions can be the key to mitigating damaging security breaches. (Shapiro, 2023)

The Opportunities That Mobile Workforces Bring

Dr. Anneke Schmidt of The Career Foundry writes that mobile workforces actually increase a business’s resilience. Dr. Schmidt quotes multiple studies that prove remote workers’ increased productivity, a more competitive employee pool for employers in a globalized economy, and better talent retention for employers as well (Schmidt, 2023).

While early predictions suggested that this new trend was a passing fad likely to end with the pandemic, it’s now clear that remote work is here to stay. In fact, a recent study investigating the process of remote work adoption by US organizations found that the model has become a widespread and increasingly standard workplace practice (Schmidt, 2023.)

In its article posted online, IBM shares some convincing research supporting a strengthening mobile workforce. A recent global study2 found that 71 percent of businesses believe that offering flexible work situations significantly widens their talent pool. Another international study3 revealed that organizations that adopt digital tools for an untethered workforce realized a:

• 67 percent increase in productivity

• 53 percent increase in employee engagement

• 43 percent revenue growth as a direct result. (IBM)

Conclusion

To conclude, after reading this article from IBM and several other sources, I believe that one thing is certain: the era of a mobile workforce is upon us. No matter your thoughts in support or against the change in work trends over the past few years, it’s hard to ignore this fact.Some make strong arguments in favor of a mobile workforce–increase productivity, an expanded and leaner workforce in a globalized economy, and better disaster

preparedness–while others make valid arguments against such workplace trends–lack of security and decreased company culture, among others.

It will be interesting to see how this phenomenon unfolds as the pandemic subsides and companies begin to feel the strain of economic tightening in the months and years to come.

References

IBM. “What is a mobile workforce?” IBM, IBM, https://www.ibm.com/topics/mobile-workforce. Accessed 17 July 2023.

Schmidt, Anneke. “17 Key Benefits of Remote Work for Employers and Employees.” CareerFoundry, 10 May 2023, https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/career-change/benefits-of-remote-work/. Accessed 17 July 2023.

Shapiro, Yaakov. “As Business Trends Mobilize, So Must Mobile Workforce Practices.” Forbes Magazine, 2023. https://www.forbes.com, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/01/27/as-business-trends-mobilize- so-must-mobile-workforce-practices/?sh=2b5c1bd421df. Accessed 17 July 2023.