As organizations across the country adjust to a "new normal" of having a majority or all of their employees working remotely amind the growing coronavirus pandemic, CIOs will be crucial to smoothing this adjustment, The Wall Street Journal reports.
This transition will not only require new technology, but will also see workers looking to IT leaders to help them leverage those tech tools to create the same collaborative work environment they've had in the office.
"CIOs can be most successful during this time by leveraging the opportunity to instill new working practices for remote work," Colleen Berube, CIO at Zendesk, told WSJ. In fact, she added, "We believe we can come out of this with a stronger way of working globally."
At Zendesk, for example, Ms. Berube has overseen the recent deployment of a videoconferencing-enabled virtual onboarding process for new hires and several new self-service tools to help with IT support.
Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of software development startup GitLab, where all employees have been encouraged to work remotely since its inception, told WSJ, "This is a giant opportunity for CIOs to make companies more efficient. If you can get a company to the point where people are equally effective when they're working from home, you give your team members a lot more freedom and you create a lot more opportunities."
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