Amazon employees have reportedly launched an internal campaign to reverse the CEO's decision mandating a worldwide return to office push.

Corporate employees have formed a channel on the company’s Slack to argue for continued remote work. In it, a petition has been shared claiming that the new office policy “runs contrary” to the company’s promises.

CNBC reported that more than 14,000 had joined this channel by 21 February, a growing fraction of the roughly 300,000 global employees affected by the shift in stance on remote work.

Andy Jassy, CEO at Amazon, announced on 17 February that all Amazon corporate staff would be expected to return to the office at least three days per week effective from 1 May.

Dismayed employees have pointed to a 2021 commitment made by Jassy to continue remote working, and an acknowledgement that "no one-size-fits-all approach for how every team works best" when it comes to work patterns within the company.

Explaining the change in stance, Jassy said that leaders can more effectively teach staff when they’re in the same room, and that in-person meetings are a better way for employees to become immersed in the company culture.

“It’s not simple to bring many thousands of employees back to our offices around the world, so we’re going to give the teams that need to do that work some time to develop a plan,” Jassy wrote in a message to Amazon employees.

“We know that it won’t be perfect at first, but the office experience will steadily improve over the coming months and years) as our real estate and facilities teams smooth out the wrinkles, and ultimately keep evolving how we want our offices to be set up to capture the new ways we want to work.”

Reports have suggested that details on the return to office are still being finalised, including how it can apply uniformly across departments like human resources and software engineering.

Pragmatic Engineering’s Gergely Orosz cited discussions with insiders who stated that employees, managers, and human resources were surprised by the announcement and questioned its absence from the firm's recent all hands meeting.

The change in remote work allowances follows Amazon’s laying off of 18,000 staff, citing an uncertain economic climate and a need to preserve the long-term health of the company.

It also comes as the company approaches the first anniversary of the formation of Amazon Labour Union (ALU), the first such organised group of Amazon warehouse workers.

What’s happening in big tech?

Tech workers have long been the beneficiaries of policies such as remote work, and during the pandemic companies allowed a growing number of employees to move away from the office full-time. Since then, these promises have been slowly reneged, amid wider cuts to workforce numbers and hiring goals.

Twitter, which was among the first to tell employees to work from home indefinitely, has since mandated staff return to offices and decimated their benefits, while in leaked audio obtained by ABC News, CEO Elon Musk was heard to say “if you can show up at an office and you do not show up at the office: resignation accepted. End of story".

But while big tech layoffs appear locked into most corporate strategies at the moment, wisdom on remote working has differed, and some have argued that turning back the clock on hybrid work is a mistake.

Earlier in February, GitHub announced it would go fully remote in the same breath as announcing that 10% of its workforce would be fired.

In November, LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report noted that employers are posting fewer remote job positions, even as demand for remote jobs has increased.

The tech industry has seen a pronounced decline in job postings in recent months but demand for new office space in tech-heavy cities declined among the least in July.

That’s according to the latest VTS Office Demand Index (VODI), which tracks new tenant tour requirements – both in person and virtual – of office properties in core U.S. markets and is the earliest available indicator of upcoming office leasing activity.

In terms of job posting measures, the tech industry registered a more pronounced decline in recent months compared to the overall labor market, which peaked around late 2021 and early 2022.

The contrast was particularly notable in San Francisco and Seattle, where the VODI found Indeed job postings to have fallen by 9.4% and 9.5% since March, respectively. For comparison, all other markets registered declines of between 1.8% and 6.5%.

Despite this decline, demand for new office space in the cities declined the least in July, falling just 7% and 14% month-over-month, respectively – which is still well below their pre-pandemic normal, VTS said.

“At the city-level, the slight cooling of the job market, does not appear to have impacted new demand for office space so far,” commented Ryan Masiello, Chief Strategy Officer of VTS.

“Despite recent economic concerns within the tech industry, which have even included layoffs at high-profile companies, office demand in Seattle and San Francisco actually fared better in July than the other VODI-tracked cities, which is likely due to the reluctance of tech firms to re-emerge in the market meaningfully from the pandemic trough.

He added: “It remains to be seen whether these tech-centric markets will see office demand impacted on a larger scale in the coming months.”

Overall, New demand for office space fell to just over half of its pre-pandemic pace in July. Countrywide demand dropped 11 VODI points from 63 to 52 in July, which equates to a 17.5% month-over-month decline, falling to its lowest level since February 2021.

While July declines are typical – July 2018 saw a 4.5% drop, followed by a 5.7% fall in July 2019 – this one is three times greater, VTS said.

“We’re used to seeing demand for office space cool in summer months, but not at this rate,” commented Nick Romito, CEO of VTS. “Unique to 2022 is an economic outlook that is continually shifting and is likely contributing to a reduction in new office demand, as uncertainty causes some potential tenants to delay or reconsider their current office space needs.

This month’s declines also come after three months of relative stability observed in the VODI, he added.

“Quarter-over-quarter, the VODI is down 20 percent, similarly in the quarterly trend to that of this month’s 17.5 percent fall speaks to that stability,” he continued. “The continued positivity in labor market performance is a hopeful indicator as we gauge employers’ reactions to other economic concerns in the months to come.”

Chicago, Boston, and New York City saw the largest VODI declines in July, with all three cities having a relatively large share of finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) among their office-use demographic.

It’s a sector that is particularly sensitive to rising interest rates – a characteristic that aligns with these cities’ sharp decline in new office demand. As a result, demand in Chicago dropped 29.9% to below half of its pre-pandemic pace, while Boston and New York fell 26.1% and 16.2% month-over-month respectively.

Dell has announced the latest iteration of its XPS 13 laptop, which it says has been redesigned to make it slimmer and more energy efficient than ever.

Designed with portability in mind, the 13.4-inch device features a motherboard that’s 1.8x smaller than its predecessor and the smallest ever made for a Dell laptop. As a result, the new XPS 13 measures just 14mm in thickness, with a weight of 2.6 pounds (1.2kg).

That reduction has enabled the manufacturer to make improvements elsewhere, with the laptop now only requiring a single cooling fan compared to the two used in last year’s range. Additionally, the extra space inside the unit has allowed Dell to spruce up the speaker system, which the firm says now offers louder sound and deeper bass, as well as offer a larger battery for up to 12 hours of use.

Despite these benefits, however, this size reduction has been offset with a compromise: machine components such as memory, storage, and battery are not user replaceable.

Like the XPS 13 Plus released earlier this year, this offering also ditches the headphone jack and, while Dell does provide a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter in the box, that will use up one of the XPS 13’s two available USB-C ports.

In terms of the display, the US model features a 13.4-inch, 1,920 x 1,200-pixel touchscreen, which offers 500-nit brightness and 100% sRGB color gamut.

Under the hood, the laptop sports 9-watt 12th-gen Intel processors (Core i5-1230U or Core i7-1250U), which Dell says can run at 12-watts in Performance Mode to match the performance of previous processors used in the range.

The new XPS 13 is available now for the line’s usual price of $999 in the US.

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1

Alongside the refreshed XPS 13, Dell has also unveiled its upcoming XPS 13 2-in-1 device, which takes fresh aim at the premium detachable market.

Available later in the summer, the Windows 11 machine is the manufacturer’s first XPS model with optional built-in 5G connectivity and runs on Intel’s 12-gen processor chips like its XPS 13 cousin.

The device features a 13-inch, 3:2 touchscreen display that offers 3K resolution (2,880 x 1,920), as well as 500-nit brightness and 100% sRGB color gamut. There’s also a front-facing 1080p camera twinned with a rear-facing 4K counterpart.

The XPS 13 2-in-1 weighs in at 1.6 pounds for the Wi-Fi model or 1.8 pounds for the aforementioned 5G variation – but the XPS Folio keyboard and Stylus pen accessories will be sold separately.

Whether you're a home worker, hybrid worker, or always on the move, these powerful, portable devices will make sure that you're effective.

Working practices are in a state of flux. We've never been so free to work from where we like and even when we like, with flexible working practices now very much part of the mainstream. Yet some businesses are pushing back, with many larger enterprises now asking employees to return to the office for more days per week. According to the latest figures from the UK Office of National Statistics, only 13% of workers now work completely from home, down from 26% in early 2022. A larger proportion – 28% – are hybrid workers, working between the home and office.

Meanwhile, more and more of us are embracing a different lifestyle, working full-time or freelance from a wide range of locations – or even working while we live abroad or travel.

This makes it all the more important to have devices that are as flexible as possible; that deliver a balance between size, weight, and portability, without sacrificing performance or battery life. Different workers will have different requirements, prioritizing mobility, speed, or screen size according to their location and their workloads. The trick is finding the right laptop to meet your specific needs.

What is the best laptop for home workers and digital nomads?

If you're working primarily from home, comfort comes first. You need a device that enables you to stay productive all day long, with good ergonomics and a screen that's fit for multitasking. Size, weight, and even battery life aren't so important on a laptop that spends most of its time on one desk.

The same can't be said for hybrid workers. Size and weight matter on a device that you'll be carrying between home and work, while a longer battery life gives you more flexibility over when and where you charge. Connectivity is crucial if you're moving between home and office networks, or connecting to different desktop keyboard, mouse and monitor setups across the two locations.

For fully remote workers or digital nomads, the requirements shift again. You need to balance comfort with having a device that can work effectively in a wide range of scenarios, whether that's a client's office, the kitchen table, the hotel desk, a coffee shop, or on your lap. If you spend a lot of time on trains, planes, or in airports, you may need something that can work in cramped conditions, and that weighs as little as possible.

Performance is important, but most mid-range business and consumer laptops will be fast enough for mainstream productivity applications, and it's only when you get to creative applications or more demanding specialist roles that you'll need to push the boat out on a high-end CPU or GPU.

The big trend this year is towards AI PCs, which feature dedicated neural processing units (NPUs) to power through complex AI operations with a lower power overhead. Right now, neither Windows, Microsoft Office nor most applications make enough use of the NPU to make an AI PC a must-have, but it's arguably worth investing in one anyway. Not only do these devices give you a degree of future-proofing, but the new processors tend to be the most energy-efficient, giving you significantly more battery life. As any digital nomad knows, this is actually more useful than raw speed.

When you're making your choice, don't neglect the less interesting stuff. Warranties, repair packages, insurance, and replacement services are a sound investment for laptops that spend some or all of their time out in the wild. There are higher risks of damage, loss, and theft, and you may need European or global cover. If your chosen manufacturer or supplier can't provide the after-sales support you need, either look elsewhere or find a third-party service specialist or insurer.

The Inspiron 14 Plus isn't the thinnest, lightest, or most exciting laptop on this list, but it's a fantastic option for remote workers on a budget. With a compact 314 x 224mm footprint and a 1.3KG weight, you can use it just about anywhere, while its 14in 2.5K screen makes for comfortable multi-tasking. It's basic, with a 60Hz refresh and mediocre color gamut coverage, but bright and fine for everyday productivity tasks. Two USB 4.0 ports and Wi-Fi 7 give you future-proof connectivity, while the keyboard, trackpad, and webcam are all perfectly respectable.

This is one of the cheapest devices around with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X CPU, and while it's the lower-end Plus variant, it's still impressively fast. Battery life isn't quite up to the levels of the top Snapdragon X laptops, thanks to a smaller 54Wh battery, but you can still get through a full day of intensive graft without serious concerns. And with prices starting at £708 ex VAT, it's a device that even cash-strapped small businesses can afford.

Read our full Dell Inspiron 14 Plus review here

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x has been released as one of Lenovo's initial AI PCs, with an onboard neural processing unit (NPU) designed for AI workloads. In our tests, the IdeaPad Slim 3x proved a great all-rounder for business, handling productivity tasks without complaint and running onboard AI software such as Microsoft Copilot with little to no delay.

One element that slightly lets down the IdeaPad Slim 3x is its display, a 1920 x 1200, 60HZ IPS offering. This is a lower resolution than one might expect in 2025, and it can struggle to be bright enough to remain visible when used outdoors. If you're planning on snapping this up for remote work, just make sure you're not looking to respond to emails on the beach.

Luckily, the IdeaPad Slim 3x makes up for this with its relatively lightweight – 1.6kg – and decent 6-7 hour battery life. Though the latter is below some others you may find on the list, Lenovo has covered this too with fast charging capabilities, meaning a 15-minute charge will net you another two hours of productivity.

Read our full Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x review

Creatives and power users need look no further than the Yoga Pro 9i 16. The 16-inch screen and high-performance spec means a bigger desktop footprint and 1.68Kg weight, but it's worth it to have a massive mini-LED display and a dedicated NVIDIA GPU. The screen hits eyeball-melting levels of brightness – up to 1060cdm/m2 in HDR mode – with superb contrast and near-perfect color reproduction. Meanwhile, the 16-core Ultra 9 185H CPU and RTX 4070 GPU give you awesome performance across creative applications, 3D rendering, scientific apps, and even games – and the slightly cheaper RTX 4060 version doesn't stint on power, either. Fan noise stays surprisingly low.

On top of this, you get an excellent keyboard with slightly concave keycaps and a smooth 1.5mm of travel, a large and effective trackpad, and a 1440p webcam that delivers good results even in less-than-perfect lighting. You also have two USB 3.2 ports, one with the faster USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 spec and one supporting Thunderbolt 4, plus an HDMI 2.1 video output and Wi-Fi 6E. It's the perfect powerhouse laptop for mostly home-based creatives but light enough for mobile use as well, even if the 84Whr battery can only power it for around 9 hours. If you do want to go smaller and lighter, take a look at the equally brilliant Asus ProArt PX13.

Read our full Lenovo Yoga 9i Pro review here

For sheer affordable excellence, the Asus Vivobook S16 is hard to beat. This 16-inch, sleek business laptop boasts snappy performance, great form-factor, and all-rounder connectivity.

The Vivobook S16's standout feature is its excellent OLED display, which delivers a resolution of 3,200 x 2,000 with a pixel density of 236dpi. Sometimes, otherwise sharp displays can fall short on color accuracy, making them unsuitable for creatives or other professionals for whom true-to-life colors are a line in the sand.

Thankfully, the Vivobook S16 scored an impressive gamut volume of 165.3% sRGB in our tests, as well as 117.1% DCI-P3 and 113.9 AdobeRGB. On performance metrics, the Vivobook S16 scored admirably, with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and 16GB LPDDR5 delivering ample power for everyday tasks and slightly more demanding workloads alike.

While this isn't a laptop to take on the likes of the latest MacBook Pro – managing just 9 hours and 21 minutes in our battery test compared to the MacBook Pro 16's 15 hours and 44 – it is nonetheless a pretty package for those seeking a dependable business machine.

Read our full Asus Vivobook S16 review here

The one downside of the new Qualcomm-based Copilot PCs is that compatibility can be an issue. Between improved ARM64 processor support and Microsoft's Prism emulation layer most apps and drivers work well at decent speeds, but there are always exceptions. This is where the Asus Zenbook S14 wins. It uses Intel's new Core Ultra 9 288V 'Lunar Lake' CPU, which gives you equivalent or better AI performance and a faster GPU than the equivalent Snapdragon X processors. Multi-threaded performance isn't quite as good, but battery life can be phenomenal, with the Zenbook S14 lasting over 19 hours in our tests.

What's more, the Zenbook S14 is a superb thin-and-light 14in laptop, with the kind of footprint you'd expect from a 13in device and a very manageable 1.2Kg weight. It comes in a lovely matte ceramic finish and features an excellent keyboard and responsive touchpad. Connectivity is better than average, with Wi-Fi 7, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB Type-A, and an HDMI 2.1 output. The OLED screen doesn't go incredibly bright, but you get perfect contrast and unimpeachable color reproduction. It's a brilliant option whether you're a hard-working mobile creative or an executive clocking up the air miles.

Read our full Asus Zenbook S14 review here

It's best to see the Surface Pro 11 not as a clever, convertible tablet, but as an excellent ultraportable PC. The click-on, click-off keyboard is pretty much a requirement, and even with it attached the whole shebang weighs just 1.23Kg. The ingenious kickstand holds the screen up in a wide range of positions, and the unit is extremely robust. You can even switch out the supplied storage yourself for a 30mm M.2 NVMe SSD. Not all ultraportables can say the same.

There's a limit to the connectivity you can fit into a tablet form factor, but with two USB 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7, and the standard Surface power/data connector, this isn't a huge issue. Microsoft's new Pro Flex keyboard can now work unconnected to the tablet and makes up for its limited travel with a lovely fast and clicky feel. And while entry-level versions have a decent 2880 x 1920 IPS display, mid-range, and high-end variants have a stunning OLED screen with vivid colors and a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate. Throw in the Snapdragon Elite XE-80-100 processor, and you have strong performance and formidable battery life, with nearly 16 and a half hours of video playback in our tests. If your priority is packing light, the Surface Pro 11 is a hard device to beat. Just remember to budget extra for the keyboard.

Read our full Microsoft Surface Pro 11 review here

The Lenovo ThinkPad range has a serious pedigree among business users – and for good reason. The latest iteration, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, retains the iconic ThinkPad styling and keyboard layout, while swapping out the chassis materials to reduce weight and improve its portability.

In our performance tests, the X1 Carbon excelled, achieving near M4 MacBook Air levels on a 4K test and a very respectable 2,725 and 10,937 in the GeekBench 6 single-core and multi-core tests. Lenovo has also addressed criticism of the battery life in previous ThinkPad models, with our battery video test pushing the machine to run for 20 hours and 45 minutes – far ahead of the MacBook Air.

A much-overlooked element of laptops for digital nomads is the keyboard and touchpad. Whether you're working from home or on the go, this is just as important as build quality in making the overall experience of using the machine a good one. In the X1 Carbon's limited space, it fits a responsive trackpad with optional haptics, a solid keyboard with excellent travel, a fingerprint scanner, a Copilot key for AI tasks, and of course, the iconic red TrackPoint that makes it even easier to use in confined spaces.

For more information, read our full Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition review

How we test

For laptops, IT Pro runs a series of tests on the display, CPU, battery, and storage, with the exact line-up of tests dependent on the laptop and its main usage scenarios. Our aim is to give you a metric for comparison so that you can make an informed decision.

For performance testing, we use Geekbench 6 as a cross-platform, baseline test, and PC Mark 10 and 3Dmark to provide a measure of real-world application and 3D performance. We may also incorporate other benchmarks, including the Cinebench R24 and 2024 3D rendering tests, the SPECViewPerf 2020 professional graphics benchmark, and the Geekbench AI and Procyon AI Computer Vision and AI Inference benchmarks.

For the display, we use a colorimeter to measure maximum brightness, contrast, and color reproduction for the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts. We also test against the sRGB profile for color accuracy. We also use the CrystalDiskMark and AS-SSD storage benchmarks to test the sequential and random read/write speeds of the onboard SSD.

Finally, we test battery life with a looped video test. The device is fully charged and the screen set to a specific brightness level of 170cd/m2. We then time how long the video keeps playing before the laptop reaches a critical brightness level and switches off. This gives us a time score we can compare with other laptops and helps us estimate how long the laptop will last during working hours.

Acer has unveiled its latest TravelMate business laptops for SMBs and hybrid workers, which the manufacturer says will provide a wider choice of mobility and performance.

The new TravelMate P4, Spin P4, and P2 machines have been designed to deliver powerful performance, enhanced security, advanced connectivity, and military-grade durability.

In fact, Acer says these new models have been engineered to meet MIL-STD 810H specifications, meaning they can withstand real-life situations such as drops, humid environments, and pesky water spills.

There’s business-grade security and productivity on offer too, with these Microsoft Secured-core PCs built to deliver security down to the firmware level, as well as a SecureBio fingerprint reader and IR camera with privacy shutter with support for Windows Hello.

Additionally, the new models all offer advanced connectivity with Wi-Fi 6 and optional LTE support for immediate connectivity to local networks.

Acer TravelMate P4 and Spin P4

Rolling out from Q3, the new P4 comes in 14- and 16-inch variants, while the Spin P4 arrives with a 14-inch screen. All models will be available with either the 12th Gen Intel Core i7 vPro or AMD Ryzen 7 PRO processors, as well as a WUXGA (1920 x 1200) IPS narrow-bezel display.

With the hybrid workforce in mind, Acer says these new models will provide high-quality video conference performance, complete with AI-powered noise reduction microphones, four upward speakers, and built-in DTS Audio for higher quality, distortion-free audio.

With the convertible Spin P4, users will also get an anti-glare display which can be rotated 360 degrees, scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass screen and touchpad, as well as support for an AES 1.0 stylus.

For those that opt for the Ryzen variants of these laptops, Microsoft’s Pluton hardware security technology has been integrated directly into the processor to ensure system integrity of the device and ongoing protection for identities, data, and applications. Check out our handy rundown on Pluton technology here.

Prices are listed as $1,099 (€999 across EMEA, £949 in the UK) for the P4 models and $1,199 (€1,099, £1,099) for the Spin P4. Buyers in EMEA will be able to get their hands on the AMD models for €949 and €1,049, respectively.

Acer TravelMate P2

Completing the set of new TravelMate offerings is the new P2 business laptop, which hit the shelves in 14- and 15.6-inch versions.

Powered by Intel’s 12th Gen Core i7 vPro chips, the device features a 180-degree hinge, MIL-STD 810H durability, fingerprint reader, IR camera, as well as Windows Hello support. Additionally, the laptop comes with an OceanGlass touchpad, made with ocean-bound plastic and a UV texture layer designed to provide a glass-like tactile feeling.

Also shipping in Q3, the P2 represents a more affordable entry into the range at $899 (€799, £649).

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The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reduced its IT spending by £1.2 million over two years, despite a surge in demand for technology during the pandemic.

The ICO’s budget was most recently cut from £5,379,990 for the fiscal year (FY) 2019/20, to £5,250,720 in FY 2020/21, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request and analysed by the Parliament Street think tank.

However, the most significant cut came during FY 2021/22, when the ICO’s IT budget was slashed to £4,122,045.

This means that spending was reduced by almost a quarter (23%) in two years, despite the data protection watchdog’s February 2021 spending forecast predicting that the IT budget would “marginally increase (...) by the year end” due to “some increase[d] hardware spend".

In September 2021, the ICO also invested in a new digital assistant chatbot to help “guide customers through the data protection fee-paying journey”. Despite answering a record ​​33,773 queries in the first month since launching, interest in the chatbot has since waned, answering only 6,560 queries in April 2022.

The ICO wasn’t immediately available to comment on the reason behind its IT spending cuts. The watchdog is largely funded through data protection fees, which accounts for around 85% to 90% of the ICO’s annual budget. The remaining 10 to 15% is sourced from grants provided by the UK government.

The ICO’s IT budget cuts are largely in line with predictions published by Gartner in August 2021, when the technological research and consulting firm stated that, despite global IT spending exceeding pre-pandemic levels in 2022, the pace of government IT spending will slow down.

Gartner researchers also found that IT infrastructure and applications modernisation, as well as digital government transformation, are the key areas that are set to fuel government IT spending in 2022. The pandemic has served to boost the pace of digital transformation in the public sector, with Gartner estimating that by 2025, more than half of government agencies will have modernised critical core legacy applications.

New data has revealed the best UK towns and cities for those looking to work remotely.

A total of 104 locations have been ranked based on factors like house prices, green spaces, crime rates, air quality, local GP numbers, the quality of local schools, and broadband speeds, in price comparison service Uswitch's first ever Hybrid Working Index took.

York topped the chart as the UK’s ideal hybrid working location, which Uswitch broadband expert Ernest Doku attributed to “superfast broadband, huge amount of green spaces, and close proximity to work hub Leeds”.

Harrogate was another North Yorkshire town that made it to the top five best places for hybrid working. However, local hub Leeds was ranked 17th due to its high crime rates.

Edinburgh and Belfast were second and third on the list respectively, combining fast broadband speeds and relatively low house prices, while also being major office hubs in their respective areas.

However, some of the UK’s biggest cities, including London and Manchester, were found to be lower on the list due to their high crime rates and house prices, with comparatively slow broadband. While York had an average speed of 159 Mbits/sec, London’s and Manchester’s were at least 35% slower – at 102 Mbits/sec and 95 Mbits/sec, respectively.

Commenting on the findings, Doku said that “the last few years have turned our working lives on their head, and many of us have enjoyed the benefits of leaving the commute behind and spending more time at home”.

“It’s been an opportunity for many to escape the rat race, move away from the big cities and enjoy life in more rural settings,” he added.

Recent research found that one in two UK workers would consider quitting their job if the hybrid working option was removed.

Doku described the speed and reliability of broadband connection as a potential deal-breaker when moving to a new area to work from home.

He advised those moving houses to research the local broadband speeds before fully committing to a new area.

“Once you’ve got the move confirmed, don’t forget to let your existing (and potentially new) broadband provider know, so you’re not left offline when the big day comes,” he added.

The full rankings are detailed below.

Palo Alto Networks has announced the general availability of its SASE-based cyber security product that promises to protect business networks from vulnerabilities on employees’ home networks.

Dubbed Okyo Garde Enterprise Edition, the new service includes FedRAMP-compliant Prisma Access and a Wi-fi 6 router. Configuration and management are relatively easy through a mobile app, which also allows for the creation of separate private and personal networks.

Discrete networks help prevent data from commingling and eliminate the risk of attackers moving laterally from one network to another, stated Palo Alto Networks.

Most importantly, Okyo Garde Enterprise Edition, now available to businesses in the US and Canada, enables security operations centers (SOCs) and IT to keep close tabs on in-home corporate networks while ensuring security admins are not privy to employees’ personal networks.

The subscription-based service also helps safeguard unmanaged work devices at home, including printers and VoIP phones.

"The benefits for working remotely also come with the shared responsibility between employees and employers for protecting networks, as at-home use of personal devices, email and social media accounts increases the risk of cyberattacks on the enterprise," said Kumar Ramachandran, senior vice president of products at Palo Alto Networks.

"Okyo Garde Enterprise Edition is built upon the principles of Zero Trust and enables organizations to extend the corporate network and bring unified security policy management and SASE to the hybrid workforce. Together, Okyo Garde Enterprise Edition with Prisma Access extends that best-in-class security synonymous with corporate environments into the home," added Ramachandran.

IDC has revealed that 2021 was the strongest performing year for PC monitor shipments since 2012.

The research firm’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker revealed that the market saw 143.6 million units shipped globally across 2021, which was the highest since the 150.3 million shipped in 2012.

However, a weaker second half of the year hampered the considerable momentum seen in the first, which registered year-over-year growth of a whopping 19.4%.

Challenges faced in the third quarter carried through to the fourth, with the market continuing its quarterly decline. As a result, shipments shrank 5.2% over the same period in 2020.

Despite mature regions slowing in that time, volume was strengthened by emerging markets catching up on backlogs, while global commercial volume helped to offset a “softer consumer base”.

“However, even as monitor component supplies improved to some degree, persistent challenges from high shipping rates and Asian supply chain lockdowns remained,” IDC said. “These challenges that defined the latter half of the year are expected to play well into 2022 and will lead to a 3.6% year-over-year decline in 2022.”

Overall, the market did still manage to exceed expectations, ending 2021 with a 5% year-over-year growth rate.

"2021 marked the end of the longest run for monitors, which saw an uninterrupted growth spurt from 2018 to 2021," said Jay Chou, research manager for IDC's Worldwide Client Devices Trackers. "Whether it was businesses refreshing PCs and monitors as they moved towards Windows 11 or the pandemic pivot towards work from home, these developments gave a much-needed boost to what had been a staid industry.

“However, we now see growing saturation, inflationary pressures from the pandemic and the Ukrainian crisis further accelerating an already cooling environment in 2022, when we expect monitor shipments to shrink 3.6% and then stabilize after."

In terms of individual companies, Dell and Lenovo were the only two in the current Top 5 to deliver shipment growth in Q4 2021, with both outgrowing the market and registering 7.2% and 6.3% growth respectively.

IDC said firms that had better control of their supply chain or a stronger presence in emerging markets fared better during the period.

Only 29% of IT workers plan to continue working for their current employers, by far the lowest score of any corporate job role, according to a new survey by Gartner.

The figure, which represents an average of global IT workers, is around 10% lower than that reported by non-IT workers.

When indiviudal regions are considered, the situation is far worse, with just 19.6% of IT staff in Asia planning to stay in their roles. This rises slightly in Australia and New Zealand (23.9%) and in Latin America (26.9%).

The trend has been linked to the introduction of unpopular policies that demand workers return to the office, as well as a lack of relative flexibility across IT departments when compared to the rest of the business, according to the report.

IT workers under 30 are two and a half times less likely to stay in their jobs than those over 50. A high likelihood of staying is only found among 19.9% of IT workers aged 18 to 29, as opposed to 48.1% of employees aged between 50 to 70.

Gartner says chief information officers (CIOs) are now facing mounting pressure to retain talent.

“While talent retention is a common C-level concern, CIOs are at the epicenter, with a huge chunk of their workforce at risk,” said Graham Waller, vice president and analyst at Gartner.

“We’ve heard of IT organizations implementing back-to-the-office policies only to face mass resignations and have to reverse course. CIOs may need to advocate for more flexibility in work design than the rest of the enterprise, as IT employees are more likely to leave, in greater demand and more adept at remote working than most other employees.”

A data-driven approach can help CIOs identify which workers are most at risk and tailor hybrid work policies accordingly. Gartner advises CIOs to develop human-centric work models to attract talent and improve business outcomes.

Flexible working hours, asynchronous and synchronous collaboration tools, and remote working options are among Gartner’s recommendations for promoting employee engagement.

“CIOs who adopt a human-centric work design will out-hire, out-retain and out-perform those that revert back to industrial-era work paradigms,” added Waller.

This article originally appeared in issue 25 of IT Pro 20/20, available here. To sign up to receive each new issue in your inbox, click here

Side hustles, freelancing, and portfolio careers have, for many workers, become a key aspect in their professional lives. The pandemic changed the definition of work from somewhere you visit into something you do. It also illustrated how a more flexible approach support wellbeing, mental health, and, for a growing number, a chance to realise a longstanding ambition to start a business.

Creating a bespoke working life is no longer a pipe dream, which is why so many people are pursuing a side hustle. Before this phrase was coined, workers ran small businesses and other projects in the evenings and weekends alongside their day jobs. Now, many more who’ve experienced the benefits of a more fluid working life are devising their own exciting ventures.

Chasing your passion

“This shift is now being driven largely by the talent pool themselves and is something employers need to get on board with to mitigate the effects of the ‘Great Resignation’,” head of talent and organisation, EMA at Infosys, Mick Burn, tells IT Pro. “In addition, we're witnessing a whole generation of side-hustlers. Gen Z doesn’t have the same loyalty and undivided commitment to the nine-to-five as their predecessors. Freelancing, therefore, provides autonomy and flexibility that's extremely attractive to younger workers.”

Entrepreneurship has always been in rude health across the UK. Giving up a full-time job to pursue that dream is, however, not a practical proposition. Then COVID-19 came along and presented many with the opportunity to take tangible steps towards becoming their own boss – albeit on a part-time basis. Indeed, two in three (64%) want to run their own business in the future, FreeAgent research suggests, with a 10% year-on-year rise fuelled by changing working patterns and the subsequent opportunities. COVID-19 has also triggered 27% to move their plans forward.

“Across the global workforce, tech and IT side hustles have been common due to the remote nature of the industry and the increase in demand for these skills,” says Debbie Irish, head of HR for HP, UK and Ireland. “Job security has played a role, too, with two in five office workers saying they are motivated to pursue their passion as their career because the pandemic has changed how they feel about job security, with millennials being the most motivated.”

Accessing the tools at your disposal

The pandemic has been the ideal time to launch a side hustle. Specialist insurance broker Caunce O’Hara found just under a quarter (23%) of those questioned reported setting up their own side hustle in the past 12 months. A further 40% reported their side hustle is between one and five years old. Over half of respondents (51%), meanwhile, earned up to £1,000 a month from their side hustle. Compounding the economic benefits, analysis by Henley Business School estimates side hustles bring £72 billion to the UK economy, with as many as 25% of adults pursuing one today.

The IT and technology sector has proven itself to be the ideal industry for side hustles. Bionic examined global entrepreneurship and discovered that IT and technology was the most popular industry, playing host to 20% of those included in Forbes’ 30 Under 30. The capacity to create a side hustle has also become more of a reality as digital tools have matured. The mass uptake of remote working, for instance, has shown millions how technology can be used to run a successful side hustle, while hosted services have also expanded and become more affordable.

Using existing skills can become the basis for a side hustle, with coding, digital design, content creation and tech support all forming the basis of successful ventures. Some even use their knowledge to teach others by building online courses or writing eBooks. The tech stack many side hustles need – not just within the tech sector – are now integrated, too. Collaboration suites, fast development, and deployment of online retail spaces are accessible, with the ability to connect with international suppliers and manage entire businesses from a notebook or tablet, too, a reality. Connecting side hustles with buyers is also possible with marketplace platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork.

Newcomers, however, need to take care when choosing what kind of IT business to start, warns Dr Rita Fontinha, associate professor of international business and strategy at Henley Business School. “To avoid moonlighting, we need to ask questions like what is the nature of the services provided in the second job? Who are the main clients or customers likely to be? When and where is the secondary work being conducted?” she says. “It’s also important to ask whether any of the main employer's property is being used. This would include material such as hardware, but also, more seriously, data containing confidential information or intellectual property.”

Your portfolio career

Employers have often lamented the challenge of finding the right people for their vacancies, with the pandemic also driving a shift in the worker-employee relationship. Indeed, according to a survey from productivity platform ClickUp, under-45s are driving a demand for a four-day working week. It’s especially true for 35-44 year-olds, with almost a fifth (19%) preparing to quit their job to find a role that offers flexible working, while 16% plan to request a four-day week in 2022; the fifth day will be used to pursue their side hustle. Although the benefits of this model are still under examination, an example of a firm that’s established a four-day week is Atom Bank, with CEO Mark Mullen stating this was vital to retain staff and protect their wellbeing.

“With so much uncertainty over the last 18 months, it's understandable that so many employees have looked for new ways to supplement their income,” says Lee Biggins, CEO and founder of CV-Library. “What's more surprising is that so many businesses have been supportive of these endeavours. With staff shortages plaguing the UK job market, it may seem counter-intuitive to encourage employees to strike out on their own. It could be argued, however, that this is actually a clever approach to take.”

The pandemic changed the definition of work while also changing attitudes about work-life balance and wellbeing. Meanwhile, in the tech space, businesses need specific skills and generally understand hiring a full-time employee isn't always a practical proposition. Offering a flexible or part-time position that could allow employees to pursue a venture of their own, therefore, could be highly attractive. For workers, likewise, equipped with the freedom and the tools, it’s the ideal time to pursue a side hustle.

Huawei has unveiled a new capability for business users who multitask between smartphones, PCs, and anything in between.

Known as Super Device, the feature is an extension of the Chinese tech giant’s Multi-Screen collaboration capability that was introduced in 2020, allowing users to connect two devices at the same time, such as a PC with a tablet or smartphone, or a smartphone with a tablet.

This time around, however, users will have greater flexibility over their cross-device connections, allowing all compatible Huawei phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, Smart TVs, and other monitors to work seamlessly across different operating systems as one integrated ecosystem.

This includes wireless screen-sharing, transfer and management of files, as well as enhanced editing capabilities.

For instance, users will be able to more accurately edit an image file saved on their mobile phone by displaying it on their laptop or PC screen, with all changes being automatically saved to their phone.

They will also be able to simply drag and drop different files across their connected devices, eliminating the need for USB drives or email transfers, as well as multitask during video conferences by hosting the call on a seperate screen while taking meeting notes on a laptop.

The feature will enable users to focus on tasks by eliminating the need of reaching for another device to access a certain file or software. Instead, they will be able to reach for the required element from the main device they’re using, allowing them to maintain high productivity levels and avoid distractions.

Super Device is available on Huawei mobile phones, tablets, monitors, Smart TVs, as well as laptops running PC Manager 12.0.2 or later.

Huawei has also made it possible to purchase their devices in bundles: choosing between the Smart Work Bundle that includes a MatePad Pro 12.6 256GB Wifi and MateView screen for an estimated £1,355, or the Super Device Bundle, which comes with the two devices as well as the Matebook X Pro laptop for an estimated £2,370.

Google will no longer require vaccinations as a condition of employment for US workers, according to a new company memo.

First announced in November 2021, the heavily-opposed policy required staff members to report their vaccination status or apply for a medical or religious exemption by 18 January 2022 or be placed on paid leave for 30 days and eventually have their contracts terminated.

However, Google has now decided to scrap the vaccination condition, meaning that unvaccinated employees will be able to keep their jobs as well as enter the offices – although some conditions will remain.

These include mandatory negative COVID-19 tests and face masks, according to an internal memo sent by Google Real Estate and Workplace Services vice president David Radcliffe, as seen by CNBC.

In the email to Google’s San Francisco Bay Area staff, Radcliffe said that the offices are expected to “feel pretty similar to what it was like pre-Covid”, with employees being able to once again benefit from the campus’ massage and shuttle services, as well as gym walk-ins.

Vaccinated employees will be allowed to enter offices without being required to wear a mask, and social distancing rules will also be relaxed, as long as they’re in line with local state legislation. Office attendance will continue to be optional, with employees being notified 30 days in advance of being required to return to working from campus.

“We’re designing and piloting options to support new ways of working together and we’ll gather insights, data and feedback to help us learn as we go,” Radcliffe added.

Despite Radcliffe’s statements, The New York Times found that the policy requiring a full vaccination status in order to be allowed entry to Google’s offices is reportedly still in place.

Google wasn’t immediately available to comment on the reports.

The tech giant isn’t the only tech company that imposed vaccination policies – in January, Meta introduced a mandate requiring all employees to have had a COVID-19 booster jab before returning to its US offices, which are scheduled to reopen on 28 March.

Microsoft, on the other hand, hasn't specified whether employees will need to be vaccinated in order to return to the office. Its headquarters in Washington State are scheduled to fully reopen on 28 February.

Zoom has added a DocuSign integration to its video meetings, allowing users to sign documents within the video conferencing app.

DocuSign eSignature for Zoom is now available for versions of Zoom Desktop 5.7.3 or later. Users can add the extension by logging into their DocuSign and Zoom accounts and installing the DocuSign eSignature App from the Zoom App Marketplace.

Once installed, users can send a document via email or SMS and, once in the Zoom meeting, select the right document from the “Find your agreement” tab in the right pane of the app, and pass control to the signer.

The integration could be particularly useful for signing legal documents when setting up a business agreement in another country or applying for a visa, which often require the presence of a notary in order to verify the identity of the signee. However, Zoom Apps & Integrations product lead Ross Mayfield said that the integration is primarily about simplifying the process of signing documents over video call.

“Employees don't want to spend their days toggling between countless apps and emails, especially when working with customers or partners. They want tools that streamline workflows and easily enable them to connect and collaborate," he said, adding that Zoom is “excited about DocuSign eSignature for Zoom as it allows stakeholders to review agreements together in real-time before signing, helping eliminate communication silos and accelerate the completion of agreements”.

In a blog post announcing the integration, DocuSign SVP Jerome Levadoux highlighted the impact of the pandemic-induced shift to remote working.

“The past few years have highlighted the need for agility and better productivity tools to meet the evolving needs of customers. We are excited to partner with Zoom to offer the DocuSign eSignature app for Zoom to make it easier than ever to streamline how we collaborate and come to agreement in the emerging anywhere economy,” he said.

The news comes days after the video conferencing platform released an update to its macOS Monterey client addressing a security issue whereby a Mac's microphone remained enabled even after a Zoom meeting had ended, leading to users claiming that the app is ‘listening in on them’.

"The Zoom client for macOS 5.9.3, released on January 25, 2022, fixed a bug involving the failure to properly terminate the microphone use post-meeting," a Zoom spokesperson told IT Pro.

Mac shipments grew at double the pace of overall PCs in 2021, according to figures from market research company Canalys.

In its PC analysis released today, the company charted a 28.3% growth in Mac shipments to 28.96 million units. General PC shipments, spanning desktops, grew at 14.6% in 2021 to reach just over 341 million worldwide.

The PC market overall was healthy, having shipped 90 million units in Q4 for the second consecutive year. Shipments for the year outpaced 2019 by 27%, and represented the highest annual total since 2012.

Notebooks and mobile workstations performed best, growing 16% in 2021 to 275 million units. Desktops still grew at a healthy 7% to reach 66 million units.

Apple's success is linked to a major upgrade across its Mac line after switching from Intel silicon to its home-grown ARM-based M-series architecture. The company has already released more advanced versions of its M1 chip and is expected to release the M2 chip this year.

Acer saw the next highest growth after Apple in 2021, at 21.8%, followed by Dell, which grew shipments 18%.

However, Lenovo topped the charts in absolute shipments, with a 24.1% market share representing 82.1 million units. HP followed in second place with a 21.7% market share, followed by Dell (17.4%). Apple had the fourth largest market share at 8.5% of the shipments, in spite of its impressive growth.

Canalys praised the industry for solid growth even as supply chain constraints continue to bite. The company noted increased penetration rates for PCs during the year, including young students and older family members. More people now own two PCs, it added.

The successes were not spread evenly across geographic regions, though. The US saw shipments fall for a second consecutive quarter in Q4, Canalys said, due to a strong fourth quarter for Chromebooks in 2020. EMEA and APAC were the bright spots, each growing shipments by double digits over last year.

WeSpire, a provider of employee experience solutions with an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainability focus, has announced the launch of its Employee Carbon Management Solution.

Developed in partnership with Cox Enterprises and South Pole, the new solution provides enterprises with a comprehensive set of tools to measure, reduce, balance, and report on employee carbon emissions both on the job and at home.

“Until now, getting employee-based Scope 3 carbon emissions data quickly, accurately, and on-demand has been challenging due to a lack of workplace-specific tools to reliably capture and report the data,” explained WeSpire.

“The rapid move to hybrid and remote work environments and an increasing number of companies setting Scope 3 Net Zero goals has magnified the urgency of implementing a better approach.”

Employee Carbon Management Solution by WeSpire enables companies to establish a corporate ESG strategy across the workforce by providing employees with specific steps they can take to reduce their individual carbon footprints.

Through curated actions based on behavioral science, companies can promote continual, progressive reductions in carbon emissions without relying on offsets immediately.

WeSpire has also partnered with South Pole to provide high-quality offset opportunities as rewards to employees and employers.

WeSpire's Employee Carbon Management Solution will be available by Earth Day 2022 after it passes its testing phase.

“We’ve pioneered a data-first, behavior-change solution to drive much needed personal climate action in the workplace,” said Susan Hunt Stevens, founder and CEO of WeSpire.

“Our technology enables organizations to engage their employees to better understand their own impact, take targeted carbon reduction actions, and, when needed, the company or employees can balance what remains. This holistic solution will inspire further innovation as employees see their collective impact on their company’s ESG goals and will significantly simplify employee-related Scope 3 emissions reporting,” added Stevens.

Welcome to IT Pro's News in Review, a weekly bite-sized bulletin of the top tech stories of the week, for the week ending 17 December, 2021.

This week:

• Log4Shell: New numbers reveal the scale of the critical software exploit
• Google will fire unvaccinated employees in 2022
• Top 200 most common passwords of 2021 revealed

You can find more videos like this in our video library and even more on our YouTube channel. Let us know what you think of this week's video – you can also find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Over half of UK workers (51%) who currently have the choice to mix remote and office working would consider quitting their job if this hybrid option was removed.

The pandemic has changed hybrid working from “nice to have” to a “must-have”, according to new research from Microsoft and YouGov.

The findings are based on online surveys of 2,046 employees and 504 HR decision-makers (HRDMs) in the UK that was carried out between 7 and 15 October 2021. 59% of HRDMs surveyed agree hybrid working has had a positive effect on the mental wellbeing of their workforce too.

Microsoft pointed to data from the Office for National Statistics which revealed resignations and job-to-job moves in the UK are at their highest level in two decades, which is what some experts are calling “the great resignation”.

Onboarding at a new business during the pandemic has been challenging, with 36% of UK workers who started a new job since the start of the pandemic experiencing their entire onboarding process without ever setting foot in the workplace.

These workers have struggled with forming working relationships (42%), not having a manager or team in the room to ask for information or guidance (33%), learning to use new software and applications (24%), earning the confidence of colleagues (23%), and soaking up company culture (21%).

The challenges of remote onboarding has also been recognised by HRDMs, with 36% feeling that remote onboarding makes it hard to provide effective training for starters and 35% voiced concerns about ensuring employees have easy access to the information they need. 28% were also worried about upholding their organisation’s culture and reputation.

Despite this, HRDMS and employees believe the long-term benefits of hybrid working outweigh these potential problems. The report found that the most pressing concerns identified by HRDMs in not having a hybrid working model were an inability to retain new talent (38%), a negative impact on productivity (25%), a negative impact on wellbeing (24%), employee burnout (23%), and keeping pace with competitors (23%).

37% of HRDMS who have onboarded new staff remotely said that although the process was challenging, it is resolvable with the right technology solutions.

“The pandemic has proven that organisations can trust their people to be productive wherever they are,” said Nick Hedderman, director of Modern Work Business Group at Microsoft UK.

“They now have an opportunity to reshape work around individual roles, preferences and even personal lives. This is achievable through tech-enabled hybrid working models, which supports the creation of a rich digital culture to benefit everyone, helping to attract and retain top talent.”

This comes after UK leaders are urging people to work from home following the rise of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Nicola Sturgeon is asking for people in Scotland to work from home until the middle of January, while Boris Johnson asked people to work from home where possible.

Welcome to IT Pro's News in Review, a weekly bite-sized bulletin of the top tech stories of the week, for the week ending 26 November, 2021.

This week:

• UK fintech Atom bank moves workers to a four-day working week
• GoDaddy data breach exposes over 1.2 million customer details
• Secretary of State retires NHS Digital and NHSX

You can find more videos like this in our video library and even more on our YouTube channel. Let us know what you think of this week's video – you can also find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

LinkedIn has rolled out a new feature designed to help freelancers access new job opportunities, akin to services like Fiver and Upwork.

Service Marketplace, which was previously only available as a beta to select LinkedIn users in the US, can now be accessed by freelancers all over the world, including the UK.

The feature allows users to find freelancers or project providers through a vast variety of 250 job categories, with opportunities ranging from accounting and consulting to information technology and software development.

Freelancers and project providers can find each other through the Search function, or by exploring the project categories, with all projects described in the Details. If interested, freelancers and project providers can then communicate through messages to find out more about the job, and after it’s finalised, they can rate each other through a five-star system.

Service Marketplace is based on LinkedIn’s pre-existing ProFinder tool, with the Microsoft subsidiary having started integrating “the best elements of Profinder into the LinkedIn platform” in 2020, according to LinkedIn senior communications manager Amanda Purvis.

“We’ve begun helping our service providers integrate their Profinder data to Service Pages and this will continue over the coming months. This will be an incredible opportunity for providers to increase their reach and gain more visibility to the LinkedIn community. Providers can expect to get regular updates from us as we evolve our service provider experience,” Purvis told the AIM Group last month.

Service Marketplace can be seen as LinkedIn’s response to freelance-focused platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork, which have capitalised on the growing number of workers joining the so-called gig economy.

Although severely hit by the financial downturn during the pandemic, freelancers constitute approximately 4.3 million out of the 32.4 million people employed in the UK, down from just over 5 million in January 2020, according to Statista.

In the US, where Service Marketplace was first trialled and rolled out, the pandemic fuelled the popularity of the gig economy, with the growth of temporary contracts attributed to the mass shift to remote working. In April 2021, the US saw a 25% increase in the number of gigs completed per day, raising questions about the sustainability of the type of work post-pandemic.

The news follows LinkedIn’s quarterly earnings report, with the company announcing this week that its revenue for Q3 was up 42% year over year.

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Welcome to issue 21 of IT Pro 20/20, distilling the most important themes of the previous month into a simple, easy-to-read package.

This month we look at the newest innovations and projects helping to shape how we interact with the world around us.

Whether that be new approaches to tackling climate change, quirky ideas on what the office should look like post-pandemic, or ambitious plans to build a world-leading smart city, each story celebrates technology that’s helping to turn age-old into cutting-edge.

The next IT Pro 20/20 will be available on 29 October – previous issues can be found here. If you would like to receive each issue in your inbox as they release, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.

Welcome to issue 20 of IT Pro 20/20, distilling the most important themes of the previous month into a quick, easy-to-read package.

With the pandemic almost behind us, companies are now having to grapple with the thorny issue of returning to office work. For many, that involves choosing how much flexibility to give employees. However some organisations, across both the public and private spheres, are questioning the validity of paying all employees equally.

Recent policy announcements from major tech players like Google to cut the pay of remote workers has sparked an industry-wide conversation about the nature of flexible work, which many believe could result in a new era of discriminatory workplace policies.

The next IT Pro 20/20 will be available on 30 September – previous issues can be found here. If you would like to receive each issue in your inbox as they release, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.

Welcome to IT Pro's News in Review, a weekly bite-sized bulletin of the top tech stories of the week, for the week ending 20 August, 2021.

This week:

• Working from home has created an "overtime epidemic"
• T-Mobile confirms it was hit by a data breach
• MoD launches callout for tech to plug cyber security holes

You can find more videos like this in our video library and even more on our YouTube channel. Let us know what you think of this week's video – you can also find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Google staff members are reportedly facing pay cuts of between 5% and 25% for choosing to work remotely on a permanent basis.

The tech giant is said to be using a company pay calculator that determines the remuneration based on whether they want to work remotely or commute to the office, according to an investigation by Reuters.

Known as the Work Location Tool, the calculator was launched in June and uses core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to estimate the cost of living and commuting. This has resulted in pay cuts of between 5% and 25% depending on where the employee is based.

One anonymous employee told the news agency that they choose to commute to Google’s Seattle office for two hours every day in order to avoid having their salary cut by 10%. Others reported that employees have faced pay cuts as high as 25% for leaving San Francisco to work remotely, despite some working from the almost as expensive Lake Tahoe area.

IT Pro has contacted Google for comment.

The reports have raised concerns that Google’s actions could serve as a precedent for other companies to do the same.

Richard Fox, employment partner at Kingsley Napley, told IT Pro that UK employers “will need to be really careful in how they introduce any such policy”.

“They will want to consult with those affected and will have to guard against the possibility of discrimination claims," he adds. "But, however difficult an issue this may be, it will not go away and if the likes of Google, Twitter, and Facebook are looking at cutting salaries for those not working in the major conurbations, it is going to be looked at by others who may want to follow suit. Those in the technology sector may be particularly affected because of the ease with which they may be able to work from home rather than living and working in expensive inner City area."

Kate Hindmarch, employment lawyer at Langleys Solicitors, also agreed that pay cuts “can only be done by consultation and consent”.

“Under current [UK] law, if an employer wishes to vary terms and conditions of a current employment contract, they must firstly seek to reach agreement to the changes by consulting with the workforce, and any trade unions as appropriate,” she told IT Pro.

However, she added that employees’ unwillingness to take the salary decrease could also lead to a practice known as ‘fire and rehire’, which sees employees being “effectively dismissed” and offered “the choice of accepting the new, usually less generous terms”.

“Most employees in this situation, particularly in the current economic climate, are likely to accept the new contract, whatever the terms, to avoid unemployment," adds Hindmarch. "If this is the case, then the employee may have a claim for unfair dismissal if they have more than two years of service."

Ultimately, “fire and rehire” is potentially lawful, but businesses must consider whether it is ethical. It is a high-risk strategy which employers should not take on without understanding the risks and potential reputational damage involved,” she said.

Amidst the disruption of lockdowns, many organisations have uncovered great benefits to ‘new normal’ ways of working. As a result, organisations are incorporating flexibility and agility into their long-term working strategies.

But how do you take everyone’s preferences into account while continuing to operate smoothly? And what are the business benefits?

This whitepaper looks at the importance of focussing on your employees when rebuilding your working setup, and how the right technology and business solutions can empower staff to work effectively under a new arrangement.

The following article originally appeared in Issue 14 of IT Pro 20/20 as part of a new series that invites industry experts to share their experience of tackling some of the most pressing issues facing businesses today. To sign up to receive the latest issue of IT Pro 20/20 in your inbox every month, click here. For a list of previous issues, click here.

Universities are typically ahead of the curve when it comes to consumer demand around connectivity. It’s no question that the consumerisation of technology has been one of the key drivers of enterprise IT trends for decades, but trying to keep up with the expectations of young, tech-savvy stakeholders that have new tastes every year is another ball game altogether.

This is a challenge that we’ve proudly invested in at Edinburgh Napier University. We understand that our students need secure and continuous access to all the relevant applications and resources that form part of their studies; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After all, there is no 9-5 university experience. Many of our students are studying around families, jobs, and – in more normal times – an animated social life. Some are also in different time zones.

Now, of course, we’re also operating remotely. At Edinburgh Napier, we have more than 19,500 students that come from over 140 different countries, in turn supported by 1,500 university employees. Meeting all the different IT needs when the majority of stakeholders are on campus is challenging, and having an IT infrastructure that meets them when they’re at every corner of the globe even more so.

It's without question that the investments we made to provide secure, remote access to university services before the crisis have been critical to our ability to quickly adapt from our students physically attending lectures to attending online courses. We had previously implemented VMware’s Horizon solutions, which provide virtual desktops and applications through a single platform. We also deliver virtualised applications through a technology called AppsAnywhere, which allows students to run them within a web browser. This means that students can access any application from any device at any time, exactly as they would if they were interacting with a desktop on campus. We have also been able to give secure remote access to specialist Apple Mac labs using a technology called Leostream. All this in an attempt to replicate the on-campus experience the students would normally enjoy in non-pandemic times.

The shift towards empowering students with seamless remote access has undoubtedly served us better in the crisis than we could ever have anticipated, but I believe that this is just the beginning of universities’ shift towards more remote learning. We’ve certainly seen the trend bubbling up over the past few years starting with Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), but I believe that the transformation starts now for our more traditional institutions.

E-learning improves the accessibility to university services and, just as we’re seeing shifts in the corporate world towards more hybrid workplace models, there will be an expectation that the learnings and benefits of this experience are harnessed in higher education too.

That said, there are a few key learnings we’ve taken away from this experience that have made our shift to remote education a success.

The first is that we benefited enormously from our IT architecture being simple and versatile. There’s no way that we could have adapted as fast as we did without having a single platform for virtual desktops and the technology we have for accessing applications. It took so much complexity out of the process: there was no mad scramble to create new services. Our students and staff were already experienced and comfortable using these platforms, and when we can all return to campus, I have no doubt that the shift back will be equally seamless.

Security was also a key focus for us in the shift to remote learning. VMware NSX has been key to keeping the cyber challenge manageable with the use of security bubbles of services and apps. This allows the IT team to provide specific bespoke solutions for a variety of individual research projects and departments. It also allows us to separate the environments of the different institutions we support; for instance, we have separate hosted learning environments for Edinburgh College and for the University of St Andrews. This makes our attack surface much more manageable, which is critical when there are even more variables to control in the remote learning environment.

It’s impossible to predict the long-term changes to the higher education sector that have been catalysed by the shift to remote learning. But preparing for the future is what we do, and any IT teams that are looking at this move to e-learning as a “temporary fix” are missing out on key learnings that will empower them to provide a more connected experience for their students and staff in years to come - no matter where they are.

Half of UK businesses expect to reduce the size of their office space, with a third looking to cut it down by 30%, according to a new report.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) surveyed 258 C-Suite executives and over senior employees of the UK's largest companies and their proposed cuts roughly equated to nine million square feet of space.

The finding indicates an appetite for 'hybrid work' models in the UK, where employees mix remote and in-office shifts, with around 71% of the respondents planning to increase investment in technology to enable more agile work models over the next two years.

As such, only 10% of those surveyed agreed that the level of employees working in the office will match that of pre-pandemic levels, despite taking into account the speed of the vaccine roll out. The consensus from the survey among the senior executives is that staff will continue working remotely for two or three days a week.

"The figures couldn't be more clear, the shift to hybrid working, with part of your time at home and part in the office, is pretty much embedded into the working culture of many organisations," said Angus Johnson, the UK real estate leader for PwC UK. "So much so that a significant proportion of the businesses we spoke to are planning to reduce their office portfolio, which could lead to up to nine million square feet of vacant space.

"However, it's clear that the role of the office is not going to disappear. We may see an increased demand for flexible space as many businesses' operating models may well need that option if holding dead space is to be avoided. It's also clear that the nature and purpose of office space are going to change."

Many of the respondents are said to be implementing 'subleasing' models and exploring partnerships for shared office space. What's more, 51% of the organisations with 100 employees or more already have a workplace strategy that considers the long-term impact of COVID.

Zoom has announced a platform for hosting virtual events that will be available to its paid tier of customers in the summer.

The service, called 'Zoom Events', is described as a "comprehensive solution for event organisers" that offers features to ticket and monetise audiences of any size.

It will include a hub to manage and share events, registration portals, integrated networking, and an analytics dashboard to monitor and review attendance and revenues. The events can be hosted as both one-offs or as part of a series of conferences that can also be made private or posted on a public directory for others to discover.

Most of those features have come from a rebranded version of the 'OnZoom' platform, which has been in beta since October 2020. This was a service for people to adapt their in-person events, such as fitness classes or music lessons, so that they could work as virtual or hybrid ones. It included tools for monetising sessions and a marketplace to search for them.

However, OnZoom will no longer be available as a standalone service as it will be folded into Zoom Events.

"It's an exciting time to be at Zoom where the pace of innovation continues to accelerate," said Oded Gal, the firm's chief product officer. "We know that people are looking for flexibility in how they attend events in the future. The hybrid model is here to stay, and Zoom Events is a perfect solution for our customers who are looking to produce and host customer, company, and public events with an easy, yet powerful solution."

The timing of the announcement may come as a surprise to some, given that the popularity of virtual events is almost certainly going to decline as lockdown restrictions begin to lift and companies jump on the novelty of hosting a physical event.

Google, for instance, hosted its I/O developer conference earlier in the week with people allowed to attend at its Mountain View campus. MWC 2021 is also still aiming to host 50,000 people at Barcelona's Fira Grand Via in June, despite a number of high profile companies pulling out of the event.

Amazon has revealed new details about its second headquarters set across a sprawling campus in northern Virginia.

The company has submitted plans for the second phase of the development that show designs for a "forest plaza" at the foot of the company's 22-story Helix tower, and proposals for new retail and transport infrastructure.

Work began on the campus in January 2020, just before the pandemic hit, but the firm said its construction, and recruitment plans, are "on pace" and that it was ready for the next chapter. The tower was part of Amazon's phase 1 plans and is scheduled to be completed by the middle of 2023. It's said to be 2.1 million square feet of "energy-efficient" office space, which is filled with "state-of-the-art" collaboration areas and leafy terraces.

The Forest Plaza is part of its phase 2 plans and is described as a "botanical experience" with pathways, communal areas and a cascading water feature which Amazon said will provide a cooling microclimate. The area will lead from the Helix office to other segments of the campus, such as transport links and a 500 square foot retail space.

"When the public health situation improves and as regulations allow, we will continue to see value in bringing our employees together in a physical space to cross-pollinate ideas and foster collaboration," the tech giant said in a blog. "With our hiring and construction on pace, we're ready for the next chapter."

Amazon has invested $2.5 billion in the site and currently employs 1,600 workers at the campus. The e-commerce giant is seeking a further 1,900 jobs for a variety of technical and non-technical roles.

These include jobs in software development and high-performance computing, as well as positions working with the Prime Video, Kindle and Alexa teams. There are also listings for Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh store designers.

Amazon hopes to create around 25,000 jobs over the next decade, both internally and around the campus as it grows.

Calling the past twelve months unusual would be a gross understatement. Thankfully, however, things are slowly starting to return to normal; vaccine programmes are continuing to roll out and case numbers are generally declining across the country. As the risk of infection falls, organisations are planning for their post-COVID future.

For those who moved to remote working, one of the most important questions they’re considering is how - or, in some cases, if - they want to return to the office. Very few businesses are envisaging a complete return to their pre-pandemic working patterns, however. For most, the office they go back to is going to look drastically different to the one they left behind.

In this month’s IT Pro Panel discussion, we asked our panellists how they’ve approached the return to the office; how their attitudes to physical workspaces have changed, the alterations that they’re making to suit their new patterns, and what the future of workplace collaboration looks like to them.

The pandemic has affected each of their organisations in different ways. For Natural History Museum CIO Alison Davis, it meant closing the museum to visitors, but while the doors will be opening again for guests on 17 May, back-office staff aren’t planning to return until the following month, when lockdown restrictions are set to be fully lifted.

As the CTO of Milton Keynes University Hospital Trust, meanwhile, Craig York’s job has never been more important. IT teams, support staff and clinicians across the trust have been working from home where possible during the pandemic, but York’s IT team are now starting to return to the office for two days a week.

Some of Moonpig’s staff have also gone back to the office; CTO Peter Donlon says that office space has been made available for anyone who wants it, but notes that only a very small percentage have taken advantage of it. Teams within other organisations, meanwhile, have left the office behind for good.

“I had a basic team on-site throughout, to deal with hardware support, but don't expect we'll be going back fully ever again for the whole team,” says SafetyKleen CIO Pat Colombo. “Given the nature of what we do, we can't all work remotely, but back-office staff, and especially IT, have proven that they can support the business from home.”

All of our panellists confirmed that both they and their organisations were planning to continue working remotely on either a full or part-time basis for the foreseeable future, but there are some exceptions to this. Like Colombo, York had to make sure that his service and support teams had an on-site presence over the course of 2020, and he’s also keen to ensure that flexible working arrangements benefit all staff equally.

“One concern for us is the cultural thing of some people having more opportunity to work flexibly in their roles than others,” agrees Davis. “That should resolve over time, as new folks are being hired, but while this is a new change, we're sensitive to the potential concern from those who can't benefit.”

Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, however, York says that working from home has been hugely popular among staff, and the idea has gained buy-in from the Trust’s executive leadership.

“We have an off-site admin building, for IT, finance and HR, and pre-pandemic, we wouldn’t have considered having such large groups working from home. A good admin example is our different finance teams all working from home and being able to complete month-end and year-end accounts without anyone attending on-site. From a clinical perspective, we've had medical consultants write to the CEO to rave about how productive it can be to occasionally work from home, with secure access to all systems but without the long commutes.”

“So far it's been working okay the way it is for over a year, and for some of us with long commuting times, working from home helps both the company and the employee,” says Colombo, “as at the end of the day, time that used to be spent commuting - three to four hours in my specific case - is now used for work instead.”

“I think that Covid working has helped to overcome some of the executive reservations about home working, but it will be interesting to see what happens,” Davis adds. “I've been stressing that managers need to allow continued remote meeting attendance - a lot of us have a longish commute (mine is about 3 hours per day) so once you have one on-site meeting a day, that's a day you have to come in… it doesn't take many of those to scupper flexible working.”

In fact, it may not surprise you to learn that according to our panellists, the concept of ongoing flexible working has been almost universally popular. Mirroring the general trend among businesses, most of our panellists’ staff will be spending at least two or three days a week working from home even once offices reopen.

“We expect most of our head office teams to be working in a hybrid way going forward,” Donlon says, “but with a large variance between those who want to be in the office semi-frequently and those who want to be in very occasionally.”

Unsurprisingly, the biggest drawback of working from home from our panellists’ perspective has been the lack of face-to-face interaction. Part of the reason York’s team has started going back into the office is to allow some of their new starters who were onboarded during lockdown to meet in person.

“This is important,” he emphasises; “while WFH is great and has very few barriers, collaboration still benefits from some in-person conversations and interaction.”

The Natural History Museum is also in the same boat, and Davis reveals that the organisation is addressing this with the somewhat paradoxical move of bringing the leadership team into the office for an away day. It might sound confusing, but as she points out, home working is now the norm.

“Some of our executive board have never met each other face to face,” she explains.“Our HR director, our comms director and most crucially our chief executive all started under lockdown. I only started six weeks before - so there's been quite a lot of change!”

The pandemic has re-emphasised the importance of in-person collaboration for many organisations, and several of our panellists report that their physical premises are going to be reworked with this in mind.

“We have been looking at our office spaces and how we can make them work better for this hybrid world going forward,” says Donlon. “I do think there will be some learning as we go. Personally, I think we may see a spike in people wanting to go back to the office as things open up, until they're reminded what commuting is like!”

York, meanwhile, will be opening up various areas within the Trust’s existing footprint to different teams within the business, including clinical staff. Rather than arbitrarily sectioning off different buildings, existing resources will be deployed more flexibly within the same footprint.

Davis is also trying to make greater use of multiple buildings. In addition to its main location in South Kensington, the museum has another site at Tring, with a third research centre currently under construction in Harwell, which she says is helping the organisation adapt to a flexible, multi-site model.

“The Museum doesn't have the option to reduce in size in the same way as a commercial organisation,” she says, “but there is the potential for us to use our space more effectively. One of our challenges is that we have a legal duty to maintain the collection for the nation, and that collection is constantly growing.”

Davis is also keen to stress that while staff have been working remotely for the past year, they haven’t been working flexibly, and this will require an adjustment period to get used to.

“We have a Future Ways of Working project for the Museum as a whole, which I'm leading. We're expecting that unless their role requires it or their personal circumstances or preferences make it desirable, that people will retain some level of flexible working. However, as we aren't working flexibly now, we are encouraging teams to experiment between June and the end of year, to decide what works for them.”

“We've been speaking to our teams a lot over the past 12 months to understand what a return to the office could look like,” Donlon adds, “and while there's definitely still an appetite for physical offices, the usage of those offices will look very different in the future as we embrace remote working long term.”

Moonpig has invested heavily in remote working, not just supplying employees with the relevant equipment and support, but also giving them additional funding to set up and improve their home working space in order to make it more enjoyable.

“It became clear pretty quickly that working from home for a day every now and again is very different to working from home every day. It was important for us that our employees had what they needed to work comfortably in their home environment,” explains Donlon.

“We were already in a good place for this,” York says. “We have large data lines into the hospital, Microsoft 365 and Azure are integrated well and all users are very secure, with all offsite apps having multi-factor authentication. There’s many more positive things than not. Struggles are often small, although they don't feel like that to individual users.”

One potential challenge that was raised by a number of panellists is managing meetings in a hybrid environment, and various strategies are being put in place to prevent a disconnect between those working from home and those in the office.

“The office needs to support our working principles going forward,” says Donlon. “If you take meetings, for example, I think what a lot of us have realised is that meetings work well when everyone is together and when everyone is remote but when you have a combination of both it works less well. So if we adopt a principle that unless everyone is in the same physical office that the meeting needs to be run remotely, more meeting rooms, phone booths, et cetera become a good solution to that.”

“We are also recommending continuing use of Microsoft Teams for all meetings,” Davis adds, “unless there is a conscious decision that it needs to be a face to face meeting. Interestingly, use of Teams Live has resulted in better all staff updates, I think. Anecdotally, there’s better attendance and people are more ready to ask questions than having to do it in person. I think we're probably also communicating more because it's easy to set up.”

Microsoft has been one of the clear winners of this pandemic, and almost all of our panellists have relied on its Teams platform over the past year to keep staff in contact with one another.

“I’d echo the importance of making effective use of those new features available, like Teams Live,” York says. “Our executive team now has several hundred staff on briefings, where there were dozens previously.”

“We were spending way too much on PowWowNow, for what was basically traditional conference calling,” Colombo explains. “By moving to Teams, a huge number of participants can join a meeting at no additional cost, and by adding an additional license to Teams, people that are unable to join via Teams can do so by dialling in. This reduces our costs quite dramatically, as the Teams license was already being paid for, and all we needed to add was Microsoft’s conferencing license to be able to add phone numbers to dial in to meetings.”

Other technical changes have been introduced to help deal with the post-pandemic operating environment - for example, York is using pre-existing capabilities within his software stack to track staff burnout - and many projects that had to be put on hold are now being restarted. Colombo is continuing with SafetyKleen’s drive to replace paper-based operations with handheld devices for field operatives, while York is pushing forward with the next phase of the Trust’s electronic patient record system.

While some investment and upgrade projects are getting back on track, however, the clear consensus was that the traditional model of office-based working is never coming back - and for our panellists, that’s very much a positive thing. Across the board, remote working has delivered benefits for productivity, technical adoption and staff flexibility, and although there are still some kinks to be ironed out, businesses now find themselves with a number of advantages.

“I think (and hope!) that this has been an eye-opener in how organisations can work flexibly,” Davis says. “We're still not out of the woods yet with COVID variants and I think we have a while (and probably another winter at least) to go through, before that becomes business as usual. So working flexibly also provides future resilience.”

“From my own point of view, I've just invested in a height-adjustable desk for my home office and I am confident that it is a worthwhile investment...so I'm putting my money, literally, where my mouth is on that thinking!”

To apply to join the IT Pro Panel, please click here to enter your details. Please note that we are not accepting applications from technology vendors at this time.

After a year of forced remote working, lockdown restrictions are finally starting to ease, and organisations are starting to plan their return to the office. But once physical workspaces reopen, will we even want to go back - or has the last year given us a taste for the benefits of working from home?

In this episode, we speak to IT Pro staff writer Sabina Weston to discuss our experiences of remote working, the impact of generational differences on attitudes to office culture, and whether or not we’re looking forward to being back in the office.

Footnotes

• Coronavirus creates new challenges for women in tech (and every other industry)
• International Women’s Day: Where now for women in tech?
• The benefits of a remote-working model
• UK gov flip-flops on remote work, wants it a standard for all jobs
• Three keys to a long-term remote working strategy
• City firms consider axing office space as remote work continues
• Why can’t tech firms decide on working from home strategies?
• 90% of Brits want to continue working remotely
• The IT Pro Podcast: Staying sane while working from home
• If employees are to work from home then the office network must move with them
• What are employers' responsibilities when we use personal tech to work from home?
• Microsoft research suggests hybrid work is here to stay
• Google warns hybrid working could hinder its 'corporate culture'
• How do IT leaders prepare for a refusal to return to the office?
• Research says 63% of employees are more productive working from home
• Staff will quit if not allowed back into the office, chancellor warns
• Why video conferencing is so tiring and what you can do about it

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Microsoft is planning to slowly reopen its headquarters in Washington later this month as it prepares to embrace hybrid working.

The company's Redmond headquarters have remained closed for over a year now, but the company has announced that the building will reopen on 29 March.

“Currently, Microsoft work sites in 21 countries have been able to accommodate additional workers in our facilities – representing around 20% of our global employee population,” said Kurt DelBene, executive vice president at Microsoft.

“On March 29, Microsoft will also start making this shift at our Redmond, Washington, headquarters and nearby campuses.”

Microsoft will also put its hybrid workplace into practice and employees will have the choice to return to Redmond work sites or nearby campuses, to continue working remotely, or to do a mixture of both.

“At each of our global work sites, the hybrid workplace model strikes a balance, providing limited additional services on campus for those who choose to return, while supporting those who need to work remotely or feel more comfortable doing so.”

“Our goal is to give employees further flexibility, allowing people to work where they feel most productive and comfortable, while also encouraging employees to work from home as the virus and related variants remain concerning,” wrote DelBene.

DelBene also outlined how Microsoft has developed a return-to-work site strategy to account for constantly changing public health conditions and government guidance to keep employees safe.

The outcome of this is the “Hybrid Workplace Dial” which contains six defined stages, instead of a specific timeline, that allows the company to quickly adjust its work sites depending on health conditions.

“The dial helps us assign a stage to each of our work sites depending on the current local health data and government guidance. The dial can go in both directions – moving a work site forward when local disease burden improves, and also dialing back when we observe declines in progress,” said DelBene.

Each stage of the dial is defined by a set of data-driven criteria, including trends in cases and deaths as well as government guidelines.

Furthermore, employees are encouraged to work remotely while their site remains in Stages 1-5 and “should not feel they need to return”. The shift on 29 March at the Redmond campus will represent a move on the dial from Stage 3 to 4.

“Additionally, we’ve pulled together a group of Microsoft researchers, engineers and real estate and facilities experts to prototype hybrid meeting spaces at our Redmond, Washington, and UK campuses,” DelBene added.

This group is investigating different meeting configurations and technologies like multiple screens, cameras and mixed reality scenarios “to understand the most effective, inclusive set-up for hybrid work.”

IT Pro contacted Microsoft UK to see if it had plans on reopening here, but it had nothing to add to what had already been announced.

At the start of February, Citrix said that UK employees wanted hybrid working models, despite a strong desire to meet in person again. The cloud giant believes remote working will play a “huge role” in post-pandemic life and will be the new normal.

Google, on the other hand, warned that its productivity and finances may take a hit due to the new “hybrid working” model brought about by the COVID pandemic. The tech giant is concerned that this will increase costs and impact its “corporate culture”.

In this week's exclusive feature for The Business Briefing readers, Jane McCallion addresses the future of travelling for business and face-to-face work meetings, and whether either of these are necessary for getting the job done.

The Business Briefing is a new free weekly digest that highlights everything you should know about the business world around you.

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It's becoming less critical to maintain large, centralised headquarters where everyone is expected to work, but how do you make a dynamic model work for your organisation?

Dynamic work distinguishes itself from remote and distributed work in that it's all about empowering workforces with flexibility and customisation, ensuring equability in benefits, programmes, and culture experiences no matter where you choose to work.

Download this whitepaper to find out four trends driving dynamic work and how Okta has been approaching this shift for the past several years.

Welcome to the 14th issue of IT Pro 20/20.

Now that we have a better idea about when the lockdown will finally end, many of us will naturally be thinking about our return to the office. It’s likely that, having grown accustomed to remote working, for most of us this return will be phased and, depending on your role, you may find yourself able to negotiate how often you make the commute in. Some will be desperate to get moving again, while others will have taken cues from the past year to take advantage of new-found flexibility.

However, before the conversation shifts towards life after lockdown, we’ve taken the opportunity to highlight areas of our industry that have played crucial, yet often overlooked roles in this great remote working experiment.

In this issue, we look at how data centres have coped with immense pressure from customers, the benefits and pitfalls of onboarding new staff remotely, how smart cities will underpin life post-pandemic, and much more.

The next IT Pro 20/20 will be available on 31 March – previous issues can be found here. If you would like to receive each issue in your inbox as they release, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.

In this week's exclusive feature for The Business Briefing readers, Rene Millman delves into the blurred lines of security while working remotely and how business leaders can strengthen and standardise their strategies going forward.

The Business Briefing is a new free weekly digest that highlights everything you should know about the business world around you.

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Agility is perhaps the most important business asset in the current climate. The working world is in constant flux – we’ve been asked to work from home, make the office covid-secure, prepare for a return to business-as-usual and embrace a new normal all in the space of a year.

Whether businesses can remain flexible amidst the uncertainty has been the difference between swimming and sinking, and a vital part of this is ensuring you have the right equipment. While laptops, tablets and phones can be great for portability, some tasks require a sizeable screen if you want to get the best results. Monitors can be one of the most useful pieces of hardware, wherever you work, especially those equipped with the latest technology to support new normal staples such as video conferencing. Here are some considerations when upgrading your hardware.

Prioritise flexibility and agility

Going forward, many organisations want to empower their employees to work productively from anywhere. Crucial to this is ensuring that any devices they use can communicate with each other to provide a seamless experience – otherwise, the technology designed to support employees may end up stifling productivity and causing frustration. Monitors which double up as docking stations can be a gamechanger, providing an all-in-one solution for agile workers.

Philips’ new vertical hybrid docking monitor with 100W power delivery is an evolution of its unique USB-C Docking Solution. It allows a full office solution, enabling you to work from anywhere. You can extend your laptop autonomy without needing an additional external power supply, plug all devices you need directly into the monitor with the built-in docking station, quickly charge your phone and transfer your data, and easily daisy-chain multiple monitors to your laptop via DisplayPort-out. Thanks to the dual output USB-A/USB-C cable and DisplayLink support via USB, it also supports legacy computers without USB-C.

Invest in a quality screen

Remote working has only increased the amount of time we all spend in front of a screen, and this doesn’t look set to change if organisations adopt an agile working approach going forward. If some of your team are working outside of the office, the likelihood is your meetings will still include video conferencing and a lot of communication and collaboration will continue online. This means you need to put extra thought into the kind of screens you’re supplying your employees with and whether they protect against eye strain. Is the resolution high enough to give a clear, sharp picture? Does it have good brightness and contrast to prevent squinting on sunny days? Philips’ new 2021 monitors include LowBlue mode and Flicker-free technology for easy-on-the-eye productivity and eye-strain protection.

Size is also important – the big benefit of a monitor is having plenty of space to work with on the screen. It can help fuel productivity and minimise frustrations and can make a big difference across numerous job roles – whether that’s finance teams needing to bring up large spreadsheets or design teams needing to see the detail on a piece of creative. Accurate colour reproduction can be vital for creative teams too. If the colour quality is poor, you may end up with creative assets that don’t quite live up to expectations. Philips’ new monitors also have great colours and smooth action thanks to the IPS panel and 75 Hz refresh rate.

Look for secure collaboration

Just because there’s global pandemic going on, doesn’t mean the cyber criminals have taken a break. If anything, it’s propelled them forward, with multiple reports showing a rise in cyber crime in 2020. This means it’s vital that you keep all of your endpoints secure, and that includes monitors. Especially if your monitors come with useful add-ons such as video conferencing capabilities, you’ll want to ensure that these features have a good base level of protection.

Philips monitors include a handy pop-up webcam which can be discreetly tucked away when not in use, thus preventing potential unwelcome viewers. It also features Windows Hello facial recognition, adding another security layer and future-proofing your hardware. Microsoft Windows products have been some of the most popular enterprise solutions over the pandemic, with products such as Microsoft 365 and Teams being integrated in everyday working life for many companies. Philips monitors also bring peace of mind with added security features such as RJ45 input for secure wired network connection.

Check the environmental credentials

More than ever, organisations are considering their carbon footprints, so it’s a real bonus if you can ensure your devices have good sustainability credentials. Things to look for include energy efficiency and any recyclable components.

As part of a mission to help build a brighter future for all, Philips monitors have some great environmental credentials, including compliance with strict international environmental standards. They are energy efficient, with PowerSensor and LightSensor to decrease power consumption and lengthen product life, and they come with fully recyclable packaging. They are also free from harmful substances such as lead, mercury, and PVC/BFR.

The new normal might sound daunting, but with the right equipment you can set your organisation and your employees up for success.

Discover the full range of Philips monitors

Chrome OS users will now be able to record their screens in meetings, as part of a slew of new features and devices announced by Google.

Although mostly aimed at children and teenagers confined to remote learning as schools remain closed, the new tools are likely to be found useful by a wider audience.

The screen recording tool will be rolled out in March with the latest Chrome OS update, and other new video conferencing features will follow.

For instance, Google Meet is providing teachers with increased control over the virtual classroom, soon giving them the option to end meetings for everyone on the call, which will prevent students from staying on after the teacher has left — including in breakout rooms. They will also be able to prevent interruptions with a new “mute all” tool, which will become available in the next few weeks.

Over the next few months, Google will also be adding a tool which will allow meeting hosts to control when other participants can unmute themselves, as well as provide better access to key moderation controls when using iOS or Android devices.

The newly-announced features are all part of Google’s efforts to increase the safety of underage users, bettering their quality of education as well as preventing major security incidents such as ‘Zoom-bombing’.

To coincide with the release, the company also announced that it will be launching over 40 new Chromebooks, many of which will be 2-in-1 devices that combine the features of laptops and tablets.

The new devices are to be equipped with a stylus, touchscreen, as well as dual-cameras, making it easier for users to take notes, edit videos, record screencasts, and create a range of media, from podcasts to books and illustrations.

Google also announced that it will roll out a range of Chromebooks that can better support students with limited access to a Wi-Fi connection. The “Always Connected” devices will be equipped with LTE connectivity, allowing users to access the internet using their preferred mobile network provider. It's currently unclear when these devices will become available - IT Pro has sought clarification on this.

Chromebook shipments between October and December 2020 hit an all-time high of 11.2 million shipped units, an increase of 287% from the same quarter in 2019.

In this week's exclusive feature for The Business Briefing readers, Keumars Afifi-Sabet rounds up advice from managers and workers on overcoming both the new and recurring challenges of remote working.

The Business Briefing is a new free weekly digest that highlights everything you should know about the business world around you.

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In this week's exclusive feature for The Business Briefing readers, Sabina Weston digs deeper into how businesses can offer wellbeing support during remote work, from mental health to personal development to flexible working hours for a good work-life balance.

The Business Briefing is a new free weekly digest that highlights everything you should know about the business world around you.

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Millions of adults in the UK are being digitally excluded due to a lack of government support and investment into internet access, a charity has warned.

The issue has been exacerbated by the pandemic and may also last beyond it, according to Helen Milner, the chief executive of social change charity, The Good Things Foundation.

The focus of the digital divide has mainly been on children since going into a third lockdown. So far, the government has provided over 500,000 devices to schools, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson stating on Wednesday that a further 50,000 devices have already been sent this week.

The move has been heavily criticised by MPs for being too little too late, but although there has been some action for school children during the pandemic, the same cannot be said for adults on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The outbreak of the coronavirus has pushed society even further towards digital transformation, remote working, and a greater need for cloud-based skill sets. This disruption has disproportionately affected low-income households, the disabled, and also black, Asian and minority ethnic people, according to Milner.

"The government has done quite a lot around the child part of the digital divide," Milner tells IT Pro. "But for adults, the government have not invested a single extra pound on adult digital inclusion, be that around devices, or be that around skills."

"From an internet access point of view, half of the households with an income of fewer than £10,000 a year, don't have internet access," Milner said. "Whereas 99% of households with an income of over £40,000 a year do have internet access. So this digital divide is also a real social divide."

Milner added that it "feels very strange" that the government makes efforts to get services and schemes online when there are nine million adults who are unable to use internet without support, and seven million households still without an internet connection.

"These were things that were incredibly significant before the pandemic," Milner said. "Now, during it, they're even worse and these exclusions are going to last beyond the pandemic as well."

While there hasn't been much investment for adults, MPs did meet on 3 December for the 'Digital Infrastructure, Connectivity and Accessibility' debate which was led by Conservative MP Esther McVey and Labour MP Julie Elliot. Politicians from both parties discussed the issue with many raising concerns about the affordability of both hardware and internet access.

The Good Things Foundation have a programme called 'Devices Now', which has been able to offer 12,000 people with devices and data. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has offered some support, with MP Caroline Dineage urging industry leaders and large businesses to engage with the charity.

However, that effort has to produce results, according to Milner, with just a few thousand pounds and some refurbished devices donated to date. Investment, she said, would have been "so much more useful".

"MPs do care, they absolutely do care," Milner said. "We've been running campaigns and we've got a lot of support from MPs, it's just that it hasn't been met with investment."

The events of 2020 and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic meant businesses were suddenly pushed to re-address their ways of working and introduce a remote model to enable their continued operation.

The abrupt nature of the transition also brought about fresh security risks with organisations unintentionally overlooking security measures in their haste to digitally transform, which cyber criminals then took advantage of.

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• Understand the new cyber threat landscape
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The working world is changing and is likely to look different for every organisation, so how can your business develop a working practice that works uniquely for you?

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Demand for remote working products and services has fuelled surges in laptop and PC sales, boosting third-quarter profits for HP and Dell.

Both firms beat analyst expectations for Q3, with optimistic earnings forecasts swiftly following as the coronavirus continues to increase demand for home learning and working.

HP shares rose as much as 9% in extended trading on Tuesday after the PC manufacturer reported $10.5 billion in revenue from its Personal Systems unit, the segment of its business that deals with laptops and desktop computers.

Sales of notebooks increased 18% due to demand for remote working and the firm more than doubled sales of Google-based Chromebooks, according to chief transformation officer Marie Myers. However, the overall segment was slightly pegged back by a decline in desktop and workstation sales, which are seen as more of an office purchase.

PC and laptop sales also featured heavily in the Q3 results of Dell Technologies. Consumer device sales, such as PCs, were up 14% compared to the same quarter in 2019. Overall, Dell's revenues increased 3% to $23.5 billion, with operating income rising 35% to $1.1 billion.

"We met unprecedented demand for remote work and learn solutions this quarter while increasing revenue to $23.5 billion," said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and COO at Dell Technologies.

"At the same time, we accelerated our 'as a service' strategy and hybrid cloud capabilities at the edge - positioning us to win in these growing markets and making it easy for customers to manage data and workloads across all their operations."

Both firms are expecting this trend to continue, particularly as the coronavirus is still forcing employees to work remotely. Even beyond the outbreak, many businesses are looking at hybrid working models with a mix of in-office and home working.

With the mass shift to remote working comes a greater demand for technology that makes remote working easy and efficient. Video conferencing is one such technology that has become absolutely vital for daily remote work.

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Artificial intelligence, machine learning, 5G, and the Internet of Things are predicted to have the most impact of all technologies in 2021, according to a new report.

Just under a third (32%) of CIOs and CTOs said that the technologies will be fundamental to their role next year, as businesses seek to recover from economic disruption and adapt to new working normals.

IT leaders also believed that cutting edge technology would be felt most keenly in manufacturing (19%), healthcare (18%), financial services (15%), and education (13%), the survey from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) revealed.

Over 350 CIOs and CTOs located across the US, China, UK, India, and Brazil were surveyed between September and October 2020. In terms of business disruption, over half (52%) said the biggest challenge for 2021 will be helping their businesses to recover from the coronavirus pandemic - specifically, implementing permanent hybrid remote and new office work structures (22%), returning to the office (17%), and overseeing indefinite remote working (13%).

Additionally, 11% of respondents said that potentially having to keep stopping and starting IT projects due to the uncertain nature of business in a post-covid world will be the most challenging task of 2021.

With more organizations and professionals relying on remote working technologies, there has been an increase in cybercrime during the global pandemic. Understandably, CIOs and CTOs have concerns when it comes to cybersecurity, their two biggest challenges being workers using their own devices at work (37%) and securing the Internet of Things (35%).

However, just 34% of respondents said they were capable of tracking and managing between 26-50% of the connected devices used in their organizations, and just 20% said they could do this for 51-75% of IoT devices.

Elsewhere in the survey, CIOs and CTOs provided a glimpse into their biggest priorities since the outbreak of coronavirus at the start of 2020. It found that IT leaders are quickly adopting cloud computing (55%), 5G (52%), as well as AI and machine learning (51%) in response to the pandemic.

Other technologies that have experienced increased adoption during the pandemic include IoT (42%), augmented and virtual reality (35%), and video conferencing (35%).

While the coronavirus pandemic has caused many challenges for IT teams, more than half of CIOs and CTOs believe it has made them more prepared to handle a range of disruptions. In fact, 92% said their organization is more ready to deal with problems like data breaches and natural disasters.

Jake Moore, a security specialist at ESET, told IT Pro: “Not only do we have more of our workforce at home than ever before, we have those at home with limited understanding and protection in place. IoT devices are still at large with little or no security features by design and many are using their own devices without a hint or direction of extra security layers.

“Furthermore, we are likely to see malicious actors jump on the adoption of 5G and businesses need to be prepared for this new challenging direction. The possibilities are dramatically larger than what we are accustom to now with regard to remote attacks such as DDoS attacks.

"Regardless of which direction new attacks may appear from, key training and staff awareness remain a focal point if businesses want to remain best protected," he added.

Continued remote working in the UK is creating an increase in demand for home office equipment and furniture, according to research.

Around half of the UK's remote workers have purchased home office items, such as desks and computers, according to product research firm Growth from Knowledge (GFK).

Currently, the UK is in the middle of a second lockdown, which is due to end at the start of December. However, GFK's research suggests that around 36% of UK workers plan to purchase more equipment in order to stay away from the workplace beyond the pandemic.

Around 53% of workers have already purchased equipment, with desk chairs the most popular home office buy (21%), followed closely by printers, headsets and keyboards (all on 15%). This hierarchy is likely to continue, according to GFK, as desk chairs are still the most sought after item, though computers, smartphones and storage units have also seen a rise in demand.

Remote working has proved more popular in the UK than in other European countries with almost half (49%) of the UK's working population working from home since the first lockdown in March. This compares to than 45% in France and 41% in Germany.

This trend has continued with Brits still working from home well into autumn, driving an ongoing demand for home office equipment. Around 58% of those that had worked remotely during the first lockdown continued to do so by September, according to GFK, whereas the trend had fallen off 32% in France and 40% in Germany.

"This is good news for brands selling office equipment and IT in the UK," said Nathalie Bolle, GFK regional lead for consumer insights. "On top of the 53% of home-workers here who have already bought items to allow them to work remotely, another 36% say they plan to make purchases in the future. Office furniture is a particular focus for intended purchases, as people aim to be more comfortable as they work from home."

Last week, a report from Deutsche Bank called for a 5% daily tax for those that chose to work remotely. The idea was to raise money for those displaced by the Coronavirus and rebalance the UK's economy.