Building IT team cohesion with a mobile tech strategy
There’s no question that mobile technology can increase productivity among IT workers, but mobile tech can also be key to more fully engaging those workers. Used successfully, a mobile tech strategy can increase a sense of connection, community and team cohesiveness among disperse IT staff.
A successful mobile technology program empowers people, not just processes, explains Amruth Laxman, founding partner of 4Voice, a telecommunications services provider. It gives IT pros flexibility, autonomy and a sense of control over their work.
For mobile tech engagement to occur, mobile tools must be secure, user-friendly, and truly simplify tasks as opposed to making them more challenging, Laxman explains. Advanced mobile systems are seamlessly integrated. IT teams don’t concern themselves with the underlying technology; they simply utilize it in the completion of excellent work.
Elements of a successful mobile tech engagement program
A successful mobile tech program exposes a combination of strict security and easy access, explains Allen Liu, tech leader and content specialist at audio hardware maker FreSound. The program should be equipped with features that clearly demonstrate advantages in a user’s workflow and communication, allowing IT personnel to perform their tasks from any location and communicate seamlessly and cooperatively to facilitate collaboration and advance the program, and gain recognition from their peers.
“Empowerment and seamless collaboration via mobile IT channels encourage learning and peer recognition,” Liu says. “For ongoing benefits of the program and sustained user engagement, there must be continual user feedback, training, and flexibility in response to user needs exchange.”
Laxman says he has seen those results first-hand. Over the past few years, he has focused on leading mobile technology initiatives to enhance productivity, accessibility, and engagement for hybrid teams. His company wanted to ensure that mobile technology made the workplace more accessible, rather than a mere convenience.
“We developed secure, mobile-first workflows for approvals, ticketing, infrastructure monitoring, and collaboration,” Laxman says. “When mobile tools are secure and easy to navigate, IT teams remain connected, empowered, and engaged, even when they are removed from the workplace.”
At this point, mobile technology is fully integrated into the fabric of Laxman’s organization. Employees use mobile technology to provide project updates, sign documents, and engage in real-time video collaboration, as well as send and receive messages within a secure portal. This technology has drastically reduced cross-department and cross-time-zone communication delays, enabling rapid decision-making in hybrid and remote work contexts, he says.
Capabilities and benefits of a mobile-first strategy
Mobile technology is also integrated into daily operations ar FreSound, Liu says. Communication, task management, and access to cloud-based resources are performed via smartphones or tablets. She says this technology access and use promotes a sense of agility. Employees can connect and work from anywhere and complete work at any time, which promotes a culture of agility.
“This mobile-first approach is especially helpful for frontline and hybrid employees,” Liu explains. “They use mobile devices to communicate and access the tools necessary for seamless operations.”
In the IT department, Liu says the ability to use mobile technology to monitor networks, manage support tickets, and coordinate collaborative incident resolution is critical. IT personnel use mobile tech to receive alerts, perform diagnostics, and communicate with team members. This enables enhanced real-time collaboration that transforms the IT department’s agility, she explains.
Beyond regular job tasks, Liu says a mobile-first strategy has produced several benefits:
Real-time recognition and peer feedback: “Mobile technology facilitates real-time peer recognition, which helps foster a constructive workplace,” Liu says. “Mobile notifications that celebrate individual accomplishments and milestones serve to boost morale and promote team bonding, which is especially important in the high-pressure IT environment.”
Mobile training and development: “Mobile devices provide access to training modules, and segmenting the courses promotes the educational modules as ‘on-the-go,’ Liu says. “Engaging training within the IT field is effortless when gamified applications are available.”
Community building through social features: “Mobile collaboration apps encourage informal chats and knowledge exchange even outside scheduled meetings,” Liu explains. “These apps help to build a virtual community that nurtures team spirit and is conducive to a collaborative culture, important for hybrid or fully remote workplaces.”
Mobile products, features, and functionalities desired by IT workers
The ability to access fully integrated and secure communication and workflow tools is one of the determining factors in how successful a mobile tech program is for IT professionals. Liu says they look for integrated chat, voice, and video technologies; alerting mechanisms to notify incidents that require immediate response; real-time monitoring dashboards; solid security protocols, including a VPN, multifactor authentication, and user-friendly mobile interfaces.
“Those features and functions allow IT professionals to control and manage systems, partner, and resolve incidents from any location and at any time without any restriction,” Liu explains.
Reliability, speed, and security define best mobile devices that IT workers use, Laxman says. Biometric authentication, single sign-on, and system alert push notifications all must be incorporated to satisfy most IT workers. They also want core tools such as ServiceNow, Splunk, Jira, and Confluence fully integrated and flex interoperability, where workers can transition from laptop, to tablet, to mobile, and retain full operability.
How IT managers can assess engagement with mobile technology
To determine how successful a mobile tech program is at engaging IT workers, organizations should focus on mobile analytics such as active user percentages, session time, and screen time for different functions, Liu says. Usability issues and areas for enhancement can be derived from qualitative methods such as surveys and feedback calls.
“Mobile technology use and its effect on response time and collaborative work pace serve as additional indicators that help to analyze the overall impact,” Liu explains.
But data and sentiment must be balanced to gauge genuine engagement, Laxman says. Response times, use rates, and system up-time give numeric data. But qualitataive metrics must also be considered.
“You are winning if workers voluntarily use and praise the tools. Workers reverting to desktop frustration is a sign the experience needs to be refined,” Laxman says.
Most importantly, mobile tech must transcend the role of an enabler of productivity and instead be recognized as a means to connection, community, and IT team cohesiveness and growth, and a vital mobile technology tool.
