In 2022 and beyond, hybrid work is becoming more and more the norm. During the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses struggled to transition from in-office employees to remote staff. While there are drawbacks to a remote team, employees found it nice to be able to work at least partially from home, avoiding the stress of long commutes. Still, working in person has its benefits, including the ability to connect better with other team members and collaborate more effectively.

The concept — and deployment — of digital transformation strategies across industries has taken the modern workplace by storm. With high-priority tech initiatives on every boardroom table, more companies than ever are looking for competent IT talent that can help them transform the way they do business. The problem, however, is that 69% of leaders at the forefront of digital change can’t hire the talent they need, keeping them from staying abreast of technology.

For retail businesses, leveraging an ecommerce presence is an important part of a smart, pandemic-resistant business strategy. With more consumers wanting low or no-contact shopping options, the market for ecommerce is skyrocketing, pushing the global market share of ecommerce to 17% in 2020 alone.

As businesses begin to recover from setbacks and disruptions that occurred during the coronavirus pandemic, many office managers and business owners are turning their attention to cultivating bottom-line health and cost-savings. One way to do this is to right-size your office technology, meaning to find the sweet spot that occurs when you have the right office equipment for the job at hand — and the number of staff served by that technology.

Manufacturers are in the spotlight for 2021, but not for particularly beneficial reasons. According to the recent X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, the manufacturing industry has become the second most targeted industry when it comes to cyberattacks.

As more companies get back to business as usual, business as usual is changing. Now, a remote work environment and flexible working hours are standard offerings in the job market — and ones that make your company more desirable in the eyes of today’s talent.

The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc with physician practices and healthcare in 2020, where many providers saw stunning declines in productivity and associated revenues. In general, physician productivity fell by over 8%, although this varied among specialties. Factors that contribute to limited productivity include providers being burdened with non-productive tasks such as searching for information, inefficiencies in patient flow, and others. In addition to lowered productivity, staff burnout and job dissatisfaction rose, causing up to 30% of healthcare workers to consider leaving their jobs.

As more businesses transition to a more digital operational environment, the need to protect data is escalating. And, while over half of small businesses claim it would take them three months to recover from a disaster, over 75% of them don’t have a disaster plan in place. And that’s unfortunate since downtime can cost companies up to $300,000 per hour.

As sweeping changes brought about by the coronavirus pandemic continue to impact the legal industry, more law firms are looking to grow their revenue and provide exceptional service through the deployment of technology. In the legal world, digital transformation is more about ensuring a high level of compliance, performance, and customer satisfaction than just automating processes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way businesses around the world operate. No industry has been immune to these massive changes in the way people work and interact with the professionals they trust. Face-to-face meetings have been replaced by video chats, for example. Even as the world begins to open back up, many of the changes that have taken place over the past year are likely here to stay.