 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Workplace Next, made possible by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Thanks very much. Welcome back to theCUBE 365's coverage of Workplace Next HPE. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. There was some great discussion there in the past panel and we now are coming to you for some reaction. We have a panel of three people. Harold Sinnet in Miami, he is the prominent workplace futurist and influencer. Thanks so much for joining us, Harold. My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. We have Herbert Loninger. He is a digital workplace expert and currently CIO of University of Salzburg. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you very much for the invitation. And last but not least, Chip McCullough. He is the Executive Director of Partner Ecosystems and Alain Fitzpatten, and he is coming to us from Tampa, Florida. Thank you, Rebecca. Great to be here. Great. Well, I'm really looking forward to this. We're talking today about the future of work and COVID, the pandemic has certainly transformed so much about the way we live and the way we work. It has changed the way we communicate, the way we collaborate, the way we accomplish what we want to accomplish. I want to start with you, Harold. Can you give us some broad brush thoughts about how this pandemic has changed the future of work? Well, this is quite interesting because we were talking about the future of work as something that was going to come in the future, but the future was very, very far away from where we are right now. Now, suddenly we brought the future of work to our current reality. COVID transformed or accelerated the digital transformation that was already happening. So digital transformation was something that we were pushing somehow or influencing a lot because it's a need because everything is coming digital. All our lives are transformed because of the digital implementation of new technologies in all areas. But for companies, what was quite interesting is the fact that they were looking for or thinking about when to implement or starting implementing new systems in terms of technology and suddenly the decision was where now we are in this emerging mode that the COVID, that the pandemic created in our urbanizations. And this prompted and pushed a lot of this decision that we were thinking maybe in the future to start doing to put it right now. But this also brought a lot of issues in terms of how we deal with customers because business continuity is our priority. How we deal with employees, how we make sure that employees, customers and we are in the management, the senior leaders are all connected and work together to provide our product and services to our customers. So you're talking about COVID as really a forcing mechanism that has really accelerated the digital transformation at so many companies in the US and also around the world. We heard from the previous panel that there was this yes, we can attitude, this idea that we can make this happen things that were ordinarily maybe too challenging or something that we push a little bit further down the road. Do you think that that is, how pervasive is that attitude? And is that yes we can and yes we have to. Absolutely, absolutely. You know here in Miami in Florida we are used to have the hurricane. When we have a hurricane is something that everybody gets in alarm mode, emergency mode and everybody starts running. But we think or we work on business continuity implementing the protocol set policies but at the same time we think, okay, this will be for a couple of weeks no more than that. Now, when we have those situations, we have a really see this positive attitude. Everybody wants to work together. Everybody wants to push to make things happen. Everybody works in a very collaborative mode. Everybody really wants to team and bring ideas and bring the energy that is necessary so we can make it happen. So I would say that now that is something that the pandemic brought us to a new situation where we don't know how long this will take. This will take maybe a couple of months more, maybe a year, maybe more than that. We still don't know, but what we really know is that digital transformation and the future of work that we were thinking was going to be in the wrong way now is something that we are not going back with this. Chip, I want to bring you in here. We're hearing that the future of work is now and the shift toward the new normal. I want to hear you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of increased agility and adaptability and flexibility. How is that playing out particularly with regard to technology? Yeah, I think the yes we can attitude, we see that all over the place and many instances it's like heroic efforts and we heard that from the panel, right? Literally heroic efforts happening and people are doing that. It reminds me of an example with the UK national health system where we rolled out 1.2 million teams, Microsoft teams users in seven days. I mean, those are the kinds of things we're seeing all over the place. And now that yes we can approach is kind of sinking in and I think Harold was kind of talking about that, right? It's sinking into how we're looking at technology every day. We're seeing things like an acceleration of the move to cloud. For example, a substantial acceleration to the move to cloud, a substantial acceleration to be more agile. And we're just seeing that kind of in all of our work now and that's the focus for organizations. They want to know now, how do we capture this amazing innovation that happened as a result of this event and take it forward in their organizations going forward? And so they're thinking about how they captured this, but Herbert at this time of tremendous uncertainty and at a time when the economic recovery, the global economic recovery is stop and start, how are you thinking about prioritizing? What kinds of criteria are you using and how are you evaluating what needs to happen? I think that's very simple and I use my standard procedure here. I think it must be possible for the users and therefore for the companies to work and be productive. I think the most important thing, technology should be provided the best possible support here for example, if a state of the art digital workplace. But in these uncertain times, we have some new demands at the moment. That means we have new priorities. For example, contacting team workshops online. Normally we have conducted such events in special conference rooms or in a hotel. For the virtual world, for example, we now have the requirement to create all of our workshops and also the documentation of it, virtual instead of using for example, physical pinport to group topics and so on. So we saw here a change at larger events too. We need the factional for breakout rooms and so on. And honestly at the moment, big events in the virtual world are not still the same like in a physical world. For example, big conferences, technology conferences and so on. No, absolutely. And what you're describing is this hybrid world in which some people are going into offices and others of us are not. And we are doing what we need to do in digital formats. I wanna ask you, Chip, about this hybrid workplace. This appears to be this construct that we're seeing more and more in the marketplace. We heard Jen Brent of HPE talking about this in the previous panel. How do you see this playing out in the next 12 to 24 months and beyond even in our pandemic and post-pandemic lives? And what do you see as the primary advantages and drawbacks of having this hybrid workforce? Well, I think it's very interesting, right? And I think at Accenture, we were very lucky because we are 500,000 employees that have been fully kind of hybrid work or remote enabled even going into the pandemic and many other companies and organizations did not have that in place, right? The key to me is you have this protective environment we'll call the office, right? Where everybody went into work too. They had their technology there. The security was in place around that office and everything was kind of focused on that office. And all of a sudden that office, it didn't disappear but it became distributed. And the key behind it, we are a big user of Aruba technologies within Accenture. And it became very important in my view to be able to take a lot of the concepts that you brought into the office and distributed it out. So we have offerings where we're using technologies such as Aruba's remote access points and virtual desktop technologies, right? That enable us to take all the rules and capability and functionality and security that you had in that nice controlled office environment and roll it out to the workers wherever they may be sitting now, whether it be at home, whether it be sitting on the road someplace, traveling, whatever. And that's really important. And I did see a couple of instances with organizations where they had security incidents because of the way they rolled out that office of the future. So it's really important as we go forward that not only do we look at the enablement but we also make sure we're securing that to our principles and standards going forward. So the principles and standards, I wanna talk to you a little bit about that, Harold. There are the security elements that we just heard about there's also the culture, the workplace culture, the mission, the values of the organization. When employees are not co-located, when we are talking about distributed teams, how do you make sure that those values are consistent throughout the organization and that employees do feel that they are part of something bigger even if they're not in the cubicle next door or just in the hallway? That is a great question because here what happens now is that we still need to find a balance in the way we work. Maybe some company says, oh, we need to fill the day with video conferences so we can see each other. So we can make sure what we're doing or we are connected. But also we need to get some balance because we need to make sure that we have time to do the job. I mean, everybody needs to do their job but also need to communicate to each other and communication in a whole group in several video conferences in the day. Maybe it's not enough or it's effective for that communication. So we need to find the right balance because we have a lot of tools, a lot of technology that can help us and are helping us in this moment to make sure that we are sharing our values. Values, that common set of values that makes or defines on how an organization needs to be present in every interaction that we have with our employees. And we need to also make sure that we are taking care of the needs of the employees because when we see from an employee standpoint what is going on, we need to understand the context that we are working today. Instead of working at the office, we're working from home. At home, also we have our partners, wives, children also, that are in the same place we are also connected with work or with distance learning. So there is a new environment, a home environment that from a company perspective also needs to be taken into consideration. Now, how we share our values, well, it's a time, something that we need to understand also or that we all always try to understand is that every crisis brings an opportunity to gather. So we should see this also as an opportunity to refocus our strategies and culture not to emerge stronger and to put everybody with the yes attitude with the really desire to make things happen every day in this same, in this same synchrony. But how we do that also is an opportunity for delivery, training delivery is an opportunity to make sure that we identify those skills that are needed for the future of work in the digital side because we have a lot of digital training that is needed and those skills that are not exactly a tech but they are needed also from the human perspective to make sure that we are creating a strong culture that even working in a hybrid or remote work we can be strong enough in the market. So I wanna let everyone here have a last word in picking up on that last point that this is an exceedingly complex time for everyone unprecedented, there's so much uncertainty. What is your best advice for leaders as they navigate their employees through this hybrid remote work environment? I wanna start with you, Herbert. From my opinion, I think communication is very important. So communicate with your team and your employees much more than in the past and be clear in your statements and in your answers. I think that's very important for the team. Chip, best advice. So it feels like we've jumped maybe two years ahead in innovation and I think from an organization standpoint accept that, embrace it, capture it but then also at the same time make sure you're applying your principles of security and those pieces to it. So do it in the right way but embrace the change that's happened. Harold, last best advice for managers during this time? Communication absolutely is essential. Now, let's look for no way of communicating that it's not only sending emails it's not only sending text messages we need to find ways to connect to each other in this remote working environment and maybe coming again to pick up the phone and have a chat, a conversation with our employees that are working remotely but doing that with kind of frequently I would say that would be very effective to improve the communication and to create this environment where everybody feels part of an organization. Everyone feels part of the team. Well, thank you so much, all of you to Harold, Herbert and Chip I really appreciate a great conversation here. My pleasure. My pleasure very much. Stay tuned for more of the Cube 365's coverage of HPE Workplace Next.