The “Great Resignation” is in full swing, but departing staff aren’t simply removing themselves from the workforce. Instead, they’re finding new jobs that better meet their needs. In the wake of the pandemic, workers are looking for employers willing to connect, communicate and collaborate with them on a daily basis. In other words, they want to be engaged.
Technology plays a critical role in this engagement. With many staff members still working from home, and with hybrid work here to stay, technology doesn’t just provide a way to get work done — it directly affects the satisfaction of staff. Recent data from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services backs up this assertion: 91 percent of employees have higher expectations for technology to be easy to use than they did a decade ago, and 82 percent say tech performance has a significant effect on their happiness at work.
“We’ve almost reached two full years of remote work,” says Adam Howes, worldwide director of ThinkPad product management at Lenovo, “and the workplace has gone through multiple phases of change.”
DISCOVER: Learn more about engaging your employees with Lenovo.
Building a Better Community in the Workplace
Howes said overall employee wellness is key to worker retention, and that includes their experiences using workplace technology.
“The biggest tech pain points right now are collaboration and productivity,” he says. “How do we collaborate effectively? How do we build community?” Howes notes that in some cases, staff might not meet their coworkers in person for months or even years. As a result, robust collaboration to drive community building is critical.
He also highlights challenges with the evolving security landscape. “Security is a huge problem, and it’s on everyone’s mind, especially when things are outside your firewall and network.”
Thinking Outside the Box for Collaboration
The Lenovo ThinkPad line makes it possible for employers to deliver on employee expectations around technology engagement.
“We just entered our 30th year,” Howes says. “It’s a significant milestone, but it’s less about looking back than forward. We just launched our 10th generation of the X1 Carbon family, and at the Consumer Electronics Show, we launched the new Z Series. While Lenovo is the leader in enterprise business laptop market share, we want to reach customers who haven’t considered a ThinkPad in the past.”
Lenovo’s newest line of ThinkPads help deliver employee engagement in four key areas:
- “From a design standpoint, we’re offering more choices in colors and materials,” Howes says. “This includes sustainable choices, such as vegan leather top covers and rapidly compostable bamboo packaging, along with the smallest screen bezel size and largest trackpad we’ve ever offered.”
- ThinkPad devices now offer both Intel and AMD chipsets, depending on buyer preference. Lenovo is also improving performance with its “air intake” keyboard, which brings in additional air to cool the device and boost processing capabilities.
- Both the X1 and Z1 lines feature a dedicated communications bar to streamline collaboration that includes full-HD cameras and improved post-processing along with Dolby voice technology capable of isolating conversation and blocking extraneous noise when staff are on calls.
- “We have ThinkShield under the hood for secure BIOS,” Howes says, “and ThinkPads also include BIOS self-healing.”
For Howes, the future of enterprise hardware is dynamic. “People are rethinking and trying to reimagine what work means,” he says. Lenovo ThinkPads can help make this possible.
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