As the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic spreads throughout the Middle East and the world, health and safety is the top priority for countries.
At the same time, countries need to ensure that their economies, and public and private sector organizations are maintaining business continuity.
One of the biggest shifts has been organizations rapidly moving to remote working – where primarily white-collar organizations are purchasing laptops, providing cloud access for email, and setting up VPNs to securely access files from a server.
In fact, a recent Gulf Talent survey shows that more than one-third (37 percent) of UAE firms plan to shift to remote work due to coronavirus. Since that survey, with the Dubai government recently ordering 80 percent of private sector workers going remote, that number has surely increased and is likely to continue to increase.
Mobile workforces are not new — many of our customers already have some remote working capabilities. Organizations need to work with channel partners to revisit short-term and long-term remote working policies and solutions. We’re seeing strong interest in Dell Technologies’ secure mobile workforce solutions, RSA SecurID identity and access management suite, and VMware’s virtual desktop infrastructure.
In many places around the world, including in the UAE, organizations offer flexible workforces where employees can access data and applications across a wide range of mobile devices. In the near future, we’re expecting the UAE to see a paradigm shift from desktop workers to mobile workforces.
With Millennials and Generation Z workers dominating the workforce of the future, we’re expecting mobile workforces to become even more widespread. Mobile workforces, from youth to families, can lead to happier and more engaged employees, who in turn can deliver higher productivity and return on investment.
