Aaron Foster, Chief Technology Officer at TelcoSwitch, said that new tech rollouts are not based on job type or seniority, but take a more holistic approach to employees and the broader business.

With many workers now combining a return to the office with continued home working, this hybrid first approach is also being reflected in how firms roll out new technologies for their employees.

Foster said that the makeshift nature of home working when it was first implemented last year has given way to a more permanent evolution in working culture. Instead of focusing purely on job role or seniority, organisations are now approaching the management of employees – and the technology that enables them to do their jobs – in a much more fluid manner.

Foster said: “As a level of confidence in businesses and the economy returns, we see IT teams start to embrace the hybrid working reality in terms of technical rollouts. When working on such projects, it’s now more about whether any employee could be anywhere on any given day, rather than introducing new tech based on the position they hold within the company, or whether they’re permanently based in the office.”

He said that this was sensible as it simplifies how IT departments manage blanket rollouts for technical solutions.

Companies are now much more aware of how a hybrid approach works means that IT departments are putting the medium- and long-term plans in place to ensure the technology deployed effectively meets demand.

“IT security and governance have generally been very well managed throughout the upheaval of the last year, so we’re hoping to see this continue”, Foster said.

“From a technology stack perspective, SaaS is very much at the top of the shopping list for hybrid specifications. This is due to many attributes that make it ideally suited to the task, including its low-to-zero capex requirement, per-seat licensing models, rapid deployment, scalability, low maintenance, self-sustaining or vendor-managed upgrade policies, and little to no downtime.”

Foster believes a few key areas for IT departments to keep an eye on as they develop their hybrid approaches further. One of these is interoperability with different applications across the organisation.

He added: "Interoperability is a vital consideration where companies are simultaneously deploying several SaaS solutions throughout the business. CRM systems are a key example of where this needs to be achieved, given the close links these platforms have between employee and customer. This need for a seamless integration is set to grow further as hybrid working strategies become more established, so it’s key that employees can easily access all the office systems they need from wherever they’re based.”