After more than a year of remote work and video meetings, most people are ready to bid farewell to the days of collaborating with colleagues through their computer screens. Not so fast. The approaching end to the pandemic doesn’t mean an end to telecommunication as the primary form of workforce collaboration. According to a recent study: While some companies have embraced remote work as the new normal, most businesses are preparing for a hybrid workplace.

Every IT environment is different. Some depend heavily on an efficient reactive support team, others need to manage a totally decentralized workforce, while some focus their resources on an infallible security and compliance team. Whatever your IT ecosystem looks like, you need to make sure you are taking into account the things that matter most to you, your IT department and your business at large.

Although IT teams are called upon to deliver a lot these days, I doubt many are being asked to solve the type of post-2020 (read: weird) hybrid work scenarios depicted below. IT support tends to stick to its ‘bread and butter,’ they focus on things like network connectivity, application performance, cybersecurity, or onboarding for new hires—to name just a few.

After more than a year spent working from home, plenty of employees are actually excited to return to the office and see their colleagues face-to-face. But that excitement will quickly fade when they realize they have no place to sit. While some businesses will be staying fully-remote after the pandemic, others are preparing for a new era of hybrid work, where staff will split time between home and the office.

Employee experience is one of the fastest growing IT markets today, and adoption of EX solutions is exploding. Every organization is competing on the strength of its workforce, which brings new urgency to questions like: These questions are at the heart of the employee experience market. But the market itself can be confusing. What is employee experience? What is an EX solution? There’s no standard definition and the term is often used in very different ways.

What does a productive digital workplace look like? For many companies, that question isn’t easy to answer. Even before 2020, enterprise business leaders have been exploring the many benefits of bolstering their digital workplaces with smart technologies and IT practices. That last figure is particularly revealing: almost all businesses are aware of the importance of digital workplaces, but less than half are taking steps to create an effective one.

First impressions matter. The first day of a new job can be daunting, especially in a post-2020 world. Back in 2019, you might have asked yourself questions like: is this office going to be open-concept or a bunch of cubicles? Will I get to sit near a window with some natural light or are they going to stick me next to the bathroom? Now new hires ponder questions like: what will my digital work environment look like? Will IT send me a new laptop, camera, and speakers?

Have you ever seen one of those old war movies where some grizzled veteran is whispered to have the fabled ‘1,000-yard stare’? Well, you need to keep an eye for it among IT teams too. IT Support Fatigue was already a very real problem before the pandemic, and has only become more severe in the months since. It’s an issue we explored in the Nexthink Pulse Report.

Fair warning, I tried to avoid using the obligatory good news, bad news opener for this article, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s just that we sort of are living in the age of good news, bad news. Especially when it comes to IT support and remote work. So here it goes. First, the good news: If you work in IT support, your colleagues need your expertise now more than ever before.

Let’s face it: when it comes to managing a work-from-home setup, IT has a lot of problems they don’t know how to solve. It’s not for lack of effort – there just don’t seem to be many practical solutions out there that can alleviate their new remote work-induced headaches. It was tough enough getting everyone up and running in home offices. Now, IT is all but drowning in tickets (a majority of tech leaders have reported ticketing increases up to 50%).