In the past six months, Mynd Property Management has doubled in size—in part by hiring, but also through acquisitions that help build our business. It’s an exciting time to be at Mynd—every week brings new people who need to be set up with email and network access, which can also be a bit hectic. To speed onboarding, we use G Suite Enterprise to get our new people working as soon as they walk through the door.

Streamlined onboarding
We started using G Suite when we launched the business because it fit our overall approach to technology—that is, deploying cloud tools that are flexible for our employees and easy for IT to manage. Good thing we picked G Suite, because given the pace of our acquisitions—13 at last count—we have our hands full with combining business systems and keeping people productive. Onboarding is literally 80 percent of our daily work! 

Some people on our team don’t have technical backgrounds, so we are careful to only introduce new software tools once people are prepared to use them. With G Suite, people need very little ramp-up time because it is an intuitive, integrated solution. In one of our in-person training sessions, we showed an accountant how to open up a Microsoft Excel file in Google Sheets, and he started working on it right away, without much help.

We’re a remote-first company, so working in the cloud is second nature to us. About 75 percent of our total workforce are remote full-timers. G Suite tools are optimized for mobile, so they’re especially useful for the 50 full-time property managers who work solely on mobile devices in the field. 

Better meetings, easier file storage
In Mynd’s early days, we used G Suite Basic, but upgraded to G Suite Enterprise after Google Cloud Premier Partner Suitebriar showed us the benefits of using tools like Hangouts Meet and shared drives in Google Drive. They’ve really helped us scale the business, so we can stay productive even in the midst of acquisitions—and of course, onboard people more quickly. 

Many G Suite tools have become things we can’t live without. Our executives got first crack at using Hangouts Meet Hardware, and loved it so much—especially the recording feature—that now all of our conference rooms have it. 

Google Drive got the same love from everyone. It’s all we need for file sharing and storage, which means we don’t have to pay for another storage solution. Drive also helps with onboarding; as soon we assign an employee a Google Account, she or he automatically gets access to the shared drives (in Drive) that they need to do their jobs. 

Customizing the tech stack
As much as we love G Suite, we still like to use some non-G Suite tools. It helps that we can tailor G Suite to fit in our technology stack any way we want. We’d never get that control and customization from other vendors in the productivity space.

For example, we love using Slack for internal chat and messaging, so we turned off Hangouts Chat. We like that we can control these channels, and that G Suite is not an all-or-nothing product. That means we’re not afraid to try out new G Suite features, since we can roll them back if they’re not right for us. 

The result of our day-to-day G Suite use is that we don’t suffer much down time even during acquisitions. We can pull relevant data from users’ old systems and easily automate user creation from start to finish. When we merge with companies that already use G Suite, we can move their data over to the business in less than a week.

When we recently moved over 80 new employees and 50 different web domains to G Suite, it was much less challenging than we expected. Since we don’t plan to slow down on acquisitions, we breathe easier knowing that G Suite keeps everyone working in the middle of so much change.

We’re dedicated to creating products that are helpful for our users, including those in a business setting. G Suite helps companies of all sizes transform how they work by encouraging people to focus on what really matters, whether that be fostering a culture of collaboration like Iron Mountain or reducing IT and infrastructure costs like Nielsen. 

Here’s how Google’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) can help people accomplish more in the workplace. First, Google Docs is packed with more assistive features to help you create high-quality work more quickly. In addition, the Google Assistant has been helping people get things done in their personal lives for the past few years. With remote working becoming the norm these days, Google Assistant has more features to help G Suite users work more efficiently and seamlessly. 

Assistive writing features in Google Docs
AI-powered capabilities within Docs makes it faster and easier for people to create high-quality, error-free content. 

• Write faster. Smart Compose in Google Docs uses Google AI to suggest complete sentences as they are created. Smart Compose has already saved people from typing more than 2 billion characters each week.
• Cut back on grammatical and spelling errors. To build on the intelligence, Docs is using cutting-edge, neural network technology to power grammar suggestions. The neural network approach has proven to help individuals catch even more errors in internal experiments. In addition, we’ve brought spelling autocorrect to Docs. Using the power of Google Search, this intelligent feature constantly learns new words or phrases that become part of the English language from search to inform spelling suggestions in documents, just as it does already in Gmail.
• Receive suggestions that are tailored to your business. Lastly, our machine-learning based spelling suggestions to recognize commonly used words from your business domain to inform recommendations is also a useful feature. For example, if your organization has an internal project name or acronym that’s commonly used, Docs will not only stop underlining such terms, but will also suggest corrections when these terms are misspelled. 

Expanding the power of the Google Assistant for G Suite Businesses
You can accomplish more on the go with the Google Assistant when you’re logged into your G Suite account. We’ve also enabled remote workers with the Asus Hangouts Meet Hardware kit to respond to voice commands in meeting rooms.

• Manage your calendar while on the move. Whether you’re on your commute home or on the go between meetings, the Google Assistant can help you manage scheduling in Google Calendar. You can ask the Assistant to read your calendar, create events, cancel events, or even reschedule events.
• Send quick messages and dial into calls hands-free. Beyond managing your calendar, we know that sometimes you need to send messages and join calls on the go. You can say things like, “Hey Google, join my next meeting” or “Hey Google, send an email to my next meeting”.
• Have a more seamless meeting experience. Google Assistant is available in meeting rooms with Asus Hangouts Meet Hardware kit. Instead of clicking into meetings to join them, people can say voice commands to the Assistant to join a meeting, exit a meeting, or even make a phone call.
• Increase accessibility in meeting rooms. Another goal in bringing the Google Assistant into meeting rooms is to increase accessibility. People can say a voice command, like “Hey, Google, turn on spoken feedback,” to use accessibility features without having to find the button to turn them on. 

Google Workspace recently commissioned Economist Impact to complete a global survey (October 2021)* on the state of hybrid work, including its challenges and opportunities. We already knew that the pandemic had fundamentally changed the world of work, but the survey emphasizes the scale, reach, and longevity of those changes.. 

Over 75% of respondents believe that hybrid/flexible work will be a standard practice within their organizations in the coming three years. Given that 70% of respondents said they never worked remotely before the pandemic, it’s clear that hybrid has become the dominant model for work and that it’s here to stay. 

But it’s also clear, as we’ll see below, that hybrid has some serious gaps that need to be addressed if it’s going to be sustainable and successful in the long term.

Defining hybrid work

As part of our work on the hybrid work survey and a broader project with The Economist Group, we interviewed a group of experts across research, consulting, business, and the advocacy world to arrive at a definition of hybrid work that captures all ways work is changing.

As Brian Kropp, one of the interviewees and vice president at Gartner, puts it: “Hybrid work is not just about different locations, but also different timings and different schedules.”

Harriet Molyneaux, managing director at HSM Advisory, a future-of-work research and advisory group, adds to this notion by describing the time-location work spectrum: “At one end of the spectrum is everyone in the office, nine till five, so both restricted time and location. And then at the other end of the spectrum is anywhere around the world at any time. So no restricted time or location. A hybrid is anything that sits in the middle of that.”

I agree with Brian and Harriet’s views. Flexibility in both location and hours is a core part of our working definition of hybrid work: a spectrum of flexible work arrangements in which an employee’s work location and/or hours are not strictly standardized.

Given this definition and framework, how is hybrid work faring and what lies ahead? 

Individual wellbeing is coming at the cost of organizational connection

Early on in the pandemic, productivity remained steady or even increased for many organizations. But it came at a cost, with levels of burnout spiking as employees juggled caregiving, homeschooling, and other demands in their personal lives with work responsibilities.

Based on the survey data, wellbeing has made an upward shift, no doubt aided by things like students returning to schools in many regions and fewer demands being made of working parents. The majority of respondents said that hybrid work, based on their own experiences, can have a positive impact on the physical, mental, financial, and social wellbeing of employees.

But it appears that individual wellbeing is coming at the cost of organizational connection. The majority of respondents said they feel disconnected from their organization and co-workers (57%), that limited networking opportunities negatively impact career growth (62%), and that limited social interactions with co-workers has had a negative impact on their mental health (54%).

To be sustainable, hybrid work models must address this sense of disconnection in real and tangible ways. And it won’t happen just by increasing the number of virtual meetings. Although 72% of people say that virtual meetings improve inclusion and participation, 68% also say there are too many virtual meetings to begin with. We need new ways for people to connect spontaneously.

Hybrid workers are often using tools built for a bygone desktop era

When asked about the most important conditions needed to achieve the long-term success of hybrid work models, the number one choice globally was “new technologies that allow for time and location flexibility.” 

Naturally, it was gratifying to see this, since Google Workspace is built on a cloud-based platform that empowers collaboration from anywhere, on any device, but the survey answer also highlights how much organizations have had to scramble to meet the demands of the pandemic. Some had to take legacy, office-centric systems and make them work for a distributed workforce overnight, often leveraging less-than-ideal technologies like VPNs that introduce digital friction.

As a result, top technology concerns of respondents include:

• unreliable internet access (if only all our WiFi connections were hybrid-ready!)
• reliance on slow or outdated tools
• accessing and maintaining files in multiple places
• relying on too many applications in order to get work done

Hybrid work, it seems to me, doesn’t need more applications and collaboration surfaces. It needs deeper, more meaningful connections in the tools and surfaces we already have. 

As organizations assess their tech stacks, they should consider whether they can shape the behaviors they want from hybrid employees (e.g., real-time collaboration, ease of information sharing) with the tools they have in place. Or are the limits of the technology determining hybrid employee behavior?

The management and culture gap

In the same way that tools have often been built for a shared physical workspace, organizational culture seems to lag behind the hybrid moment. The majority of respondents said that a lack of face-to-face supervision creates a sense of distrust among managers and employees, and that they feel stressed by increased monitoring associated with flexible work. And more than 62% said that limited networking opportunities with senior employees and co-workers has a negative impact on career growth.

Strikingly, more than 70% of respondents indicated that the culture of trust between managers and employees needed improvement. Training and management best practices (60% of people want more of both) might help fill some of the gaps, but a manager can’t build trust with their hybrid teams by going through a training program. 

The role of manager must itself evolve to meet the demands of a hybrid model. How can we empower managers to be the bridge between the “office of one” and the “office of many”? And as I discussed previously on Forbes, driving towards impact rather than output is a more sustainable metric for team engagement and productivity. It also dispenses with monitoring as a core part of a manager’s role, freeing them up to be a coach-and-connector.

How Google Workspace can help bridge the hybrid work gaps

No one has all the answers for how to make hybrid work successful, and I suspect we will see iterations of the model into 2022 and beyond as organizations—including Google—experiment with the right mix of location, culture, processes, and tools. 

On the technology front, Google Workspace is uniquely positioned to bridge many of the emerging hybrid work gaps. Over the last year, we’ve delivered a set of innovations that are designed to deepen collaboration experiences while strengthening social connections within and across teams. 

For example, we launched smart canvas to bring new collaboration capabilities to the places where people are already working together, helping to keep them connected, rather than having them switch tabs or open new apps. And we delivered Spaces as a central place for collaboration, where teams can share ideas, work on documents together, and manage tasks from a single place. Because all their work is preserved for future reference, team members can easily jump in and contribute at a time that works best for them, seeing a full history of the conversations, context, and content along the way. Spaces helps people maintain individual wellbeing while preserving the health of a group project.

In Google Meet, we’ve introduced real-time captions in multiple languages (in preview now), the ability for people to customize their video tiles, including being able to turn off their own to help with meeting fatigue, and we’ve implemented automatic light adjustments and noise cancellation. These changes help ensure that everyone can be seen and heard.

Meanwhile, features like hand-raise, Q&A, and polls have helped make meetings more inclusive and companion mode (in preview) can bring these to life in hybrid settings, to help ensure that there’s one cohesive conversation between the people in the office and their colleagues working somewhere else. We view companion mode as a bridge between the office and “somewhere else.”

On the personal wellbeing front, we launched Focus Time, which lets people block out their calendars for uninterrupted focus work, and Time Insights in Google Calendar, where employees can look at how they’re spending their time and adjust as needed.

As hybrid work continues to evolve, Google Workspace is committed to supporting wellbeing and seamless collaboration with tools that can remove digital friction and help people maintain connections—to each other and the organizations they work for.

^{*Survey details: The survey, completed in October 2021, polled a total of 1,244 employees and managers in four regions (North America, Europe, APAC, and Latin America), from more than 15 industries, in every age group, and from both small and large organizations. The focus was on knowledge workers, though it’s important to note that some of those people have been working on the frontlines; 20% of respondents indicated they haven’t worked remotely at all during the pandemic. This includes people in hospitality, retail, transportation and logistics, and healthcare.}

We are excited to announce that Google has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Analytics, Q2 2021 report. Thank you to our strong community of customers and partners for working with us to deliver a customer focused product. We believe Forrester’s recognition is an acknowledgement of our leadership across an integrated set of capabilities that rely on data to drive transformation. We were also honored to be named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Data Warehouse, Q1 2021. 

Forrester gave Dataflow a score of 5 out of 5 across 12 different criteria and according to the report: “Google Cloud Dataflow has strengths in data sequencing, advanced analytics, performance, and high-availability. Google Dataflow’s sweet spot is for enterprises that have a preponderance of real-time data generated on Google Cloud Platform or wish to simplify all data processing by using a single platform that unifies both streaming and batch jobs.” 

Harnessing the power of real-time data

The speed with which businesses are able to respond to change is the difference between those that successfully navigate the future and those that get left behind. In order to accelerate their digital transformation, reimagine their business and leverage the power of real-time data,  today’s data leaders require a streaming analytics platform that provides both depth and breadth.  

Cloud Pub/Sub and Cloud Dataflow, based on more than a decade of experience in internet scale systems for Google’s own needs, provide customers with a reliable, scalable, performant platform. In addition, we’ve designed these products for ease of use to make streaming analytics accessible to more users, which is why customers such as Sky and others from across all industries use Dataflow to run streaming analytics workloads.

5 out of 5 across key streaming analytics criteria

While Forrester gave Dataflow a score of 5 out of 5 in 12 criteria, the product achieved the highest possible scores in areas that are top of mind for our customers.

We continue to be focused on solving problems that matter to you. For example, just in the last month we announced Dataflow Prime and  Auto Sharding for BigQuery – two new auto tuning capabilities that bring efficiency and simplicity to your streaming pipelines. 

Dataflow achieves highest score possible in strategy 

With Google, organizations gain an industry leading product and a partner that has the vision and strategy to help you tackle new business challenges and provide delightful experiences to your customers.

In summary, we are honored to be a Leader in The Forrester Wave™, Streaming Analytics, and look forward to continuing to innovate and partner with you on your digital transformation journey. 

Download the full report: The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Analytics, Q2 2021 and check out these smart analytics reference patterns. To learn more about Dataflow, visit our website and get to know the product by taking an interactive tutorial. You can also watch recordings from the Data Cloud Summit event (May 2021), where we provided an in-depth view of new product innovations in Dataflow and other data analytics products.

Virtual meetings, remote collaboration, flexible hours: it’s becoming clear that these new ways of working are here to stay. 

Business leaders, since the onset of COVID-19, have seen workplace transformation go from an almost theoretical long-term goal to an urgent priority. Employers and employees want more flexible ways of working, and delivering on this requires the right technology. 

But flexibility isn’t the only thing that employees want. Remote working has significantly increased the demands we’re getting from many directions—in both our professional and our personal lives. Employees feel overloaded with too much information and too many tasks across too many different tools. Instead of learning another tool, we need the tools we already use to be even more helpful, and work together, in an integrated, intuitive way. 

Today’s teams need to re-imagine not only how they communicate and collaborate with each other remotely, but also how they continue to serve their own customers and support the communities they belong to. From doctors consulting with patients, to financial institutions providing critical advice to customers, to teachers delivering distant learning, to car dealerships creating virtual showrooms—it’s clear that these new ways of working are here to stay.

The future of work is here. COVID-19 has accelerated a shift in how organizations like yours get work done. Take this 2-minute assessment below to see where you’re at on the journey to the future of work, and get a free guide to help you take the next step.