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%).

Over the past year, the pandemic has created a number of new IT challenges, spurred on by the sudden shift to remote work. On the bright side: in the wake of these developments, companies across the globe have taken huge leaps in terms of their IT strategies. One such company is Paddy Power Betfair. When the Irish betting company Paddy Power merged with Betfair in 2016, they created one of the most powerful and unique brands in the world of online gambling.

Early this month, Microsoft will host the second part of its Ignite conference aimed at IT professionals and developers. The livestreamed event, which begins on March 2, will feature a number of exciting trends in technology innovation, but the industry has its sights on one element in particular: a presentation on mixed reality.

Even when businesses are functioning as usual, mergers and acquisitions are intense and demanding transitions for companies to pull off. From the constant communication required in the preparation phase, to the technical demands of integrating two teams, a merger or acquisition forces companies to exhaust resources in order to make the transition a smooth success. Then the pandemic hit.