One-Minute Webinar: How Okta Is Embracing Dynamic Work

Office spaces have always been designed to encourage productivity—and yet, no single desk arrangement has stood the test of time. Back in the 1950s, for example, the assembly lines at Ford inspired organizations to experiment with open floor plans. When that proved ineffective for white-collar workers, cubicles took hold in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. But, as high tech startups began to emerge in the 2000s, companies began to re-embrace open-concept offices to promote more collaborative work and accommodate smaller budgets.

And now, perhaps in a more drastic way, offices are changing once again. Today’s employees value being able to work whenever and wherever they want, and are questioning whether traditional office spaces are needed at all. We’ve been asking the same thing at Okta, and in 2019, decided to move toward what we call Dynamic Work—a model that empowers workforces with flexibility and choice. 

In this fourth installment of our “Okta-on-Okta Remote Work” webinar series, we discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic—and other macroeconomic trends—has accelerated our shift to Dynamic Work. We break down the model’s core principles, and suggest what leaders can do to embrace it at their own organizations.

The trends driving Dynamic Work

COVID-19 has forced businesses of all sizes to change how they view the office, with many deciding to make remote or distributed work a permanent shift. But the global pandemic isn’t the only reason that we’ve adopted this new, more flexible model. 

Several macroeconomic trends have influenced this change:

• Urban unaffordability: The cost of living in major cities is growing faster than salaries. Housing is increasingly unaffordable and a lack of public transport infrastructure can make commuting expensive, busy, and stressful. 
• Generational shifts: With Millennials projected to comprise 50% of the workforce by 2025 and Gen Z entering the workforce for the first time, businesses need to consider a more flexible approach to meet the expectations of these generations.
• Technology trends: Cloud-based software and infrastructure gives organizations the opportunity to work with employees, customers, contractors, and partners from anywhere.

Dynamic Work takes all of these factors into account, and enables employees to be their most productive and successful selves—no matter where they’re located. And we’re already seeing positive results: a recent survey revealed that 81% of Okta employees feel as or more productive working remotely, while 80% want more WFH flexibility than they had prior to COVID-19.

The three pillars of Dynamic Work

Employees no longer want to sit at a desk for eight hours a day, every day. Instead, they expect the modern office to be a place where individuality, collaboration, recreation, and optionality are prioritized.

Organizations can accommodate this by embracing the three pillars of Dynamic Work:

• Redesigning and rethinking the traditional workspace: Dynamic Work strives to create environments that are as engaging and productive as the people that work within them. Think collaborative hubs instead of conference rooms.
• Getting technology infrastructure right: The Dynamic Work model takes full advantage of cloud technology, which enables employees, contractors, and partners to collaborate in a secure and efficient manner. 
• Cultivating a great company culture: Dynamic Work gives organizations a unique opportunity to expand their talent pool and provide employees with custom benefits plans that work for each individual.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust everyone into unfamiliar territory. Businesses that adapt to the current situation and practice Dynamic Work will reap the benefits. By providing a culture of choice, offering flexible benefits, and expanding the talent pool, organizations get an engaged workforce that is more productive and delivers better results.

Supporting Dynamic Work with cloud technology

In the first webinar of this series, we talked about how Okta’s cloud-first approach helped us adjust to working from home at the start of the pandemic—a strategy that was crucial in our shift towards Dynamic Work.

With more distributed teams, businesses need to invest in best-of-breed cloud tools that enable employees to effectively and securely work from anywhere. That means moving away from single suites of applications, and enabling employees to use the best apps from the best vendors. This is critical to improving remote onboarding and collaboration, but also ensures that businesses can keep on top of evolving security threats, innovate faster, and deploy new solutions with greater ease.

Dynamic Work also requires that businesses abandon the concept of a traditional security perimeter and adopt a Zero Trust model—one where identity is confirmed using the context of a users’ device, location, and network. Along with authentication and authorization processes, this grants safe and efficient access to corporate apps and resources regardless of whether the user is signing in from their work laptop, their home PC, or their smartphone

Cloud technology is crucial to providing employees with the flexibility they’re looking for, enabling them to work how and where they want, and keeping businesses secure.

For more information about our approach to Dynamic Work—and how you can embrace the core concepts of this model—check out the following resources:

• The Ultimate Guide for Dynamic Work
• The Future of Work is Dynamic
• The Future of Work is Dynamic: Going Beyond Distributed and Remote Work (Blog post)
• How the World’s Largest Organizations Should Respond to the Paradigm Shift of Remote Work (Blog post)
• How Okta's IT and Workplace Teams are Getting Ready for Dynamic Work (Webinar)