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The New Role of IT: Promoting Employee Collaboration and Productivity

Pre-pandemic, only 16% of IT decision makers would say IT was largely responsible for the workplace. But in the next five years, 45% expect their departments to be largely responsible, according to a new research report, IT in the Evolving Workplace, from Nexthink.

Image removed.

The report highlights that 94% of IT professionals are seeing the roles and responsibilities of their job moving away from simply provisioning IT equipment to focus more on providing solutions which promote employee collaboration and productivity.

90% have received additional training from their organization to support them in their role's evolution since the shift to remote work in the beginning of 2020, and 95% have received access to additional tools or software.

"Hybrid or remote working has cast enterprise IT into the role of supporting digital work experiences and even influencing the side effects of remote work, including isolation, disengagement and lack of energy" said Yassine Zaied, Chief Strategy Officer for Nexthink. "As a result, IT's role is changing from a problem fixer to an architect of the workplace. While this shift was accelerated due to the necessary remote work caused by the pandemic, the data shows us IT has been heading in this direction for years. We're on the cusp of a new era for how enterprises consider digital work and who supports it."

Additional highlights from the report on the shifting roles and responsibilities of IT include:

IT's evolving role

IT's role has been evolving for years — 99% of respondents have seen new tasks come into their role in the past five years, including developing working from home practices and training, supporting employee communication and developing sustainability projects and policies.

More recognition for IT

Despite changes, IT professionals are looking for more recognition in their new roles — 99% report that there are things that they could have or do which would help them excel as an IT professional in a remote/hybrid working world — more than half (57%) would like recognition of their roles and responsibilities, followed by additional tools/software (55%), better leadership/guidance (53%) and additional time for certain tasks (47%).

HR under IT

Traditionally HR areas are coming under the purview of IT. While 63% of IT professionals consider access to effective and appropriate technology to be largely the IT department's responsibility, notable proportions also consider IT to be responsible in other more traditionally HR-focused areas. For example, 29% believe that IT are largely responsible for effective employee collaboration and 27% believe they are largely responsible for employee productivity.

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The New Role of IT: Promoting Employee Collaboration and Productivity

Pre-pandemic, only 16% of IT decision makers would say IT was largely responsible for the workplace. But in the next five years, 45% expect their departments to be largely responsible, according to a new research report, IT in the Evolving Workplace, from Nexthink.

Image removed.

The report highlights that 94% of IT professionals are seeing the roles and responsibilities of their job moving away from simply provisioning IT equipment to focus more on providing solutions which promote employee collaboration and productivity.

90% have received additional training from their organization to support them in their role's evolution since the shift to remote work in the beginning of 2020, and 95% have received access to additional tools or software.

"Hybrid or remote working has cast enterprise IT into the role of supporting digital work experiences and even influencing the side effects of remote work, including isolation, disengagement and lack of energy" said Yassine Zaied, Chief Strategy Officer for Nexthink. "As a result, IT's role is changing from a problem fixer to an architect of the workplace. While this shift was accelerated due to the necessary remote work caused by the pandemic, the data shows us IT has been heading in this direction for years. We're on the cusp of a new era for how enterprises consider digital work and who supports it."

Additional highlights from the report on the shifting roles and responsibilities of IT include:

IT's evolving role

IT's role has been evolving for years — 99% of respondents have seen new tasks come into their role in the past five years, including developing working from home practices and training, supporting employee communication and developing sustainability projects and policies.

More recognition for IT

Despite changes, IT professionals are looking for more recognition in their new roles — 99% report that there are things that they could have or do which would help them excel as an IT professional in a remote/hybrid working world — more than half (57%) would like recognition of their roles and responsibilities, followed by additional tools/software (55%), better leadership/guidance (53%) and additional time for certain tasks (47%).

HR under IT

Traditionally HR areas are coming under the purview of IT. While 63% of IT professionals consider access to effective and appropriate technology to be largely the IT department's responsibility, notable proportions also consider IT to be responsible in other more traditionally HR-focused areas. For example, 29% believe that IT are largely responsible for effective employee collaboration and 27% believe they are largely responsible for employee productivity.

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Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

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The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

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The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

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Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2025 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions explore how generative AI (GenAI) is affecting areas where most would assume only humans can have lasting impact ...

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating across the telecoms industry, with 88% of fixed broadband service providers now investigating or trialing AI automation to enhance their fixed broadband services, according to new research from Incognito Software Systems and Omdia ...

 

AWS is a cloud-based computing platform known for its reliability, scalability, and flexibility. However, as helpful as its comprehensive infrastructure is, disparate elements and numerous siloed components make it difficult for admins to visualize the cloud performance in detail. It requires meticulous monitoring techniques and deep visibility to understand cloud performance and analyze operational efficiency in detail to ensure seamless cloud operations ...

Imagine a future where software, once a complex obstacle, becomes a natural extension of daily workflow — an intuitive, seamless experience that maximizes productivity and efficiency. This future is no longer a distant vision but a reality being crafted by the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence ...

Enterprise data sprawl already challenges companies' ability to protect and back up their data. Much of this information is never fully secured, leaving organizations vulnerable. Now, as GenAI platforms emerge as yet another environment where enterprise data is consumed, transformed, and created, this fragmentation is set to intensify ...

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