NTT has announced “a new management style suitable for a decentralized network society” that will see remote work supported for all 320,000 staff.
While many modern startups have embraced the benefits of enabling remote work for quite some time, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the hands of many of the older and more reluctant enterprises to quickly adapt or die.
Fortunately, the telecoms industry’s advancements enabled the world to largely continue moving even during the strictest lockdowns. Most households in the developed world now have access to robust broadband and 4G coverage; with full-fibre and 5G connectivity also increasing by the day.
Employees that work remotely generally take fewer sick days, are less burnt out, can achieve a healthier work-life balance through eliminating commute times, and studies indicate they are therefore more productive.
An increasing number of businesses are now planning to continue supporting these arrangements for employees who wish, which also helps to protect against scenarios where a vaccine-dodging COVID-19 variant emerges or another pandemic entirely. Japan’s NTT Group is one such business.
In a press release about its transformation to a new management style, NTT explains that companies are requiring to respond to two changes:
- Social and economic environment changes such as digital transformation (DX), increasing importance of economic security, AI/robotics, and merits and demerits of digitalisation.
- Post COVID-19 environment changes such as the acceleration of the decentralisation of the world, coexistence with infection threats, and the social advancement of the diversity of human resources.
NTT has set out ten ways in which it will adapt to these changes:
- Introduce cloud-based/ zero-trust systems
– Develop an IT environment that enables employees to work from anywhere - Promote work-life balance
– Employees’ work will be premised on remote work and they can choose their own workplace
– Transform from a “highly centralised organisation” into an autonomous, decentralised “network-like organisation” - Automation of business processes
– Promote a connected value chain that includes partner companies
– Expand customer reach through digital marketing
– Contribute to the DX of society as a whole - Enhance governance in consideration of conduct risks
– Implement measures against various risks, including maintenance of appropriate relationships with stakeholders, precise management of the life cycles of services and other items, and improve crisis management capabilities - Promote paperless operations
- Re-examine systems to promote business transformation/DX
– Systematizing information security that is appropriate for remote work
– Re-examine the office environment
– Develop core personnel for promoting DX - Active promotion of women, external, and global personnel
– Advancement the promotion of female managers and directors and expansion of various kinds of support and training programs
– Actively recruit external and global personnel and develop global management personnel - Introduce job-based personnel system
– Expand job-based personnel system for all managers
– Promote autonomous career development - Decentralise the organisation (Including head offices and back-offices)
– Decentralise away from major metropolitan areas to regional areas
– Accelerate community-based regional revitalisation - Promote the development of information infrastructure
– Promote regional urban development and the introduction of new social infrastructure development (IOWN introduction plan.etc)
– Promote initiatives for the development of resilient infrastructure and disaster mitigation against increasingly large natural disasters
With this week’s announcement, NTT is setting out to become a shining example of how even large enterprises can become leaders in digital transformation and in the modernisation of their business to adapt to rapidly-changing social, economic, and health environments.
(Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash)
Find out more about Digital Transformation Week North America, taking place on November 9-10 2021, a virtual event and conference exploring advanced DTX strategies for a ‘digital everything’ world.
