Technology companies face many challenges related to attracting and retaining talented employees.

On the one hand, highly sought-after skilled workers are increasingly expecting to be able to work either at home or as part of a hybrid arrangement while still receiving office-like support from their employers. 

At the same time, many of these employees also expect their employers to be environmentally conscious, with younger people, in particular, saying they would be willing to earn less if they could work at a sustainable company.

That’s why providing support in a hybrid workplace — alongside a cultural alignment on eco-conscious values — is key for organisations looking to remain competitive in the year ahead.

Prioritising the employee experience — as well as a focus on environmental, social, and governance matters — benefits both employer and employee. Research suggests that companies that embrace sustainability attract better talent and have longer employee retention leading to increased productivity and business performance.

Companies can reduce their environmental impact — and provide remote work technology enabling employees to efficiently do their jobs — by increasing visibility into their environments through observability.

Reduce the environmental impact of data centres with observability

Databases — whether they’re hosted on-premises or in the cloud — play a fundamental role in an organisation’s day-to-day IT operations. They help ensure the high-performing and highly available networks, applications, and environments needed for employees to do their jobs and for customers to enjoy a company’s products.

Unfortunately for planet Earth, global emissions from data centres supporting these databases range from 2.5% to 3.7% of all global greenhouse gases. To put this in perspective, commercial flights account for about 2.4%. 

One of the reasons these databases become such energy hogs is that many are still running underutilised or unused legacy applications or systems that are inherently energy inefficient.

On the other hand, modern observability solutions provide database administrators with single-pane-of-glass visibility no matter the company’s infrastructure, enabling them to easily map the performance of applications and systems.

It is the database performance analysis and tuning capabilities — and their ability to identify and eliminate redundant or underused applications and systems — that can help reduce computing power and energy consumption.

What’s more, these tools can also enable companies to reduce physical waste by eliminating unnecessary data centre hardware. 

By leveraging observability, some estimates suggest companies can experience a 10% energy reduction, an attractive statistic for environmentally conscious employees that also comes with significant cost savings.

Observability improves digital experiences for distributed and remote employees

In the post-pandemic world, being able to offer flexible working is a top priority. Hybrid workplaces are typical of organisations hoping to attract and retain skilled employees. 

According to recent research, however, managing the infrastructure needed to support a hybrid and remote workforce is becoming increasingly more difficult. Even handling an IT support desk ticket has become an unnecessarily difficult and frustrating experience.

Part of the problem is that employees working remotely must rely on infrastructure outside of the control of the IT support desk. This includes issues such as commercial internet access and the widespread take-up of various remote work tools, software, and custom applications. 

Modern, flexible observability solutions provide IT staff with comprehensive visibility into these hybrid workplaces to identify application and tool outages and performance bottlenecks. What’s more, the artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities powering these solutions help fix and prevent future problems, ensuring employees have access to the resources they need to do their jobs.

By combining these observability functions with IT service management services, organisations can help ensure employees have access to the same quality of service they would receive in the office, eliminating staff frustration and the need for employees to contact peers or bypass their IT service desk for support. 

The stakes for providing workplace flexibility — while delivering exceptional, office-like support to employees — are high. Doing both successfully correlates directly to staff retention, satisfaction, productivity, and overall business performance.

What’s clear is that the next generation of technology leaders demands workplace flexibility with the strong support of their IT teams and a commitment to protecting the planet.

By implementing observability, companies can become greener and provide excellent remote and hybrid workplaces. At the same time, they can also appeal to a broader pool of talent that empowers them to succeed in the future.