The world took a collective sigh of relief as the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31 and the calendar flipped into a new year. Good riddance to 2020, a time so many of us would like to forget. But trying though it may have been, 2020 did have at least one thing going for it: the chance to shine for enterprise IT professionals overseeing their organization’s communications and collaboration strategies.
As offices, contact centers, and other corporate facilities shuttered around them, members of the No Jitter and Enterprise Connect user communities heard a resounding call to action: Keep the lines of communications open and the collaborative culture alive. Never mind that overnight, in many cases, hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of business users and contact center agents transitioned from working in the office to working at home.
Enterprise communications/collaboration managers had to pull out all the stops. Extending or spinning up brand new cloud telephony licenses, fast-tracking migration to team collaboration apps, deciding on and implementing video collaboration services …and the list goes on. And then, once that flurry of activity ended, they were left to rethink their strategies for the longer term and the dawning new reality of hybrid home-office work schedules.
At the same time, the clamor for social justice and diversity and inclusion reached an all-time high, and many across the enterprise communications/collaboration discipline took heed. We’ve heard pledges to make the hiring process less biased, to support diversity at the departmental and team levels, and to give everyone an equal voice in discussing strategic and technology challenges at their organizations.
Even without needing to contend with a global pandemic and massive social upheaval, enterprise communications/collaboration professionals are always part of the corporate bedrock — deserving of recognition for all they do to facilitate the conversations of everyday business life. Too often, though, their work goes unnoticed — only recognized in the wake of a problem. We’d like to change that, beginning with our new
Enterprise Connect IT Hero Award.
With this IT Hero Award, we look to honor enterprise communications/collaboration professionals and teams who go above and beyond their day-to-day responsibilities to provide exceptional service, vision, and expertise to their organizations. Our enterprise IT heroes will have shown outstanding initiative and dedication in helping to make a difference inside and outside of their enterprises in the past year, whether that be in COVID-19 response, a call for equity, or in their every action. With this award, we look to bring these heroes to the forefront as a model to others.
We are now accepting nominations for the 2021 IT Hero Award; the deadline to enter your candidate/s is Friday, Jan. 29 (new date!). To be eligible, individuals or teams must work within an enterprise’s IT organization with a focus on communications/collaboration.
