10 Digital Workplace Trends Shaping the Future of Work

Gone are the days when enterprises used to stick to traditional ways of processes and operations. The technological advancements have now pushed the enterprises to adopt new techniques that improve productivity and also engage tech-savvy customers and employees. Emerging technologies have enhanced the way enterprises collect, process, and analyze the data, collaborate and communicate, and make decisions.

Since new technologies are continuously redefining the way organizations and individuals work, in the process, they are also dynamically shaping a more digital workplace. A digital workplace improves employees’ capability to adapt faster, be proactive and do smart work.

In the past few years, it is observed that the enterprises are equally enthusiastic about embracing truly digitized enterprise workplace. 

“As per the 2017 CMSWIRE REPORT, 95 percent of organizations agreed that a digital workplace is important.”

Most of the businesses around the world have already adopted digital technologies in the workplace and have improved how their organization interact with customers, partners, and employees.

Here are the top 10 digital workplace trends that are going to be prevalent in the industry and is gradually shaping the future of our work ways.

1) Remote Operations

As businesses are growing, the need today is more towards having an active global workforce. Besides, there is an expectation of dynamic working styles among employees as well and hence work management is continuously looking for ways to create a diverse workforce and at the same time provide them more flexible work-life balance.

Complemented with digitization and propagation of technology within day-to-day lifestyles of working professionals, enterprises now look for giving employees the benefit of remote working. This has updated the work-life balance which is now one of the key requirements that present-day employees expect from their employers.

2) Smart Workplaces

Efficiency and productivity of both employees and infrastructure directly impact the competency of a business organization. Nonetheless, it is often received dryly due to the mismanagement of resources. 

With digitization taking over the workplace ethics, IoT technology, in addition to other IT solutions, has proved itself to be quite effective in eliminating such bottlenecks. This has eventually pumped in driving greater fluidity into operations and unlocks the true potential of a business organization.

3) Employee Empowerment 

When businesses today are increasingly becoming digital, they also seem to realize the fact that enterprise professionals are more comfortable with different other technologies, solutions, specific applications, and means of communication.

When employees are given the path to empowerment and freedom to enhance their skills, the results are impressive. The latest vogue of any enterprise is to attain quantifiable end results and enhance KPIs to ultimately have a unified collaboration to attain mutual benefits.

4) Evolving Communication

Communication is an important factor in any organizations' growth. Technologies like video conferencing setups are facilitating seamless communication in organizations that meet geographical ends at any time. There had been developments around Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality that suffices enterprises with a strong indication of how our workplaces today functions.

For instance, if any critical resource needs to be available for any business meetings that requires merely brainstorming ideas and initiatives, it could be possible without the need of traveling with the help of AR, VR technology.

“Gartner report proves that by 2019, AR, VR, and mixed reality (MR) solutions will be evaluated and adopted in 20% of large-enterprise businesses.”

5) Project-based Employment

There are various challenges that enterprises face in terms of workforce and infrastructure. There are c chances of inconsistency and hence friction in business operations eventually. 

Today, employers look forward to adopting project-based route by hiring contractors and MSPs to outsource short-term and long-term work commitments. The approach has led to an increase in demand to bring greater specialization, advances in cloud infrastructure, and increase in business output while minimizing employment count.

6) Chatbot platforms 

“A Gartner report states that – “By 2021, more than 50% of enterprises will spend more per annum on bots and chatbot creation than traditional mobile app development.”

Chatbots have evolved over time. The year has already witnessed a rapid advancement in the fields of Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Conversational User Experience (CUX) that has paved the way for more intelligent and efficient AI-Powered chatbots. 

7) Analytics

“IDC suggests that by 2020, 85% of new operation-based technical positions hires will be screened for analytical and artificial intelligence skills.”

2018 has already seen a majority of enterprises focusing more on inclining towards analytics across multiple domains. The Analytics technology is incorporated in the digital workplace to constantly maintain a high end-user experience and adoption.

With the continuous potential increase in cybersecurity threats, there had been an emergence of the mobile workforce and a multiple-cloud environment that paves way for advanced security analytics. The data from the analytics report helps in detecting threats and eradicating them from the system.

8) The Rise of Cloud Technology

“Again, a report by Gartner states that by 2021, more than half of global enterprises already using cloud today will adopt an all-in cloud strategy.”

In every organization, there is a constant need for real-time information for quick decision making. However, there are a few instances when data is not available, or the data provider is not available which hinder the decision-making process. Also, depending on someone for data is a time taking procedure.

Top eradicate the challenge and ensure decision-making accuracy at all managerial levels, cloud-based self-service Business Intelligence solution is being introduced as a digital trend in enterprises.

9) Robotic Process Automation

“Robot Process Automation has proved to offer a potential business ROI of around 30 – 200 percent – McKinsey Report”

The reason why Robots are being introduced in the industry is it affects the enterprise on a large scale altogether. It supports business processes to cut costs, automate tedious tasks, link applications and boost employee productivity.

It’s important for IT leaders to choose the right software, hardware and strategically combine other technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning etc. for powerful business outputs.

10) Immersive and Hybrid Technologies

“A report by IDC predicts that by 2019, 75% of enterprise applications will have AI embedded in them. This AI enablement will be majorly incorporated in productivity scenario of business analysis”.

There are other emerging technologies that encourage leaders to integrate immersive and hybrid technologies in the enterprises. This helps in improving employee communication and business performances. There had been early adopters like DHL that implemented Augmented Reality for their logistic employees and reaped significant benefits.

Conclusion

While the emerging technologies have marked its value and authenticity in the market, it's also important to realize that there is a direct impact of employee's productivity with business growth. Hence it becomes really important to provide employees with an innovative work environment that make remote collaboration easy and also increase the operational efficiency.