The future of the labor market is shaped by emerging digital technologies and their active integration into company operations. This allows organizations to rethink internal processes to develop more efficient ways of working.
Remote work and hybrid conferences provide improved communication and collaboration opportunities for employers and employees alike. In fact, 90% of organizations are embracing the digital workplace trend of combining remote and in-person elements.
Companies face the challenge of transforming these digital workplaces into an ecosystem that meets all business requirements while maintaining engagement and flexibility for employees beyond the office.
We invite you to explore the latest digital workplace trends and discover how digitalization changes the workplace.
WHAT IS A DIGITAL WORKPLACE?
A digital workplace encompasses the technology used across the numerous processes and systems involved in everyday business. This includes how we communicate, hold meetings, share data, collaborate on projects, and share presentations.
Platforms like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom are three top examples of online applications advancing the ways the modern digital workforce interacts. An important element of the digital workplace to understand is that the technology enables more than just video conferencing alone.
There are three essential components of the digital workplace:
- The technology enabling new levels of communication and collaboration
- The importance of convenience, productivity, and engagement among teams
- The impact on how the workplace is designed and managed
WHAT DOES THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE LOOK LIKE?
Imagine all of the digital tools and services your teams need available in one space, including:
- Messaging
- Video conferencing
- Cloud-based storage and services
- Integrated apps
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DIGITAL WORKPLACE AND A DIGITAL WORKSPACE?
The digital workplace represents the digital environment where communication and collaboration occur, including all elements involved in digitalizing a traditional, physical workplace.
The digital workspace represents the specific, individual tools used for productivity in the digital workplace.
For instance, the digital workspace includes laptops and mobile devices, specialized software, digital calendars integrated with video conferencing, etc. All of the tools that provide for the digital workplace are part of the workspace.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE?
The digital workplace provides unimpeded connections among employees, across teams, and with clients, providing the following benefits:
- Integration of offline and online communication. Real-time communication and access to the necessary information from any device (e.g., computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone) maintain the team's productivity and flexibility anywhere in the world.
- Efficiency and transparency. The digital workplace enhances process transparency and improves social interactions.
- Flexibility and mobility. Digital workplaces provide remote or hybrid work opportunities, allowing employees to maintain a healthier work-life balance.
- Cost reduction. Digital technologies significantly reduce (or eliminate) the need for paper documentation, decrease expenses for renting large office spaces, and save employees time and money on commuting.
- Task automation. Tools for automating routine tasks boost productivity and allow employees to focus on more critical tasks.
- Higher service levels. Quick access to necessary information speeds up, simplifies and improves customer service.
- Increased security. Cybersecurity measures, encryption, authentication, and compliance with data protection rules ensure the security of companies' confidential information, along with client and employee personal data.
10 DIGITAL WORKPLACE TRENDS
Traditional frameworks for HR management, corporate culture, and labor relations constantly change as they evolve toward a technology-driven model based on trust, flexibility, mobility, and productive workflows. Technology is erasing the boundaries between offline and online environments.
Here is a list of 10 digital workplace trends you should be aware of.
1. CLOUD SOLUTIONS
Cloud solutions enable teams to work remotely from anywhere in the world while effectively communicating and collaborating. Employers appreciate the benefits of the cloud as it allows them to save on equipment and maintenance costs. Cloud platforms provide easy access from multiple devices, plentiful security preferences, and powerful server-side processing and data storage to keep your persistent communications in a safe place that’s easy to access.
2. AI-BASED FEATURES
Gartner survey results indicate that 68% of financial organizations are already using AI or planning to adopt this technology. AI technologies analyze and interpret vast amounts of data, help track various indicators, and automate, facilitate, and speed up routine, repetitive tasks, minimizing errors. This allows the team to focus on solving critical problems and performing creative tasks.
Workplace platforms take the power of AI beyond basic transcription capabilities, serving companies with actionable data to dramatically improve efficiency.
Zoom’s AI Companion boosts productivity and collaboration with meeting recaps, message summaries, phone call analysis, and numerous insights and communication enhancements.
Gong provides an AI platform for revenue streams that uses AI to serve businesses with insights that can sharpen their sales capabilities. Information about meeting length, topics covered, thoroughness in product summaries, and numerous data points help teams improve communications to land more deals.
The features AI provides will continue to evolve at a rapid pace.
3. COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION TOOLS
As the digital workplace matures, communication platforms tend to focus more on collaboration and vice versa. All of these unique digital applications for communication and collaboration merge together.
With ease of use as a constant, video conferencing systems provide teams with seamless connectivity. At the same time, integrated collaborative tools help plan, organize events, and share data in various formats, from chat to documents.
For example, Miro was originally designed as a communication platform and is now for communication and collaboration; many platforms follow this trend.
4. HYBRID WORK ENVIRONMENTS
87% of Americans use flexible work schedules when given the option, and analysts believe this is one of many signs that the future work environment will be a hybrid model with in-person and remote workers aligned as teams. Remote workers from different states—and even countries—can align their schedules with others who choose to work remotely or at the office.
5. INTEGRATED WORKPLACE HUBS
Integrated, adaptive, and user-friendly platforms for unified communication and collaboration represent the future of workplaces.
Platforms like Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams act as central hubs where aligned productivity tools exist under a single platform, joined and integrated for easy access. Bringing documents, calendars, messaging, and video conferencing under the umbrella of an integrated hub makes it easy for a company to share across all teams without leaving the communication and collaboration environment.
6. SINGLE-SERVICE PROVIDERS AND APPLICATIONS
Integrated benefits are consistent with hubs, but in this case, single-service providers offer a single application that unifies the communication and collaboration tools a company needs, like screen sharing, video conferences, email, phone, whiteboard, and more.
Zoom is the most prominent example of a single-service provider that competes with the quality and feature set of Google and Microsoft hubs.
7. SIMPLIFIED SOLUTIONS
As platform features merge to offer everything a company needs for its digital workplace, it becomes increasingly vital that these growing tools and features remain easy to use. This is as important for training as it is for continued use.
Applications have to be easy enough for the workforce to adopt new features, and they also have to be easy for IT to manage.
Logitech provides a great example of simplified solutions, where you can set up a conferencing room with a room scheduler, access controls from a tabletop interface, integrate digital whiteboarding, and switch seamlessly between different room angles to capture the best available speaker image and sound.
8. LOWER COSTS
Moore’s Law describes a phenomenon that was first theorized by the founder and CEO of Intel, Gordon Moore. Moore postulated that, as computer-based technology doubled in advancement, there was a similar exponential reduction in cost for that technology.
This theory has remained remarkably accurate for decades and has carried over into the audio-visual equipment used for conferencing and software applications.
As the world adopts new capabilities and companies rely upon the software that makes these capabilities possible, the price tends to drop even as powerful features continue to advance.
9. PERSISTENT ACCESS
As businesses rely more heavily on the digital workplace for company-wide communication and collaboration, it becomes increasingly important that users can access shared information through these unified platforms.
Whiteboards, emails, chats, documents, and recorded video conferences can all be accessed at a later time—an important development in our move from numerous separate applications and accelerating toward a unified future provided by hubs and single-service platforms.
10. UPSKILLING AND RETRAINING
The speed of digital technologies and the constant integration of more complex solutions into the work environment require specialized training. Companies and their workforce require the flexibility to adapt to change.
Automated processes, AI-based tools, and all-in-one integrated workplace platforms require training users to make the most of features in order to gain the full advantage of the efficiency and seamless integrations that are now possible.
With upskilling and training, companies will be working with future-resilient workers who understand the challenges in security and carry the digital literacy required to make the best use of the digital workplace.
DIGITAL WORKPLACE CHALLENGES
Technology moves quickly in the digital workplace space. The result is an enhanced experience for your entire workforce, but the following are some challenges that arise along the way.
ADOPTION
It can be difficult to get teams to change to new systems. As cumbersome as workplace tools have been in the past, people trust what’s familiar, But once teams realize the convenience of unified platforms, they appreciate the added convenience and efficiency.
INITIAL TRAINING
Learning how to use digital workplace features comes easier for some people than others. Companies willing to invest resources in proper training will get the best results.
DEVELOPING POSITIVE HABITS
With persistence, workplace platforms make it possible to keep a record of past conversations, video chats, whiteboards, documents, and more. But, unless your team develops the positive habit of bookmarking, tagging, and creating easy ways to reference materials, it’s easy to run into digital clutter or have trouble finding older materials.
SECURITY PRACTICES
Understanding the basics of internet security is a requirement for every person who goes online. But, robust cybersecurity is of utmost importance for companies, and the potential for attacks and security breaches is greater now than ever. We rely heavily on video conferencing, shared documents, and other digital interactions, so ensuring your entire workforce follows best practices and is assigned relevant administrative privileges is vital.
ONGOING EDUCATION
Initial training isn’t enough to get the most from your workplace platform; as technology changes and new features are added, it is just as important to continue to train teams on new feature implementations and their benefits.
DESIGN YOUR IDEAL WORKPLACE: VIVO CAN HELP
Creating a digital workplace means considering your organization's unique needs and software requirements, integrating with the right cloud services, and choosing the best tools for communication and collaboration across all your teams.
Vivo Technologies doesn’t just sell workplace equipment; we help our clients navigate the challenges mentioned above so they get the right platform for their needs and learn how to guide their staff to gain the most benefits from their workplace.
We offer our clients individual solutions that can be implemented in a hybrid work environment. You can even choose to rent software and equipment to match your business needs.
Contact us to receive an optimal technological solution for productive work in a remote, hybrid, or office format!