More and more organizations moved to remote and hybrid work because of the pandemic. By the end of 2021, 45% of companies switched to the hybrid workforce model. Yes, today it’s become a new norm that drastically changes modern workplaces. All that makes businesses face new challenges in 2022.
Thus, it’s crucial for organizations to be aware of workplace trends that will impact the way they work, onboard, communicate, collaborate, and so on for the upcoming year to stay competitive and grow. Here we are to help you to equip workplace professionals and drive the company forward.
Top 7 Workplace Technology Trends to Consider in 2022
We expect the following 7 technology trends to act as force multipliers of businesses in 2022 and beyond. Below you will find a quick guide to what these workplace technologies are, why they’re valuable, and why you should adopt them in the upcoming year.
Distributed Enterprise
Distributed workforces are a permanent feature of modern organizations. That’s because distributed enterprises have several locations or branches that can be placed all over the world. Not only do they reflect a digital and remote work model that better serves your remote team and can improve overall employee experience but help businesses grow and evolve.
Yet, this approach has a few challenges to meet, for example, security. For many such companies, the headquarters are highly protected against different cyberattacks, but the branches are not. Thus, 2020 was a record-breaking year for data lost in cyberattacks by organizations all over the world. That becomes a reason for a 171% year-over-year increase of the average ransom paid by organizations. Herewith, organizations have to adjust their thinking around security and adopt the latest technologies to protect themselves and their customers from cybercrimes.
All-In-One Employee Management Applications
Employee monitoring and analytics platforms allow businesses to monitor the productivity and progress of their employees. Such applications are designed to simplify and automate administrative tasks, streamline the workflow, and just provide critical insights about the project.
It’s possible thanks to all-in-one employee management applications common functions and features provided, including:
- Employee work time management;
- Team productivity management;
- OKR management;
- Employee database;
- Employee administration;
- Employee engagement;
- Communication;
- Scheduling;
- Task reporting, etc.
These platforms are the backbone of modern business environments. Today as well as in the upcoming year and beyond, it’s impossible to imagine a business surviving market competition without such tools implemented. Furthermore, these applications integrate with other productivity systems that add to the managerial robustness of the workplace. And this trend will stay in 2022.
Digital Personal Assistants
Work smarter, not harder. And digital personal assistants are here to help your employees with it. According to the prediction:
- More than 50% of knowledge workers will use a virtual assistant on a daily basis by 2025;
- 25% of employee interactions will be voice-based communications by 2023.
Google Home, Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, and many other conversational technologies have been already adopted by the enterprises in the workplaces for:
- Improving efficiency:
- Streamlined workflow;
- Reducing costs;
- Accelerating revenues;
- Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, and so on.
So, this trend will keep going in 2022 and beyond. If you want to make working more comfortable and easy for workers then this technology is a must to adopt in the upcoming year.
Room Or Desk Booking Applications
Today, desk/room booking applications are considered an essential return-to-office technology. A range of workplace management challenges are solved by adopting a desk reservation system:
- It allows employees to reserve any space (room or desk) before coming into the office or upon arrival;
- It enables employees to pick the space/room/place to work for improving the collaboration with other team members at a safe distance;
- It makes it easier for workplace leaders to monitor space utilization, plan ahead, keep workspaces clean, and so on;
- It increases the ratio of employees to desks, allowing the accommodation of more people with fewer dedicated workspaces;
- It makes it easier for the executive team to plan for future real estate needs.
When adopting this technology, make sure you choose the right application. Here are a few hot features to look for:
- User-friendly interface so that employees can easily find available workspaces on a map of the floor plan and reserve them in seconds;
- Conference room scheduling to make it easier to find a quiet place for meetings;
- Integration with sensors for eliminating “ghost” reservations;
- Desk utilization data (the average length of booking time, which spaces are booked most often, which weekdays have the highest demand for desks, etc.) to help your executive team plan ahead.
Virtual Meeting Rooms
Now it’s obvious that, though some of the employees get back to the office and to more in-person meetings, all the meetings will still include a remote participant and, thus, a video component. That’s why it’s highly important to choose the right tool to hold online video conferences. Companies can choose among hundreds of platforms, apps, and systems, including such popular tools as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Totem, Wonder, and so on. When making a choice, it is worth paying attention to such features as:
- Easy to use interface;
- Fast and seamless integration with other tools;
- Lightness;
- Price;
- Customizable rooms (add/delete participants, create/delete rooms, etc.), and others.
Virtual Team-Building Solutions
Since 2020 remote working has become mainstream and the tendency will keep increasing only. However, high productivity and efficiency are impossible without engagement. 97% of employees and executives mention that the lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or even an entire project.
Yet, remote employees have much fewer opportunities to get to know colleagues better, socialize, feel like a part of the community, and so on than in-office teams. Thus, it can be a true challenge for modern companies to keep remote teams together.
Virtual team-building solutions can help overcome these difficulties and help employees:
- Adapt to remote work;
- Keep the workforce engaged;
- Connect remote team members;
- Improve overall performance;
- Increase the quality of the product.
All this enables companies to create highly engaged workplaces that, according to the research results, can claim:
- 41% lower absenteeism;
- 40% fewer quality defects;
- 21% higher profitability.
In 2022, it’s highly important to organize virtual team-building activities (various games, competitions, parties, coffee breaks, and so on) to support remote teams, build a strong company, empower your employees, and increase the results.
Contact Tracing Apps
The health and well-being of the employees will become one of the leading trends in the upcoming 2022 and beyond. In terms of the world pandemic and reopening offices, it’s crucial for businesses to keep employees and customers safe:
- Take preventative action;
- Mitigate infection risks;
- Manage capacity.
It’s where contact tracing apps are essential return-to-work tools. It’s because such digital health checks help:
- Track, record, and map interactions;
- Prevent potentially ill employees from coming to a workplace;
- Alert other team members to reduce the impact on others from an infected employee.
Here are 4 key points that any return-to-work plan and contact tracing policy should meet:
- Easy accessibility: the solutions need to be easy to use and compatible with the rest of the tools already used.
- Data aggregation: they need to make it easy to both track and collect information.
- Privacy and security: they are to provide total data protection and maintain the company’s data privacy policies.
- Full employee participation.
Final Thoughts: The Future of Workplace Technology
The pandemic dramatically changed the way we work and live. Thus, the remote and hybrid work model becomes a new normal that drives the digitalization of the companies and reshapes modern workplaces. The enterprises are to adapt to new conditions and realities, adopting trending technologies like EMS (employee management systems), virtual meeting rooms, digital personal assistants, and others to stay afloat and stand out from the competition in 2022 and beyond.
Alexey Kutsenko is the CMO at DDI Development company. He is experienced in developing marketing strategies for companies in different industries. Alexey actively uses and shares with the wide audience his expert knowledge on how to grow a customer base, optimize sales and profits with technology.
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