The Future of Work
The future of work for you.
How different is your working day from 3 years ago?
· You may be working from home?
· You may be using different tools and applications?
· You may even have switched occupations?
Many of these things have been driven by the pandemic and reported on extensively by research companies such as (The future of work after COVID-19 | McKinsey).
The future of work for software
However, as a software company, we needed to be thinking about, and preparing for, the future of work years in advance. Speed to market and development of new solutions has accelerated in recent years, however it still takes time to realise a gap, specify a product, develop, test, and deliver new solutions. Those solutions that were already addressing the problems of hybrid and remote working were rewarded for their forethought as they are now experiencing growth as they help a wider swathe of the population who have been shoe-horned into these new ways of working.
Cloud delivery of solutions was a game-changer and lifesaver as remote workers could still access their systems, although many companies were ill-prepared for the security risk this presented and for the proliferation of new tools, each of which needed supporting and training. This favoured solutions with in-built security, ease of use, and easy maintenance.
The future of work for employers
From the employer perspective, they now need to reassess their workforce to be sure they are providing the right infrastructure; that means office space, workspace, and technology. Companies need to understand, at a granular level, what elements of work can be done remotely, without loss of productivity, and how the team can collaborate with each other and other companies, and what do they need to support that. And fundamentally, do they want to offer hybrid working (work from home Tuesday’s and Fridays) or flexible working (work from home 2-days per week)?
These assessments need to be done sooner rather than later as increasingly new hires and employees are in the driving seat, and they will choose their employer based upon their approach to the above. With the global talent shortage employers need to be ready with the right answers as employees are in the driving-seat and there is a heightened level of work mobility right now. Some due to latent build up from the pandemic, but also as there is an occupational shift and people have starkly different values pre- and post-pandemic.
It is worth noting that these are not short-term changes either, many of these changes will persist such as the shift to ecommerce, hybrid working, and the reliance on digital.
The future of work for you…
With the above as backdrop, have you assessed your own personal productivity in tasks you perform daily? For instance, we all Zoom, and Teams daily and then share links in the chat that you can’t retrieve if you are a guest, when the meeting is over. So, you email a file and then use a separate diary app to coordinate diaries. The meeting recording is too large to email, so you use WeTransfer or some other tool to share but then must pull the notes, the recording, the transcript, the files and all the other paraphernalia for that client or patient or business partner into a folder. If it is patient records, or client confidential all this needs to be done with compliance and security in mind.
You are surrounded by digital tools, all open on your desktop to manage the many tasks you need to run because of one Teams Meeting. That need not be the case. This is an example of a software solution that was already thinking of the future of work as this has been a problem for years, exacerbated by the increase in remote working and conferencing.
Visual collaboration technology is not as well-known as word processing or spreadsheets, but as we become more reliant on visual tools and remote meetings, this will move front and centre as we need tools and technology to support the visual way of remote working, but all in one place with business logic, security, and easy to use.
This is where our Conflab platform scores with our customers as it is one solution, with many applications, for all those using video conferencing and who need all the ancillary apps and workflows managed in one sensible and discrete way.
Instead of using video conferencing tools like Zoom and Teams in isolation we add workflows and automations that make sense for your business needs. Secure document storage, aligned to the video recording and transcript, automatically saved to a client folder.
This brings a whole new level of efficiency and compliance (particularly important in certain sectors such as the legal profession), especially when all the appropriate actions are taken because of predefined rules and workflows.
Notably your team will be more loyal, more productive, and more motivated with the right tools to enable them to be more productive and efficient.
Some key data points from the McKinsey survey:
· Business travel is down 20% due to use of videoconferencing
· This has a knock-on effect on commute business centres, transport, retail, and hospitality
· Of 278 executives interviewed, there was a 30% reduction planned in office space
· Workforce analysis (we analyzed its potential) of >2,000 tasks in 800 occupations in 8 advanced-economic countries, without loss of productivity, 20% to 25% of the workforces could work from home between three and five days a week.
· This represents 4 – 5 five times more remote work than before the pandemic and could prompt a large change in the geography of work.
· E-commerce and other virtual transactions are booming.
· According to McKinsey Consumer Pulse surveys conducted around the world.
