The digital workplace is rapidly evolving. With new tools, greater demand from users, and a focus on productivity and efficiency, technology is changing the way we work for the better. As we look ahead to the trends that are shaping the modern workplace, we notice that flexible work and the availability of the right digital tools will continue to become more and more important.
Cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) platforms have become increasingly more popular for businesses of all sizes. Enterprise spending on UCC tools grew to a $45 billion industry this past year, according to Synergy Research Group, with an average annual growth of 16 percent year-over-year.
Half of the global workforce currently holds a position that is compatible with remote work and 40 percent does work remotely at least part of the time, according to Global Workplace Analytics. While this trend has many benefits, Buffer’s State of Remote Work report found that nearly 20 percent of these remote workers felt lonely.
The remote workforce has gone global. Seventy percent of workers telecommute at least once per week, while 53 percent of employees work in the office at most half the week, according to a recent study from IWG. Even more fascinating, a Citrix study estimates that 50 percent of the workforce will be completely remote by the end of 2020. Such numbers shape the remote work trends for the next period.
Look around at any airport and you’ll see people surrounding outlets, sitting on their laptops and phones. According to the State of the Remote Job Marketplace report, 43 percent of the workforce works remotely at least some of the time. A major perk of distributed work is the ability to be traveling while on the clock.
The frequency of remote work options have grown exponentially in the past decade, with an estimated 3.6 million Americans working from home in at least some capacity, based on State of the Remote Job Marketplace.
The remote work trend has notable perks for both employees and employers – no commute, time flexibility and minimal office costs. What’s more, a study of 500 employees from Stanford University reports that working from home can lead to a boost in productivity. For example, traditional office workers in the study lost time due to traffic on their commutes, periodic water-cooler breaks and other daily interruptions, while remote employees did not.
Coworking is a concept that’s “younger” than the average millennial professional life. Yet it also seems to be hugely popular, trendy even. Projected coworking spaces follow a curve that resembles Moore’s law. Every year, there are twice as many spots to fill. Either extensions or new spaces being open in a novel approach to build “uncorporations”. However, the concept of coworking is as old as early human communities.
After all, coworking is people doing similar work in shared spaces. Unlikely collaborators pursuing mutually advantageous strategies for development. Sharing a workspace with friends, mentors, and the competition. In a sense, this is remote work with superpowers. And it is more than a trend.
Onboarding done right. Surprise, it’s a challenge! In fact, a quick peek at employer review websites can tell you a lot about the value of onboarding. Dating is similar. First impressions matter. But that’s the interview. The love affair starts with onboarding.
Onboarding done right leaks when measuring quality of hire. If you’re not HR, quality of hire is a trendy metric to track. While tough to calculate, it does provide valuable insight. It is also a gateway into building a system of metrics on which to plan improvement goals. Quality of hire factors in various items. Indicators such as job performance, ramp-up time, enthusiasm, cultural fit and more. Fear not, we won’t attempt to do a math model of quality of hire.
Photo by Persnickety Prints on Unsplash
At 4PSA, we are strong proponents of remote working. We develop solutions that assist this culture and we know first hand that it works to the benefit of modern companies – where most of the workforce uses a computer to carry out its duties.
20 years ago, remote working was a luxury that few could afford. As a culture, it didn’t even exist. Firstly, there weren’t nearly as many types of businesses that could benefit from it. Then there’s the aspect of mobility – namely, the lack thereof – back then. Neither the hardware, nor the software (let alone the Internet) could sustain a telecommuting culture in the 90s, or even in early 2000s. Cloud computing was virtually inexistent, laptops were clunky, wireless Internet was scarce, tablets were still in their prototype stages, and because of this, people were forced to come into the office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to do their job. Not anymore
In a paper on the state of telecommuting, Telework Research Network acknowledges that the U.S. workforce is increasingly mobile, “but, beyond that broad statement, we know little about the rate of increase in mobility — how often people are out of the office, where they are, and what they’re doing. For that matter, there’s no agreed-upon method of defining who they are.”
Or isn’t there? Ctrip, China’s largest travel agency, joined forces with Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, in order to find out how telecommuting impacts the worker, the boss, and the business. 250 of Ctrip’s employees volunteered as lab rats in the experiment, with half being deployed at home and half in the office. They found that the benefits were short term.