Of course, there have been challenges we all are still facing - blurring of personal and professional lives, fatigue, isolation but, we can consider these as teething troubles. Whenever there is a massive behavior change like the one we are witnessing, the challenges are bound happen
There are many things that make Iron Man memorable. The incredible Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., kept on reminding us the significance of technology and innovation during times of crisis. My personal favorite from the Iron Man series has always been Stark’s home office. In fact that suit in itself is a fully operational office!
There have been multiple instances where we have seen Stark using his futuristic virtual home to disappear in his own ‘mind palace’ or in other words indulge in deep thoughts to drive innovations. I am sure many of us secretly yearned to own something similar– access to the world from the comfort of personal surroundings. While owning Stark’s office might not be possible for everyone, parts of it are already under development, further accelerated this year.
COVID – 19 forced all of us to adopt work-from-home (WFH). This led to a significant change in attitude. Remote working became a reality and all of us recognized that perhaps this was a good thing to happen. People got time to spend with family, and increased personal innovation and productivity. Of course, there have been challenges we all are still facing - blurring of personal and professional lives, fatigue, isolation but, we can consider these as teething troubles. Whenever there is a massive behavior change like the one we are witnessing, there are bound to be challenges. However one cannot negate the fact that – virtual tools and technology are indeed making life comfortable, turning the idea of a traditional office obsolete. Some of the most interesting tools that have taken center stage this year are:-
Making Traditional Connections in a Virtual Office
A major concern with remote working has been a sense of isolation. You miss out on the chats, the sense of camaraderie found in a traditional office structure. The answer to that has been virtual offices - being developed in the last few years and has now hit the mainstream. Case in point, recently Facebook expanded Oculus to introduce ‘Infinite Office’ a virtual reality office space. Other tools have been around for a while. Mixed reality tools offered by Sneek or Pukkateam help create a feeling of togetherness by displaying fellow workers in tiles with periodically updated snapshots - at their desk, on a call, drinking a coffee, or free and ready for a chat. If someone is reluctant to show actual images, tools such as Sococo offer avatars to bring employees together across geographies in illustrated virtual offices, complete with conference rooms and pantries. These together solve the problem of connections and offer help all employees stay connected virtually.
Collaboration Is the Way of the Future
Though most of us are now working on a combination of Zoom, Slack, and WhatsApp, the pandemic has put collaborative tools at the forefront this year. Most of these offer a combination of videos, voice, and chat, giving everyone the opportunity to contribute. This means improved productivity and better work. In fact, as per a survey by Verizon[1], businesses received great benefits from collaboration technologies in maintaining productivity with videoconferencing topping the list (98%) followed by file sharing (97%), instant messaging/chat (95%), other collaboration methods (e.g., Slack or Teams – 88%) and cloud-based collaboration (85%). Further helped by online interactive training sessions that kept employees engaged and motivated (85%).
Your Friendly Virtual Assistant (VA)
Virtual assistance was on the rise even before the pandemic as they helped minimize costs and streamlined corporate processes to a great extent. This year, the benefits have been felt by most employees, including parents, busy balancing the needs of their children with the needs of work.
A fully functional VA makes life easy by taking over menial tasks you have to complete every day. VA’s of today can manage multiple tasks – customer service emails/reminders, social media postings, and calendar sorting. They can even make calls on your behalf. That leaves time for more important tasks, making you efficient and giving you time for other priorities, including personal life. Great way to build work-life balance and further reducing the need for a traditional office structure with physical admin support.
Whether a physical office retires in the future or not, these tools make people give serious thought to the concept. The future office is most likely to be a hybrid model with mixed reality infrastructure. Technology will play an integral part irrespective of where you fall on the work status scale. Technologies such as augmented reality, IoT enabled smart environments, and location-based indoor intelligence tools are going to make office experiences even more immersive and real. In the meantime, employees and companies together need to pave way for behavioral changes and wait and watch what the future holds.
(The given article is authored by Kushal Nahata, CEO & Co-Founder, FarEye)