The Future of Work: Business Imperatives Influencing 2022 and Beyond
As businesses look to modernize, reinvent and improve the way employees work, new digital workplace services have emerged.
December 31, 2021
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Workplace disruptions have forced rapid change in the way businesses operate and how work is accomplished. As a result, digital transformation initiatives are markedly different now than in the pre-pandemic era. Organizations have pushed forward to deliver against digital imperatives, said Adam Holtby, Omdia principal analyst. These include updating enterprise communications, improving collaboration, and developing a more modern, mobile, and digitally enabled workplace.
As businesses look to modernize, reinvent and improve the way employees work, new digital workplace services have emerged. The traditional office has now transformed into a well-integrated digital ecosystem of different technology and service capabilities.
However, adopting a new ecosystem means a systemic evaluation of business technologies. For instance, Omdia found that the pandemic forced 70% of respondents to reconsider which IT and service-provider partners their businesses wanted to work with.
In addition, the digital ecosystem includes substantial investment in 5G.
“Across all major industries, new digital workplace investments over the next 24 months will be directed heavily toward 5G connectivity, capabilities that help improve self-service and automate employee support, and process and workflow automation platforms,” Holtby said.
In 2022 the debate may continue about where employees work. However, Omdia’s data show that businesses plan for more work to occur away from the traditional office environment.
In fact, it seems the conversation has moved forward as businesses focus instead on infrastructure. Specifically, managers should develop the kind of infrastructure where employees can work anywhere without compromises to security or productivity. It’s the difference between “reacting” versus “reinvention.”
“Businesses must now begin to focus less on work locations, and more on ensuring they have the right infrastructure, tools, processes and practices in place to help employees work from anywhere,” Holtby said.
Challenges brought by the pandemic mean organizations optimize value from people, processes and technology. As a result, it’s become an imperative that companies place an emphasis on worker well-being. This is especially necessary when employees find themselves more isolated working from home.
“This is causing many organizations to look beyond just the technology to consider more humanistic and sentiment-based elements to improve the employee experience,” Holtby said. “As collaboration and communication happen primarily via digital channels, it becomes even more important to understand what work people are doing and how they are using technology to get work done, as well as how they feel about the technology and processes supporting their work and their day-to-day activities.”
Few organizations were fully prepared for the radical disruptions brought by the pandemic. However, the last year has shown many businesses can respond to change in an agile and robust manner. However, three industries stood out for their inability to adapt to contemporary working conditions. Omdia researchers found that transport and logistics (14%), retail (20%), and government (22%) were the industries least prepared for the transition to remote working.
Omdia data show that businesses think employee productivity has improved since the shift to remote work and will continue to do so throughout 2022. However, further research analyzing the employee experience is still needed. Examining how people feel about the work they do is difficult to quantify, but it is necessary to understand to help employees do their best work. New platforms aid businesses to better comprehend what the employee experience looks like. Businesses should consider adopting these in the year ahead.
“New solutions, such as digital employee experience platforms, are helping businesses better understand what the employee experience looks like, and enterprises should look to adopt these types of capabilities,” Holtby said. “Additionally, teams like HR and IT must work closely on employee experience initiatives.”
Omdia data show that businesses think employee productivity has improved since the shift to remote work and will continue to do so throughout 2022. However, further research analyzing the employee experience is still needed. Examining how people feel about the work they do is difficult to quantify, but it is necessary to understand to help employees do their best work. New platforms aid businesses to better comprehend what the employee experience looks like. Businesses should consider adopting these in the year ahead.
“New solutions, such as digital employee experience platforms, are helping businesses better understand what the employee experience looks like, and enterprises should look to adopt these types of capabilities,” Holtby said. “Additionally, teams like HR and IT must work closely on employee experience initiatives.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the future of work. There’s been a shift to working from home and changes to how companies transform digitally.
No doubt, work has altered for the long haul. Recent field survey research from the firm Omdia, part of the Informa network (also Channel Futures’ parent company), delved into how organizations responded to the pandemic’s disruptions.
Omdia wanted to know how long-term digital workplace strategies and business priorities have changed. So its researchers collected data from more than 400 organizations across all major regions. These included responses from CIOs, CFOs, IT directors, chief digital officers, HR directors, and chief HR officers (CHROs).
Check out the slideshow above to find out what the researchers determined about the future of work.
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