Global workplace-communication product seller, Poly, using a post-2020 understanding has announced their predictions for workplace trends. They have labelled the top 5 directions they expect companies to implement in some fashion.
First about Poly. Uniting audio, video and screen sharing capabilities in their products, they promote the online collaboration and can create a work environment no different than the office. Whether it’s on the commute or in the workplace, Poly “makes connections more productive.”, responding to human behaviour and creating the best industry experience.
The first trend the business field can expect to see is the continuation of hybrid working. 2020 found a desperate need for online solutions and many companies step up to the task to provide the answer. Now, at the start of 2021, the infrastructure for hybrid working has already been developed and it simply a question of whether businesses embrace it in the years to come.
Senior Vice President of Poly for Asia Pacific, Pierre-Jean Châlon, said this,
“Offices will shift from being the ‘default’ location of work to centralized workspaces geared towards collaboration.”
The 2nd market movement mentioned by Poly is how companies will transform their workplace culture and office spaces. In the new age of business, hiring and educating employees will be done without boundaries as online recruiting has advanced, workspaces will try and cater to concerns surrounding health, organizations will move away from classic perks like gyms, daycare and lunchrooms to wellbeing services, app subscriptions and digital health.
The third trend predicted by Poly is the continuation and expansion of video.
With the infrastructure already laid out because of 2020 and a growing concern to protect oneself and a general consciousness of having been used to digital conferencing for over a year, it is most likely that even if the business world were to try and revert post Covid-19, some qualities of 2020 would still remain with us.
As Paul Clark, Senior Vice President for EMEA said,
“even if we are able to return to ‘normal’, business travel will not be exactly as it was before.”
The fourth trend focuses on putting consumers forward or as Poly puts it, “Prosumer at the Center”. Between home and the workplace, “individual preferences” will parallel business continuation when companies make purchasing decisions. Personal and professional technology has become increasingly intermixed and workers aren’t likely to cede the comfort they’ve grown used to. The consumer grows more powerful thanks to the technology at hand and the industry will need to adapt to this trend to continue moving forward.
Lastly, as mentioned so many times before, the new technologies brought in through the wake of 2020 will continue to drive businesses forward. As Châlon states,
“Consider the way a consumer might bundle the price of a smartphone with their phone bill. Here, we can also expect to see industries colliding, where telcos might offer headsets, speakerphones, video bars, and more on a month-to-month paid plan.”
Business transformation being fueled by the XaaS (Anything-as-a-Service) wave and as Poly predicts, “beginning with enterprise-grade video conferencing hardware.”
Read the full article here.
