7 Technology Trends Shaping the Modern Global Workplace

Today there are many technologies and apps available to improve our productivity. This as the digitalization of the workplace continues. Many people believe we still have a long way to go, but we really have already seen some great trends worthy of our attention.

Artificial Intelligence

CMS Wire says the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the digital workplace today is about to become so pervasive and ingrained that it’ll almost seem invisible. In fact, by 2028 many people believe that AI won’t be something that we simply yet proactively interact with and manage, but instead it’ll be so fully integrated throughout every part of our lives (both inside and outside of the workplace) that the boundary between artificial intelligence and human intelligence will become indistinguishable.

The systems that companies use as operational systems of record will become the foundation of their work. When this happens, any decisions regarding the work that needs to be done, as well as indications of work progress and automatic adjustments that are made to the work that’s taking place will occur without any human intervention.

Working with New Robotic Coworkers

Align says even as we witness AI grow more ever-present in our lives at work, it’ll also become more present in what’s happening in the background without us even realizing it. This is because AI offers a lot of huge opportunities for optimization and decision-making. Today, even the simplest automated tasks that are used to power or augment human activities are becoming necessary. Developments in AI are saving money while helping with deeper learning. As this occurs, businesses are continuing to evolve in such a way that it’ll change the game and some of the ethics that go along with it.

Higher use of Cloud Technology

Fuze says the use of the cloud continues to grow and permeate technology as we know it today. This is seen in many different aspects throughout our offices — including data storage, collaboration, software and cloud-based phone systems. All these things are continually growing more sophisticated, with no end in sight. This is especially true of your business phone system as it becomes increasingly necessary in our modern workplace. Throughout this year and the foreseeable future, we should expect to see strong growth here as a real need for cloud services develops. The continued migration to the cloud will also let businesses become more flexible so they can scale up or down as their requirements change.

The era of Virtual reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)

Despite strong growth in the mobile workforce, bringing virtual reality (VR) into the workplace will be a challenge because many people still view it as a novelty. There are very businesses that have the computing power that’s necessary for full AI integration. As such, it’s still a bit premature to expect executives to put on a VR helmet for a meeting. Phone, email and video are still the most common approaches for holding meetings when you have a mobile office. However, Biz Community says it might not be too long before virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) innovations do impact the workplace. This is demonstrated in South Africa where about 61% of employees are already willing to use VR/AR in their professional lives for things like training on new skill sets in a realistic virtual environment, solving problems, and creating new ideas for clients. Additionally, over half of South Africa’s employees (52%) believe introducing AI to their workplace will make their jobs easier.

Place for Remote Work

We’re also seeing a profound change in how today’s digital workplace defines “remote work.” It’s expected that within the next 10 years nobody will use these terms (remote work or remote worker) anymore. Instead, people will go to work on a dynamic digital platform as a workplace, reporting to work as full, high-definition 3D holograms. This means there will no longer be any difference in interacting with someone in person or someone who’s projected into your workplace. Every worker will have their own personal ‘co-bot’ who will act as their concierge, gofer, analyst, and predictor.

Cybersecurity Threats

In 2018 it’ll also be important to make sure that all your content is secure. This will be particularly important as the number of remote workers increases — which will also increase the number of devices that are connected to a business’ infrastructure at any one given point in time. These devices will bring with them a rise in the number of cyber threats businesses will also see. What this means is that the network edge as we know it is in a current state of flux. This is also true for today’s security technologies which were originally designed to protect the networks themselves.

Many people believe that in 2018 we will also see a spike in the number of sophisticated cyberattacks that use a combination of unusual vectors to breach company networks. This will change the way we view the supply chain attack as it will become much more common today. However, simply identifying devices through endpoint security won’t be enough to truly mitigate the threats that will occur because of having a distributed workplace.

Robotic Process Automation

Since 2017 Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has emerged as an important technology. In 2018 it’s become primed to take an even bigger role in the workforce. All of this has transformed since 2017 — a year in which many big businesses adopted RPA for the first time. Now some of these companies want to think about bringing in the element of AI. When this happens there won’t be any shortage of opportunities for businesses to implement RPA. In fact, many businesses who haven’t already done so will start to adopt it too.

When RPA is combined with other proven technologies (e.g. document capture) it’ll gain even more traction. As businesses grow more familiar with the technology, they’ll gain a better understanding of its place in business process automation. This is something that most businesses are now realizing as they feel they need to take a closer look at RPA’s strengths and how the various providers offer different types of processing — varying from semi-structured and unstructured content to that which is highly structured. The combination of software robots and machine learning, document classification and data extraction services is quite powerful.