A new report from Owl Labs breaks down who's working remotely, hybrid and from the office — and the disconnects between what workers and bosses want.

It's the 'year of the mandate' at offices, but hybrid and remote work aren't dying

Owl Labs

owllabs

By Aoibhinn Mc Bride From zero commuting times to taking a nap on the couch during your lunch break to going for a run in the afternoon, remote work undoubtedly affords workers more autonomy during working hours, away from the daily grind of getting to an office building before 9 am and staying there until the early evening. But more “me” time isn’t the only reason why so many workers are keen to remain in hybrid positions. According to recent data compiled by Owl Labs as part of its report, 46% of workers in the U.S. are “polyworking,” aka working an additional job on top of their full-time one, 11% have more than one additional job and 16% are planning on getting one in 2024. State of Hybrid Work 2023 Owl Labs’ research also uncovered that more men than women are taking on additional work, 62% versus 38%, and millennials continue to champion the grind, accounting for 74% of those who polywork, compared to 13% of Gen Z, 11% of Gen X and 13% of boomers. Rise and grind While hustle culture is not a new phenomenon, why are so many workers taking on more work instead of prioritizing work-life balance and downtime? Unsurprisingly, money is the biggest motivation when it comes to explaining why so many workers are working more than one job, with 39% stipulating they need the extra income to cover expenses. Over a third (34%) shared that their side gig allows them to indulge their true passion and that they’d like to work in it fully in the future, while 33% shared that their passion projects wouldn’t stack up financially in a full-time capacity. Additionally, 36% admitted that they had taken on extra work because their full-time job is “easy” and they have extra time during the working day to focus on something else. Long term impact Aside from side hustles or pet projects that fuel your passions or personal interests outside of work, the downsides to taking on another role are manifold. For starters, overworked employees are more likely to suffer from burnout and mental health issues, and Owl Labs’ report found that in the last year, 56% of workers said their stress levels had increased since last year. The alternative to polyworking? Finding a role in a company that remunerates you accordingly, allows you to achieve your financial goals, and fulfills you professionally. The is the perfect place to focus your search as it features thousands of jobs in companies that are actively recruiting, including the three below. Hackernoon Job Board Cyber Engineer, Senior, Booz Allen Hamilton, Norfolk In this role, you will conduct analysis to develop a plan to operationalize the cyberspace concepts in support of capability development efforts. As such, you will develop plans and procedures that will support future concept operationalization efforts, support the operationalization of the concepts by acting as an SME during requirements definition and prepare relevant briefing materials, as required, and deliver presentations. . Cyber Engineer View additional details here Software Engineer, Leidos, Alexandria Are you interested in joining a dynamic team of developers, engineers, and analysts dedicated to building new capabilities for Leidos and its customers? The Airborne Mission Operations division is seeking a to support the Army Geospatial Center’s Instrument Set, Reconnaissance and Surveying Capabilities (ISRSC) Program. In this role, you will be required to update software with the latest features utilizing software development best practices to generate clear and concise code. You will also collaborate with an Agile Development Environment to develop, maintain, and support a large codebase system and participate in daily Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) practices to maximize efficiency. . Software Engineer See the full job description here Principal System Software Architect, Servers, NVIDIA, Santa Clara Do you want to be a part of the artificial intelligence revolution? NVIDIA is developing processor and system architectures that are at the forefront of accelerating machine learning, building data centers, and enabling other high-performance computing applications. As you will collaborate with hardware and software engineers to craft the next generation SoC and CPUs and bring a deep understanding of software architecture, system software technologies, and modern OS’ to drive hardware architecture decisions. Want to know more? . , Principal System Software Architect Find out how to apply here Accelerate your career in tech today via the Hackernoon Job Board

Almost Half of Workers Are 'Polyworking' or Have a Side Hustle

By Aoibhinn Mc Bride Holding your hands up and taking accountability for a mistake is never easy. So, spare a thought for the who are now admitting that hastily issuing return to office (RTO) orders wasn’t their best decision. 80% of business leaders A found that most leaders made their decision around forcing staff back to the office by analyzing keycard monitoring data and by seeing how many times meeting spaces were utilized, rather than by speaking to employees and taking their thoughts around returning to the office five days per week into consideration. new report by Envoy Additional data compiled by Owl Labs for its found that 69% of employees believe companies are insisting on a return to office because of traditional work expectations rather than functional benefits. State of Hybrid Work 2023 report Using employee monitoring data to ensure their staff are coming into the office is nothing new—companies including and have been using employee badge swipes to monitor in-office attendance for over a year—but is counting swipes the best way to make decisions around workplace location? JPMorgan Chase Google While 94% of those who took part in the Owl Labs survey shared that they could be convinced to come back to the office, 56% said their level of work-related stress increased since last year, highlighting that being in the office full-time isn’t serving everyone. Moving Forward So what can you do if your employer is insisting you wave goodbye to your home office for good and return to the office permanently? For starters, if commuting to an office every day is going to leave you worse off financially, you could ask for a pay rise to cover the cost—29% of those Owl Labs spoke to expect a pay increase if forced back to the office. Or perhaps you can speak to your manager about revising its technology so that it facilitates remote work more effectively, meaning you can adopt a hybrid working model instead. Additionally, you could try and negotiate a four-day week where you consolidate your work into four days but your . productivity and output stay the same However, if your employer is refusing to meet you half or even part of the way, one solution is to find a new job in a company that facilitates remote work. If so, the is the perfect place to start your search. HackerNoon Job Board It features thousands of jobs in companies that are actively hiring remote workers, including the three below. Senior Sales Engineer, Coder, Remote Coder is on a mission to build enterprise software that makes software developers’ lives easier and keeps them in flow. We are looking for a who will work with enterprise account executives to qualify, progress, and close revenue opportunities with Fortune 500 customers for Coder’s self-hosted Development Environment Platform. Senior Sales Engineer In this role, you will be a stakeholder in the technical relationship with customers, demonstrate the Coder platform from both the end user (developer) and administrator points of view, and install the Coder platform on various cloud and on-premise Kubernetes and VM infrastructure. . Find out more information here Product Manager, Search Platform Integration, Virtuoso Ltd, Remote Virtuoso is the leading global travel agency network specializing in luxury and experiential travel. The will oversee the integration of the Algolia search platform and play a crucial role in enhancing the search capabilities of the platform, ensuring a seamless and intuitive search experience for travel products, travel advisors, network-specific content, and travel inspiration content for valued travelers. Product Manager, Search Platform Integration As such, you will work closely with technical teams to define data structures, indexing strategies, and search algorithms that optimize search results across various content types. . See the full job description here Salesforce Solutions Architect, Vantage Point Consulting, Remote As a , you will play an integral role in the high satisfaction of Vantage Point's clients through the design and development of scalable, high-quality Salesforce services and solutions. Salesforce Solutions Architect The Solution Architect is responsible for owning the overall design of the technical application and recommending best practice solutions based on client business needs. . View additional details here Find your next job in tech today via the HackerNoon Job Board

Does Your Boss Regret Asking You to Come Back to the Office?

আপনার বস কি আপনাকে অফিসে ফিরে আসতে বলার জন্য অনুতপ্ত?

Bereut Ihr Chef es, Sie gebeten zu haben, ins Büro zurückzukehren?

¿Se arrepiente su jefe de haberle pedido que volviera a la oficina?

Votre patron regrette-t-il de vous avoir demandé de revenir au bureau ?

क्या आपके बॉस को आपको कार्यालय वापस आने के लिए कहने पर पछतावा है?

あなたの上司はあなたにオフィスに戻ってくるよう頼んだことを後悔していますか?

당신의 상사가 당신에게 사무실로 돌아오라고 한 것을 후회합니까?

Seu chefe se arrepende de ter pedido para você voltar ao escritório?

Сожалеет ли ваш начальник, что попросил вас вернуться в офис?

Patronunuz Ofise Geri Dönmenizi İstediğinden Pişman mı Oldu?

Sếp của bạn có hối hận khi mời bạn quay lại văn phòng không?

你的老板后悔让你回到办公室吗？

Enterprises are discovering new avenues for growth and opportunity because of digital transformation. More industries are adopting digital workplaces and hybrid models to create a more flexible and self-sufficient workforce. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, digital workplaces have transformed the way people collaborate and experience work. More companies are heavily reliant on technology for remote collaboration and operational efficiency. According to a study by Deloitte, implementing digital technologies augments the progress towards company goals by . In a rapidly evolving technology-driven ecosystem, digital initiatives are also responsible for creating more sustainable workplaces in and beyond. 22% 2021 However, the debate is still going on about whether remote work is better than on-site work, or whether a hybrid workplace model is the best fit for modern enterprises. What does the future of work look like? In a survey conducted by Accenture, it was identified that of high-revenue companies embrace the concept of hybrid workforce models. This states that most enterprises are keen on streamlining processes using technology that enables more efficient on-site work as well as remote work. 63% Ultimately digital transformation is driving industries to adopt new ways of working and upskilling their current workforce to meet future demands. Yet many businesses still rely on on-site workforces which is gradually changing with the introduction of new equipment, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. So, what is the difference between on-site work, remote work, and hybrid work? What are the pros and cons? Which workplace solution will determine the future of work? To answer these questions, let us understand the pros and cons of each workplace ecosystem. 1. On-site work Working at a location, a worksite or an office can provide a unified experience for the entire workforce. This can foster a physical sense of awareness, discipline, and unity. Most of us are familiar with this type of work as the set standard. While some people exclusively prefer on-site work, there are others who find remote work more advantageous. Each type of work has its own pros and cons. Pros of on-site work: Less distractions from family affairs More communication and interaction with colleagues Cohesive organizational culture which fosters a sense of purpose Access to company assets, facilities, and equipment Common, structured routine that enables discipline and productivity Cons of on-site work: Stressful, costly and lengthy commute times Increased overheads for the organization Higher energy costs for the organization and individual Frequent distractions from colleagues and coworkers An exclusive business ecosystem that some may find unfavorable While on-site work is slowly phasing out in various industries, there is still a large proportion of workers who are required to be on-site to perform certain tasks and functions of the business. Digital disruption will benefit the companies investing in developing technologies to automate strenuous processes. 2. Remote work Digital innovation has introduced digital workplaces, which highlights a lot of drawbacks of on-site workplace models. With the rise of technology, it became easier for people to work and collaborate remotely. Research by Owl Labs revealed that of the companies globally are already remote. Another study by CoSo Cloud recorded that of remote workers report being more productive when they work from home. 16% 100% 77% A parallel survey by Intuition also revealed that of employers surveyed will permit employees to work remotely post-pandemic. 47% Remote work is gaining prominence in numerous industries across various business verticals. Pros of remote work: Higher levels of productivity Freedom to work anywhere and at any time Save time and costs on commute More family time and personal time Less distractions from coworkers Virtual collaboration Cons of remote work: Social isolation and related problems Lack of interaction with the outside world Often results in communication gaps between teams Remote work trends picked up during the global pandemic of COVID-19, where many companies introduced remote work practices and policies. 3. Hybrid work Notably, key players in the IT and FinServ industries are determined to continue remote work post the pandemic. However, operations reliant on on-site workers will have to find a new and inventive workplace solution. That’s why hybrid workplaces can revolutionize the future of work. In a survey by Stanford, of workers prefer to spend some time at office and some time at home during work. preferred working from home permanently, while only said they want to work on-site full-time. 55% 25% 20% Hybrid work models vary from company to company. In many cases, employees are offered flexible work hours and remote work opportunities while a percentage of the workforce works on-site. This system is alternated depending on the business requirements. Pros of hybrid working: Employees have the freedom of remote work During on-site workdays, employees can get to know their coworkers better Companies can curb overhead costs by deploying hybrid workplace solutions Cons of hybrid working: Division between on-site and remote workers in the same organization Collaboration between two teams may be negatively impacted Managers and leaders may prefer teams they work with often, rather than a cohesive work culture The hybrid work model includes the many advantages of both on-site and remote workplace solutions. Yet every enterprise has its own goals. A hybrid model works best when the solution is designed for business-specific outcomes. Are Hybrid Workplaces the Future of Work? To materialize the hype around what the modern workplace will be like, experts at Technovert conducted an independent study on LinkedIn. The poll asked respondents to pick their preferred type of work. of voters opted for Hybrid work while chose Remote work and preferred Working from office. 47% 36% 17% LinkedIn Poll results Realizing that hybrid workplaces are a top preference by most voters, reflects changing employee expectations and their recent experiences. Majority of the voters who prefer a hybrid workplace understand the benefits of on-site work and vouch for the flexibility of remote work. Combining the two workplaces is the logical solution. The impact of hybrid workplaces will speed up innovation at every level of enterprise in the coming years. This will change the way we work and thus our perception of work as a whole. Digital transformation is reinventing the way we work Digital transformation has made way for technology that enables seamless workplace experiences that are flexible, adaptable and highly scalable. According to Gartner, of senior executives believe that digitalization is an organizational priority. Digital initiatives will determine the progressive nature of technology adoption in every office across the world. 87% For businesses to make better decisions, it is important to understand how various types of workplace solutions can impact their operational efficiency, and organization’s culture. Digital workplace solutions that are tailored to the unique demands of enterprises can map the growth and opportunity for companies of all sizes. The future of work is tech-driven workflow and flexible workplace policies, widely sought after by conglomerates and SMBs alike.

The Future of Work: On-site Work vs Remote Work vs Hybrid Work

How to Find and Hire the Top Remote Tech Talents in 2021 [Part 1]

The future is always full of uncertainty, and with the explosive growth of remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many are wondering what will happen to the workplace as the world slowly reopens. One thing that remains clear is that the pandemic has changed some things in our world permanently. Remote work is very likely one of those things. Although some workers will have to return to in-person work as restrictions are lifted, we should continue to see an overall steady rise in remote work. Lockdowns and quarantines forced many businesses to figure out a way to work remotely, and now that they’ve seen the benefits and overcome many of the challenges, there’s simply no turning back. Here are just some reasons why remote work is not going away. 1. The Pandemic is Not Dying Down Thanks to the available vaccines, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19 are down in many parts of the world, but the virus is still spreading in other places. Many that COVID-19 will become endemic and seasonal like the flu. It will hopefully become less deadly, but at this point, it is hard to say. Bringing everyone back to office space only to have to go virtual again at some point in the future will cause unnecessary stress and waste resources. scientists speculate Even if COVID-19 disappears completely, there is no reason to think that there won’t be another pandemic from a new virus in the near future. that due to climate change and further encroachment into animal habitats, there may be more new viruses that mutate and “jump” from animals to humans. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen, but the future is uncertain. Scientists worry What we do know is that remote work is better for employees’ physical health in general. With more remote work, there will likely be less spread of other viruses and illnesses such as the common cold and the flu as we saw in 2020. 2. Businesses are Realizing the Value of Remote Work There are numerous benefits to businesses for having a remote team. Before the pandemic, many businesses had not yet tried offering remote work, likely because they felt that productivity would decrease, workers would be unmotivated and distracted and communication would be a struggle. However, now that many companies have been forced to try out remote work due to lockdowns and regulations, they have learned that many of their fears about remote work were unfounded. Further, businesses have had a chance to see the benefits of remote work firsthand. It Saves Money It is estimated that a typical employer can save an average of remote worker per year. With a full-time remote team, businesses could save up to $22,000 per worker, per year, in addition to saving on overhead such as an office. $11,000 per half-time Employees save money as well by not having to spend as much on coffee, lunch, a professional wardrobe, and gas. A study from estimates that workers can save as much as $4,000 per year by working remotely. Flexjobs Easier Recruitment and Better Retention The overwhelming majority of workers prefer doing remote work to commuting into a physical office. Over 80% of workers surveyed by reported that working remotely would help them to be happier, feel more trusted, and be better able to handle work-life conflict. Owl Labs Offering remote work is a huge perk that will help employees stick around longer and will attract new talent. Increased Productivity A study done by found that most workers either kept the same level of productivity after a transition to remote work or increased their productivity. Without a commute or in-person meetings to attend, many workers reported that they were able to get more done. Great Place to Work Less Sick and Personal Days Used As mentioned above, remote work is generally better for the physical health of employees, even when not in the midst of a pandemic. Additionally, seasonal viruses and illnesses won’t spread through a remote team the way they would through an in-person team working together. Even though everyone on a team might get sick, it is very unlikely that they will all get sick at the same time. A found that remote workers take an average of 2.4 sick days per year, in comparison to the 2.6 taken by those working from company premises. study done by CartridgePeople.com With flexible work-from-home schedules and better work-life balance, it is likely that remote workers need to take fewer personal days as well. 3. Workers Are Unable and/or Unwilling to Return In-Person Since the start of the pandemic, many workers have left large cities and moved away from their offices. Others may have childcare issues due to adjustments made during lockdowns. Still, others have simply gotten used to all the benefits of remote work and are unwilling to return to an in-person workspace. According to , many people have already left jobs over the fact that they were requiring a return to the office. Managers of in-person teams also reported that it was “exceedingly difficult” to find candidates, especially quality ones, to fill an in-person-only position. research done by Slate 4. Global Teams Are On the Rise Worldwide employment by multinational companies headquartered in the U.S. and abroad has been and this is a trend that will likely continue. Diversity of thinking, creativity, and access to talent from anywhere are the top benefits noted by companies with global teams. Remote work allows companies to easily hire someone from anywhere in the world without having to ask them to move. Because of this, as the number of global teams increases, so will remote work. increasing 5. Better for the Environment Companies of all sizes are beginning to realize the importance of taking steps to help the environment. As things like climate change, and air pollution become more urgent problems. We are seeing large brands like taking big green initiatives. Switching to a remote team is another easy way that companies can help the environment by reducing travel significantly for their workers. Ikea, Apple, and Nike According to Fatmap, In 2017, transport was the largest contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the UK. Most employees cut their overall travel time down significantly when they switch to remote work. We saw the positive effect of this during the height of the pandemic when there was less congestion, cleaner air, and other . positive impacts on the environment Conclusion: It’s Time To Embrace Remote Work Although remote work was not in the game plan for many companies, it is clear now that embracing remote work is a smart choice. There are numerous benefits across the board and most of the challenges are easily overcome with the right cloud communication system and tech stack. In the near future, it is likely that working at a physical office will be the exception, not the rule.

5 Reasons Why Remote Work is Not Going Away

30 Web Design Trends To Look For in 2021

A job with 50 flights a year, and a life in back to back audio and video call meetings, and the same question over and over again in my mind: Why are all these conferencing platforms so shit, we’ve got AI making deep fakes from dead people in 4K with Dolby surround, and my colleague is still an unintelligible single delayed pixel falling off the edge of the screen out of sync, and no one seems to ever be able to share the right screen. No I’m still seeing the Presenter View. I quit a dream job with a multinational technology company last year to try and fix this. This is not my first rodeo but I quickly found out the problem was a lot deeper and fundamental then I expected. Then Covid happened and now everyone’s asking the same question I was asking: Why are all these conferencing platforms so shit. Let me take you down the rabbit hole I find myself that’s all about choosing where you attack on the value stacks, market dynamics of an oddly sized fragmented market, and what I think could be one of the greatest business opportunities I’ve seen in ages. Analysis Paralysis There’s been numerous surveys done on the problems with video conferencing, you’ll know the list: , the list goes on, long and familiar. Audio issues, sync issues between video and voice, poor picture quality, latency, echo problems and hearing yourself, people not hearing you and not being able to interrupt them And then there’s been many physiological studies on why we have such a negative experience, from the effect of lack of eye contact suggesting dishonesty, to the overloading of the brain the division of people into little boxes on the screen causes, and the decremental effects of hearing yourself. So the Google’s and the Microsoft’s of this world, or the younger focused companies like Zoom, why haven’t the titans of technology, fixed these already? The Heart of the Problem The reason these tools are not great is actually really obvious if you’ve used a specialised commercial software or service, like your own homemade HR or holiday booking system in your company, or one of those websites for a small local government service for example, they’re all terrible to use, full of bugs, and don’t work well or as expected. The reason is there’s just not that big a user-base to justify the invest to build something better. Building robust reliable services with well thought out UX takes a lot of investment. Before Covid hit, the whole of the video conferencing market in the US was only worth about $3.85B (USD). It was split about 50/50 between HW and SW/Service. Also, corporate conferencing, the bit you first think of, is only about a quarter of the market again, with other submarkets like Education, Healthcare, Government and Defence making the other pieces. If you think the corporate platforms are not great, you should see the other specialised ones, they’re shockingly bad. So we’ve started with not that great a number, and divided it by 2, and then divided by 4, you’re now in the Which isn’t that big a number if you think about it. 100s of millions of dollars range. Then of course the market is fragmented, and each company has a smaller piece of this. When you get to those levels of revenue, quite frankly the return on investment on building say a new advance echo cancellation system isn’t great. If you looks at the teams behind many of these products, a large part of the operational cost is around the sales organisation, winning and keeping those customers, and the engineering teams are grossly under resourced and overloaded. Which brings me to the other characteristic of this market: Imagine you were using one of those virtual background capabilities that are very fashionable at the moment, that cut people out of their background and make them look like they’re on the beach (for some reason) and it didn’t recognise the face of your colleague that has darker skin properly, and they disappeared. You can imagine that happening, and that’s the exact reason you wouldn’t use that feature in a serious meeting. The need for extremely high reliability. For a capability to reach that enterprise level quality it needs to be truly well qualified for all edge scenarios, and all biases to be removed, and again that adds significant cost, and reduces the ROI further. And that’s the main reason these tools aren’t great. Making them better isn’t outside the roam of human capability, it’s just that they’re not worth it for the companies to do, all the best engineers in the world are off pushing the envelope on deep fakes, they don’t have time for this stuff. How to Fix it To find the solution we need to go back to those budget local government websites, and free service apps again. In the last 5 years some of them have got a lot better, Why? In big part this is due to the availability of various intermediate technology stacks that you can build your service on top of. Everyone knows you’re not gonna go out there now and buy your own servers, you’ll use AWS/GCP/Azure for the compute and serving capability, but a lot of the underlaying SW you need to deal with capabilities like accounts, billing, data management, security, and frameworks for UIs are either available for free, or there’s great paid for services, and they are so much better than anything you could ever make yourself, because they have the economy of scale. You’ll left to make the application SW only so your investment goes a lot further. The world of video and audio conferencing doesn’t have this, you can’t buy in all those well-developed underlying capabilities you need, well not yet anyway. You’d have to build a lot of it yourself. If you set out to build your own video conferencing platform tomorrow, say with a flow that was more usable, or say you wanted to focus and build something with certain features suitable for , you’d likely get the HW on AWS, you’ll use open source for the OS and server infrastructure, you’ll even be able to find a great white-label video conferencing SW platform, free or paid to take and tailor, but if you use these pieces and build your application on top of it, better screen sharing remote exercise classes you’d likely have poor audio quality, and echo problems, and disappointing video performance. If you wanted better quality there, even on par with the Zooms and Microsofts of this world, you’ll have to sink millions into making your own audio/video signal processing, since there isn’t anything out there free or paid for that’s any good and properly qualified, and yes big guys like Microsoft, Google and Zoom have their own, but they’re not gonna sell just that capability to you to build a competing platform to them, and there’s isn’t even that good, because they couldn’t justify the investment needed in the first place (as explained above). Go a bit more application specific, that background swap feature, you’d have to build your own and it to make sure it works for all kinds of webcams, and rooms shapes, and backgrounds, and skin tones, etc. That’s a reasonable investment, and that’s only to get you on par with the incumbents. fully qualify So unfortunately despite your best intentions your platform will be just as bad, if not worse, and even though you have better screen sharing flow, or suitable market features, people will not want to use your product. The way to break this situation is that we need independent technology companies that want to invest and do the audio and video signal processing well, and their business model is setup to sell these capabilities to the conferencing platform providers, new and old. At this point, the solution should be obvious: The benefit of this approach is that . If you develop a great real time noise cancelling capability, AI powered, highly qualified, you can sell this to all the major conferencing providers, and not just corporate, but also education, healthcare, and even other markets outside of conferencing. Now the market size is big enough to justify the investment, and you’re not then trying to build, market and sell a whole conferencing platform to end users, but just this capability. the ROIs start making sense If you look at the conferencing market, and want to make it better, It won’t be better, you just won’t have pockets deep enough, and even if you did, you’ll never get a reasonable return on it. Try not to be the hero and household name, instead identify the underlying technologies that would make the existing platforms better or enable better new platforms, develop them, and find a business model that allows you to sell them to many. I believe the worst thing you could do is to try and make another conferencing platform. , there would be major independent technology companies at various levels of value stack. There would be 2 or 3 companies offering great noise suppression capabilities, some would also have echo cancelling, there would a number of technology companies offering great real-time video processing capabilities, and there would be startup’s breaking through with new advance capabilities for this market, some quite high up the value stack with very application specific features. If I were to describe a world where video conferencing isn’t rubbish As an end user of conferencing you wouldn’t be buying these capabilities from these companies, in fact , but the conferencing platform providers you use and know, would buy these capabilities from the companies mentioned above, and this would free the platform companies to use those sales organisations to listen to the end customers, figure out what they need at the application level, and tailor products to work the way the customers want, with access to rich powerful underlying technologies from various suppliers. you would likely never hear the name of these companies at all To fix this market we need an ecosystem of players, that is the solution to the problem, not one vertical behemoth owning the whole stack. We’ve seen that doesn’t work. The Change is Coming With the explosion in video conferencing due to Covid-19, the market size has obviously grown, but it’s too early to know how much of this change and size increase is here to stay, but beside the market size growing and allowing the big players to justify their investments on technology, finally, independently we’re started to see more companies trying to build the underlaying technologies with a sell to all business model, rather than making their own platform. On noise suppression a great example is a startup called , building an AI power noise suppressor. Other recent examples are a tool in beta called from All Turtles, which is a set of features mostly around video and image processing to make the experience of video calls more productive. Krisp mmhmm Today these companies are offering their capabilities as plugins that the end user can use with any conferencing platform. I think it feels inevitable that for these startups to succeed they will have to evolve out of offering plugins to end users and become technology suppliers to the platform providers, but that in itself is a journey they will have to go through. This is more than just Video Conferencing You might be thinking some of this real time audio signal processing capabilities must have existed for years, my phone does it, surely not every phone manufacturer is going trying to build their own capabilities from scratch? If you go back 5 years, the majority of the audio signal processing was happening on the communication devices themselves, like your phone, or your physical conference phone sitting in the conference room, and even on your laptop, and traditional integrated circuit and signal processing companies like Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectornics, have been providing real time signal processing capabilities for decades. But two things have happened recently, that changes things up: - While the initial signal processing in the devices remain, we’re seeing a emergence of the more advance signal processing capabilities away from the devices themselves to the cloud, where there’s more information, or information from multiple devices, enabling much better processing opportunities for certain problems - Advances in AI for both audio and video processing, combined with the vast increase in centralised processing capability has increased the possibilities but has also pushed the signal processing further up from the embedded devices in many cases and away from the offerings of the traditional incumbents in the real-time signal processing space. I believe and hopeful that we’ll witness : Either the traditional power houses of signal processing, predominately the IC manufactures, will grow their AI driven capability and transition further up the signal processing chain, and offer more application specific audio and video processing capability, or There’s a real need for this. one of 2 things over the next decade in this space of real-time signal processing we’ll see a new breed of major company emerge, filling that gap in the ecosystem, providing application specific real-time signal processing capabilities. So What Am I Doing About All This? I have a new startup, but we’re still in stealth, so we’re not talking much about what we’re doing at the moment, but we have a couple of cool bits technology and our goal is to build state-of-the-art, fully qualified audio and video signal processing capabilities, with a focus in the voice and video communication and conferencing market, no surprises there. We want to make video conferencing better, a lot better. We’re experimenting with a sort of business model, where you pay for the real time processing of audio and video feeds in the cloud in a by minute model, this way regardless of your size and application you can get hold of the best signal processing needed for your application, and you also don’t need to worry about the infrastructure or latency, it’s all taken care of. Digital Signal Processing as a Service (DSPaaS) We’re hoping to flip this market on its head, and if we do our job right, you’ll never hear our name, but your video conference platform, whichever one you use, and whatever you use it for, should suddenly get a whole lot better. References If you want to learn and read more on the space, here’s some links to the studies, market analysis and companies I talked about in the article above: A nice survey by OWLLabs on the the state of video conferencing in 2018, and some commentary on what some of the biggest challenges in using video conferencing is OWLLabs — State of Video Conferencing 2018 https://www.owllabs.com/state-of-video-conferencing Some commentary in the article on study of the effect of lack of eye contact in video conferencing, and how it causes lack of trust Ksenia Klykova — The impact of videoconferencing on business travel: an historical point of view https://medium.com/sam/the-impact-of-videoconferencing-on-business-travel-an-historical-point-of-view-3b5fa85e0a9d New feature from Microsoft Teams, but interestingly their study in seeing that having people in different boxes on the screen seems to make you more tired Tom Warren — Microsoft Teams’ new Together Mode is designed for pandemic-era meetings https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/8/21317526/microsoft-teams-together-mode-dynamic-view-new-features If you want to find out more information about the video conferencing market sizes and segmentations Grand View Research — Video Conferencing market Size, Share 7 Trends Analysis Report https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/video-conferencing-market Another look at the video conferencing market, with sub market breakdown — Corporate, Education, Healthcare, etc Fortune Business Insights — Video Conferencing Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type, By Application, By Enterprise Size and Regional Forecast https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/video-conferencing-market-100293 There’s a few, but OpenVidu is an free or paid for white label video conferencing platform, based on Kurento, that you can take and build your own video conferencing platform on top of pretty quickly for example OpenVidu and Kurento https://openvidu.io https://www.kurento.org Krisp, is that noise suppression startup I was talking about above. They have a free plugin you can try Krisp https://krisp.ai mmhmm is that beta tool that help with screen sharing and processes the video on calls, on their website at the moment at least you can find a video explaining what they’re doing. I’ve added the link for the video as well. mmhmm https://www.mmhmm.app https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8KhKBLoSMk This is our new startup company working in this space, there’s almost no information on the website at the moment, sorry. Pommelhorse https://pommelhorse.com

Why is Video Conferencing so SH*T - Surely we can do better than this

For the vast majority of people in tech, one of the side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the switch to working remotely. , for some, this may become a long-term reality, too. If Twitter is anything to go by Among the many questions surrounding remote work is the always burning issue of productivity, with all 17 levels of management (in an average organization) wondering if remote employees can be as productive if they work from home. To answer this, we turn to science and the remote work productivity research that has been conducted over the years addressing this particular issue. 1. Increased engagement and job satisfaction Even the birds in the trees have heard of that professor Nicholas Bloom presented in his TED talk in 2017, sharing some staggering results. Among other things, the study showed that the employees who switched to working exclusively from home were much more productive than their in-office counterparts, amounting to a whole day’s work every week. a Stanford 500-people study Professor Bloom suggested that this boost in productivity stemmed mostly from the lack of commute and some other, rather pedestrian reasons. Gallup, however, suggests something far more interesting. , they discovered that people who worked remotely a certain part of their workweek (the sweet spot somewhere between 60-80% in favor of remote work) were more engaged. According to them, the 15% bump in productivity that follows increased engagement is the main reason for the increased productivity of remote employees. In their research from 2016 Another positive effect that remote work has on employees is the overall job satisfaction. showed that 71% of remote workers are satisfied with their jobs as opposed to only 55% of on-site employees. Owl Labs’ remote work reports 2. Better work-life balance Finding the right work-life balance is a particularly sensitive issue in the tech industry, with sleepless nights, neglected private lives, and crunch modes that become the norm plaguing pretty much every niche. It turns out that remote work might be just what the doctor ordered. At least according to Indeed, whose showed that improved work-life balance was the most obvious benefit that respondents felt when working at least some time remotely (more than 75% of them). recent survey All the time not wasted on commuting, more sleep (we all know ), the ability to spend more time with family and generally being around loved ones more can definitely have a seriously positive effect on one’s work-life balance and productivity. how bad lack of sleep can be 3. Dull vs. creative work While a number of studies show that you can expect a bump in productivity stemming from remote work, there is a particularly interesting study that shows things aren’t that black or white. Namely, shows that remote work will have contrasting effects on productivity, depending on the type of work that is being done. On the one side of the spectrum, we have creative work that benefits from a remote setting, and, on the other, we have dull, repetitive work that gets more difficult to do equally well in a remote setting. a 2012 study by E. Glenn Dutcher In short, remote work is great for creative work, bad for dull work. It should be pointed out that the study was quite limited in the number of participants (just more than 120) and that the author himself says it would be a mistake to over-generalize the results of his study. 4. Lack of communication nuances One of the more ubiquitous experiences for people who have switched to working remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic has been and other types of remote communication. video conferencing And while some may think not much is lost by communicating online, the science would not agree. , Stanford psychologist Jeremy Bailenson, there are certain aspects of online video communication that simply do not feel natural and make us become tired sooner. According to an expert in virtual communication For instance, he points out the constant eye-to-eye contact, which doesn’t actually happen in face-to-face communication where our gaze constantly moves. He also mentions the fact that with video meetings, we are actually much “closer” to one another than we would be in person, as we keep our screen much closer to our faces than we would actual people. Bailenson also emphasizes the lack of natural, unstructured social interaction and exchange of ideas that happens in the workplace that cannot be replicated virtually. The absence of microexpressions and body language clues also impedes natural communication in a remote setup. Another study that reinforces Bailenson’s statements is whose respondents, “emphasized the loss of the valuable, quick communication that is only possible through face-to-face interactions with their colleagues.” a very recent one by Masayuki Morikawa from RIETI 5. Loneliness can be serious When we are talking about the negative sides of remote work, the most commonly reported problem is the feeling of isolation and loneliness that many people start to feel after some time. For example, identified loneliness as the second-most common struggle that remote workers feel, closely following difficulties to unplug after work is done. Almost 20% of their respondents said that they feel lonely working remotely. Buffer’s 2019 State of Remote Work report pointed out that their interviewees felt that they were missing out on office interactions and relationships. Another paper by Christine A Grant, Louise Margaret Wallace, and Peter Spurgeon There is a particularly interesting VitalSmarts survey covered in , which tells an even more alarming story. The study in question asked more than 1,100 participants how much they agree with certain statements like: a 2017 article on HBR Colleagues don’t fight for my priorities. Colleagues say bad things about me behind my back. Colleagues make changes to a project without warning me. Colleagues lobby against me. Across the board, remote employees were more likely to agree with the statements, showing that they felt more than just isolated. They felt shunned and even ganged upon. Closing word There are a few things that have to be pointed out here. For one, it can be dangerous making any generalizations based on a couple of studies (often limited in scope themselves). Moreover, many of the negative effects of remote work can be addressed by smart processes and better involvement from various people in an organization. Finally, we need to be aware of the fact that nothing is normal now and that our abruptly introduced remote work reality is absolutely influenced by the other, often more serious, effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

5 Important Takeaways From 9 Remote Work Productivity Studies

Due to COVID-19, companies have found themselves in the middle of the . Many hail remote work as a blessing, allowing employees to continue working while practicing social distancing during this uncertain time. world’s largest work-from-home experiment Of course, even before coronavirus grabbed our attention, many companies were already adapting various telecommuting and remote work policies. A 2019 study by Owl Labs found that 16% of global companies were fully remote, and 40% were hybrid (companies who offer both remote and in-office options). There are good reasons why companies have been embracing the remote work culture. From , s, and enabling access to a larger talent pool, remote work has many benefits. boosting productivity reducing the cost of operation However, for all its advantages, remote work also presents many unique challenges. Companies must establish communication norms, address diminished productivity due to lack of supervision, and create systems for managing accountability, tracking projects, executing payroll, and prioritizing cybersecurity. Taken together, these hurdles pose a significant hindrance to fruitful remote work. Fortunately, with the right strategy and tools, you can effectively identify and address these issues to fully reap the benefits of a remote team. For those enacting a rapid transition to digital work or even for veteran leaders of decentralized teams, here are five best practices to ensure that your operation runs smoothly. #1 Adopt Remote Security Measures Ensuring security, privacy, and data protection in a fully remote setup will be difficult. Traditional intrusion prevention systems, firewalls, and sandboxes are not enough now that employees are no longer under your corporate security perimeter. While VPNs are being advertised as a solution, . they are not the quick fix that many companies expect them to be One workaround is an endpoint-based data loss prevention (eDLP) solution. It can monitor and protect your employees’ workstations instead of just the servers and nodes on your network. This has the benefit of preventing data leaks by mitigating risk at the user level, where the . majority of cybersecurity threats occur Another approach that companies can take is to utilize virtual machines on Windows, VMware Horizon, AWS/Azure/GCP, or set up a Terminal Server for their remote team. With this arrangement, employees can then login to the server using RDP while continuing to protect the company’s sensitive network and repositories. This is particularly useful if you have third-party contractors or other external users you need to support. #2 Implement a Communication Policy Frequent and fluid communications are keys to a successful remote team. Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangout, Telegram, 8×8, WebEx, and Jabber all are useful tools. Many of them are offering free services for a limited time. In many cases, cell phone providers are also extending or removing the data cap. However, due to increased demand, you may experience some limitations and disruptions. For example, Zoom recently removed the dial-in by phone audio conferencing capabilities from its Basic plan. Most recently, because it was overloaded with activity. It’s a good idea to have a backup plan in case your default service fails. Microsoft Teams went down for over two hours Regardless of your brand preference, select one that has end-to-end encryption. If you want better protection, you can adapt a Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Content Monitoring and Filtering (CMF), or Extrusion Prevention System (EPS) solution. Many of these have real-time monitoring for email and IM/chat conversations to prevent sensitive data exfiltration over your communication channels. #3 Utilize Team Collaboration Tools Office 365, Google Apps, and other collaboration suites have built-in tools that allow employees to work together seamlessly. You can also use cloud drives to enable document sharing. When doing so, don’t forget to implement access control policies so that sensitive documents don’t get into the wrong hands. Use project management tools for assigning team responsibilities, defining project priorities and tasks, and providing clear directions. This is critical for remote team collaborations.  The right tools provide employee clock-ins, create and track projects and tasks in real-time, integrate with your support systems/PM systems, and many other useful features to improve team collaboration and engagement. #4 Monitor Employee Engagement and Productivity Remote workers . However, flexible and “always-on” hours can that neither supports employee well being nor promotes company priorities. Therefore, establishing a consistent workflow that measures team performance is critical to ensuring that your team stays productive and doesn’t suffer alienation, burnout, or . can be highly productive lead to a burnout culture app-overload Specifically, a user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) software can be utilized to track employee behavior for signs of stress or other abnormalities. Of course, companies should implement this software carefully because many employee monitoring and time tracking software solutions allow you to record screens. This can be demotivating and hamper productivity. Instead, focus on activity and outcomes to support both employees and employers. #5 Manage Your Remote Team with (Special) Care The truth is, many managers are not trained to manage remote employees. After all, traditional management practices focus on personalized interactions, body language, and other soft skills that do not translate well in a virtual world. Remote employees also have unique needs that require special attention. For example, found that remote workers struggle with unplugging from work, loneliness, and collaboration/communications. Make sure your managers are mindful of these social elements. It seems counterintuitive, but technology can help address many of these “human” challenges. Conducting daily one-to-ones, using video conferencing, organizing “shenanigans,” “watercooler,” or casual team time, ideas generation sessions (for example, using for remote brainstorming and engagement), flexible scheduling – all are useful tips. The key is to invest in the extra effort and pay attention to your employees. a survey conducted by Buffer Mural While painful, this could be the movement. By the time we reach the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work will likely be even more normative than before. Companies should prepare now with a full understanding of the remote workflow, security, productivity, and monitoring tools, so that they can manage decentralized teams at scale – for the future of remote work is already here. watershed moment for the work-from-home This article was originally published on IT Security Central and reprinted with permission.

5 Remote Working Best Practices and Tips in the Era of Coronavirus Pandemics

Hi there! My name is , I’m a Product Manager. In this essay of the series I will share with you . Previous parts of the series you can find here: , . Vitalii Berdichevskyi 2020 HR Tech trends research Part 1 Part 2 What you will find in the essay: HR Tech trends Hypothesis about future of distributed work after COVID-19 A collection of handpicked links I used in the research HR Tech trends 1. Specialization For example, Job boards (marketplaces) - despite the existence of “whales” like LinkedIn, Indeed, Careerbuilder, and Monster, there is a growing industry of niche Job boards that focus on job types, geos, skills, and industries. 2. Distributed work The number of employees who work remotely in the USA (remotely = work from home more than 2 days a week) is 4.7 million people or 3.6% of the total number of employees (Source: ) Flex jobs REmote job statistics The hypothesis is that after COVID-19, the number of distributed workforces will grow. The longer employees work remotely, the more a habit is developed, the more of them will remain to work remotely after quarantine. Figures confirming hypotheses: 42% of remote workers plan to work remotely more often than they currently do over the next 5 years. 80% of employees want to work from home at least part of the time (Source: ) OWLLabs State of Remote Work 2019 The growth forecast for employees working more than 2 days a week outside the office after the end of the information noise around Coronovirus is 25-30% of the total number of working people in the USA (39-46 million people) in the next 2 years (source: ) Global Workplace Analytics 56% of the workforce in the United States has work that is compatible (at least partially) with remote work Gallup data show that the percentage of workers who worked remotely for some time in 2016 was 43% (4% more than in 2012) Reduced fear among supervisors of remote employees. One reason is that managers themselves work remotely. Research data says that 56% of companies already allow remote work (16% completely remotely, 40% hybrid; (source: ) OWLLabs: Global State of remote work 2018 Unemployment continues to reach generational lows with every Jobs Report from the U.S. Department of Labor, and from every international reporting agency. So offering employees hybrid or completely remote job could help employers to attract talents The ability of enterprises to reduce costs by reducing the cost of offices and the transfer of employees to remote work. The survey data say that more than a third of workers are ready to reduce wages by up to 5% in exchange for the opportunity to work remotely for at least some time; a quarter is ready to cut wages by 10%; 20% ready for even greater reduction in return for schedule flexibility (Source: ) OWLLabs State of Remote Work 2019 3. Conversational HR technology Technologies like chatbots and messaging interfaces have led to rudimentary process improvements like automating repetitive and administrative tasks. The result is a creep in the number of applications used to interface with employees. These technologies will tie into core HR platforms, reducing the burden of repetitive employee relations transactions and streamlining data collection and analytics 4. Running into skills-based everything With global unemployment continuously setting new record-lows, the cost of replacing existing talent is far greater than "re-skilling" them. Retention has always been an action-driver for HR, but when a visible employer like Amazon commits to retrain a third of its workforce with an investment of approximately USD $700 Million, CEOs everywhere take note. Taking inventory of a company’s existing skills, mapping that to the jobs internally, then matching based on an algorithm, sprinkling in some machine learning or AI… factoring in data from a workforce planning initiative – using the same data to then look at candidates externally. Integration: demonstrable integrations to the internal systems that feed the matching engines AND the talent management processes and systems in place that guide the employee on their newly defined path. Learning: Matching without learning is a direction without a GPS. If we're going to point the employee in a direction based on their interest, skills, cognitive abilities, and more we need to connect the employee into the learning path to reach the destination. In this case we mean the "royal" learning - skills and compliance certification, casual learning, micro-learning, mentor-based learning, self-learning, external learning. All of whatever is available, via integration or natively. 5. Job boards and marketplaces which add bigger value Temp/Contract to Hire Model: as work is becoming more distributed and more contingent, job board marketplaces have the ability to offer projects that lead to full time employment. There's an emerging opportunity  for employers to offer project work to universities, community colleges, skills certification programs, veteran-focused jobs initiatives, state government run job training programs, second chance career  organizations, and more. Certified Talent:  Skills can be tested and cognitive abilities can be assessed with validity.  Backgrounds can be checked. Certifications can be validated. Initial screening can be completed. All before the candidate is presented to the employer, or at any point along the way. Marketplaces with the right resources and  tech can begin to look like automated  recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) firms in the near future, delivering a better candidate experience with potentially one process for multiple employers, and a more turnkey solution for employers. A collection of handpicked links I used in the research Below is the link to handpicked resources I have used in Google Sheet format. What’s inside: Articles Industry reports List of top HR tech influencers and many more. To use filters you can easily make a copy of the file and save it to your Google Drive. A collection of handpicked resources Summing it up Specialization - even though there are alot of wales in each subcategory there are still a lot of room for niche players COVID19 may boost the total number of working people in the USA remotely to (39-46 million people) in the next 2 years Skill based solutions requires integration and learning Job boards-marketplaces can begin to look like automated recruitment process outsourcing firms in the nearest future P.S. This essay was previously published at . If you have any questions about the research or are in love with creating products - please feel free to ping me on or . Lampovoeit.space Facebook LinkedIn

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