7 min
In the last decades, new technologies have changed the way companies work and they have represented multiple advantages for both companies and employees. Its implementation has also allowed the introduction of new employment trends such as telework, which is already a reality in crescendo due to benefits such as increased staff satisfaction, increased productivity and cost savings. According to Cisco, 64% of companies consider providing greater mobility to their employees as one of their top priorities. Without a doubt, as the workforce becomes more global and more mobile, technology will increasingly become a key factor for the success of companies.
The impact of new technologies on workspaces
The integration of the new technologies is favoring a deep transformation of the companies that points in the direction of five key trends that will intensify during the next years: the workplace as a competitive advantage, favoring the satisfaction of the employees at work, the increase of mobility and remote work, a greater work-life balance, and the intensification of the culture of sharing. And in all this, the introduction of artificial intelligence, digital tools or cloud-based communication systems, are playing a determining role.
Artificial intelligence in the workplace
The introduction of artificial intelligence in companies frees employees from those tedious and routine tasks they have been forced to do day after day, from retrieving documents or writing and sending emails, to scheduling meetings to find out the best time and place based on the analysis of data contained in the exchanged emails. But artificial intelligence is also capable of producing reports based on data and even diagnosing a disease and recommending an appropriate treatment. Thus, the so-called “vertical artificial intelligence” allows to automate tasks and free up time for the employees that can be dedicated to much more creative and productive actions.
The revolution of digital tools
The adoption of Software as a Service tools such as Dropbox, iCloud, Microsoft 365, Gmail or Google Drive, among others, allows employees access to information from anywhere, at any time and through any device. The ease of information and knowledge exchange is another of the most visible advantages. But the cloud also brings other interesting benefits to companies, including:
- Preventing possible information losses as it is stored in the cloud and not in a specific device that can be lost or damaged.
- The availability of information is automatic and instantaneous.
- Facilitates mobility and remote work.
- It allows you to determine which person has access and what type of information one have access to.
Together with the cloud, collaborative work tools allow you to add the individual intelligences of team members and work together on the same project, once again, regardless of the geographical distance between the different collaborators. We refer to writing tools such as Co-ment, Amara or Titanpad; decision-making tools such as Appgree, Agora Voting, Democracia en red, Your priorities or Doodle; debate tools as Incoma or Loomio; collection and selection of contents tools like Reddit, Stackexchange or Menéame; mapping tools such as Ushahidi or Open Street Map; data analysis and research tools such as Zooniverse, Boinc, or Project Gutemberg; obtaining resources tools; digital action tools; and a long etcetera.
Teleconferencing and virtual meeting rooms are other booming digital tools within companies driven by better compression techniques that reduce the need for bandwidth, higher image and sound quality, or reduced connection costs by facilitating, once again, communication between people who are not in the same geographical location, and also reducing costs and travel times, among other benefits.
On the other hand, messaging and communication always on tools like Skype, WhasApp or Telegram, are breaking the barriers of what until now was understood to be a messaging application, enhancing the security and privacy of conversations, as well as groups and mega-groups, free voice and video calls or the exchange of all kinds of files like images, videos, pdf documents, Word, etc., not to mention the bots in Telegram and the benefits that these can bring to the customer service of the companies.
Virtual PBXs allow unlimited extension of fixed and mobile extensions and offer up to 80% cheaper calls (free between extensions); do not require large initial investments, activation costs or penalties; its management is simple and intuitive and also is integrated with a wide range of advanced functionalities of intelligent phone systems as a virtual operator, voice recognition and text-to-speech, virtual voicemail, intelligent routing, database interaction and much more.
Telecommuting, an upward trend in new digital companies
Another of the consequences of the integration of new technologies in the companies is the telework. It is increasingly common for employees to perform their tasks remotely without being present in what is traditionally understood as a workplace.
Companies and employees share in the benefits of telecommuting. A recent study by Cisco reveals that companies could increase their productivity by up to 23%, reduce their physical presence costs by up to 18% and cut absenteeism rates by up to 63%.
Telecommuting makes employees happier, which translates into an increased productivity and commitment to the company. At the same time, the company achieves greater efficiency in the management of its resources, reduces costs and minimizes employee “leakage”. But despite these and other benefits and the facilities provided by digital tools such as those mentioned above, there are still many organizations that do not promote telework. In fact, only 22% of Spanish companies have real teleworking programs.
Keys to introducing telecommuting in a company
Precisely for an effective introduction of telecommuting in the company, it is necessary to develop good planning, to implement it gradually and to establish adequate monitoring and evaluation of the results.
Some of the key premises to consider before implementing a telecommuting policy in the company are:
- Telecommuting is not valid for all companies; even sometimes it is only viable for certain areas of a company. In these cases, it is necessary to devise compensation systems in order to avoid comparative grievances between areas.
- It should be planned in the middle term, drawing up a roadmap that specifies how it is to be introduced and which employees it will affect. In any case, the implementation should be progressive, starting with a pilot program involving the employees in whom it is most trusted and who can provide an enriching feedback before extending the model to the whole company.
- Telecommuting should be organized in a way that responds to the needs of each company, always preferring to implement a few days of teleworking weekly to divide a day.
- The teleworker must be given the freedom to organize his own workday, but setting goals that allow him to evaluate his performance and ensure that time is not wasted.
- Finally, it is necessary to establish a periodic evaluation of the results that are being obtained in order to apply the appropriate adjustments.
New telecommuting trends
The proliferation of telecommuting is making flourish a whole range of new trends linked to freer, natural and near-vacation lifestyles. Working is not at odds with enjoying paradisiac beaches, with the harmony and pure air of nature or with the almost mystical atmosphere of a restored monastery. Under the so-called “digital nomads“, people whose main objective is to travel at the same time as they work, new emerging trends have emerged defined by concepts such as:
- The independent location or ability to live where one wants.
- Knowmads, neologism that tries to define the nomads of knowledge able to work at any time and place.
- The lifestyle design or the design of your own model of life.
All this is possible with only one condition: having a good access to the network. Stuart Jones, founder of Coworkation, is clear about the thrust of these new trends in telecommuting:
The results improve when you step out of your routine and place yourself in a place that inspires you. Sitting in a chair for four hours in an office does not work if you’re looking to make decisions and find inspiration.”
Telecommuting as a millennial philosophy
Facilities, advantages and benefits of telecommuting fit perfectly with Millennials’ philosophy of “working to live, not living to work.
A recent study carried out by ManPowerGroup involving more than 19,000 young people from 25 countries born between the 1980s and the early 2000s shows that more than 85% of millennials consider more important to have flexibility at work (that allows leisure time) than have a good salary.
In addition, they are much more interested in the international options offered by companies, since this reduces the ties and allows them to know new cultures, something very in line with those emergent new tendencies of telecommute that were mentioned before.
In conclusion, it is clear that the adoption of new technologies in the business environment is not only transforming the organizations themselves, but also peoples life models.
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