Steering the Future Workspace: Insights into [7 Key Trends]

“The digitization of the office helps immensely in this regard. Not only can you enable remote teams to work from home and avoid expending travel-related emissions, but also track your progress through digital processes and record-keeping.”

3. People Will Demand More Transparency From Higher-Ups

Accountability is becoming a common theme. Recent months have made lower-level employees more demanding of their management groups when it comes to being transparent about events and business strategies. Even the administrators themselves strive to keep staff and clients informed of their intentions, as doing so:

• Keep your eye on the ball when it comes to corporate goals and objectives
• Fosters employee loyalty
• Let staff know what their roles and responsibilities are in the firm
• Attracts the right type of employees when you’re looking for new hires

A disturbing trend in corporate culture in recent years is everyone blindly agreeing to everything the company does out of fear of seeming like an outcast from the team. Businesses should strive to encourage two-way communication and allow for disagreements no matter their nature. Everyone should have an opportunity to express an opinion without fear of getting fired.

To that end, social media, online forums, and unified communications allow for proactive feedback from staff. Be willing to open up transparency and allow anybody to ask questions regarding leadership and business initiatives.

4. Customers Are Going Digital

A large driving force behind the sudden digital transformations of many companies is consumer demand shifting towards online shopping rather than brick-and-mortar stores. Food deliveries were made online, and shipping a new appliance over Amazon became the norm. This trend began well before the pandemic, but it certainly sped up as a result of everyone having to stay indoors all day.

The implication for businesses here is that their sales and marketing teams must focus even more on Internet-enabled interactions with customers rather than face-to-face ones. Digital investments went up significantly to $1.3 trillion globally in 2020, and they continue to grow.

5. The Rise of Remote Work is Part of the Future Workspace

Here’s a trend that certainly wasn’t popular before COVID. Most businesses had to scramble to generate remote modern office workspace environments when the pandemic hit with varying degrees of success. Nonetheless, this trend had several important side effects on the labor market:

• • About 8 out of 10 organizations will continue to allow employees to work remotely at least part of the time according to a Gartner survey.
• • The result is that remote work will be here to stay even as lockdown restrictions subside. It’s been predicted that, by 2025, 70% of the workforce will be remote for at least 5 days a month.
• • The higher incidence of remote labor also has the side effect of cutting down on the corporate real estate market, with 7 out of 10 companies thinking about reducing their real estate ownership in the next couple of years.

While in-house employees won’t necessarily disappear for all industries, the modern future workspace must be more agile, allowing for partial remote operation at all times. The driving force behind this change will be the quality of remote unified communications every business has access to.

Some features that businesses should consider as part of their unified communications include an in/out-of-office indicator. In a hybrid model that we’ll discuss later, knowing which staff members are on-site or off-site at any given time can be incredibly useful for employee management. 

And now that everyone is carrying a smartphone around (or even a wearable smart device), some companies use Beacons to track the location of workers during office hours no matter where they are. This way, you don’t have to “clock in” necessarily to be credited with your efforts. Remember to follow any international regulations like the EU’s GDPR regarding how you can capture, store, and use employee data.

6. The Popularity of the Hybrid Work Model

The truth is that not all industries will go 100% remote. Some jobs simply require the physical presence of the staff or rely on it heavily for optimal operations. For these cases, the hybrid work model will certainly gain traction.

Hybrid work combines the benefits of on-site staff with the flexibility of remote workers. Employee preferences can vary greatly in this regard, as some might enjoy on-site while others prefer remote.

• On-site members prefer the traditional in-office role where they can meet with others face-to-face and have a direct connection with the company. These people might not have robust home offices and prefer the professional environment that on-site work has to offer.

• Remote work makes more sense to other types of employees, who might find themselves more productive at home thanks to better flexibility and less time wasted traveling to the office every day. These individuals like to have control over how they live at home while still offering their services to the business. Even the company itself might save some money from reduced consumption of office resources.

• Hybrid work combines many of the advantages of both models. It’s not uncommon for an organization to have part of the team in the office and the other part at home. The latter group might occasionally meet up physically with the former for a comprehensive meeting if necessary.

It’s clear that the hybrid model is popular with workers themselves. The Pulse of the American Worker Survey reported that 87% of employees preferred to work remotely at least one day a week. Management only has to ensure that remote workers don’t end up left behind, as it can be easy to forget about the staff you don’t see every day.

“Hybrid work is ultimately part of an overall trend of making companies more flexible. The more open you are to new and more productive frameworks, the more likely you are to enhance employee engagement and drive business growth.”