Top 5 Tech Trends for Office Collaboration for 2021
Since the beginning of 2020 оffice life has changed a lot. Companies have never switched to remote work format so massively! Gartner research company reports that after the Coronavirus outbreak at the beginning of 2020, 88% of organisations encouraged or required their employees to work from home.
However, not everyone did that and some companies are going back to their offices. This also means looking for new approaches to activities, that cannot be performed online. Changes in collaboration trends have caused quite a stir in business operations and it doesn’t end there… What started this year, will either progress, continue or transform in 2021, which will demand another shift in our habits.
Collabio Spaces team are here to explain what changes to expect next year and how to adapt to them. These guys are more than familiar with collaboration and are eager to tell you everything about the upcoming trends. Don’t fear, they will get you ready to face the challenges of the next year!
1. Innovative Tech Tools for Collaboration Will Develop Further
Since the start of the pandemic, businesses substantially invested in collaboration technologies for remote working. According to Kate Lister, the President of Global Workplace Analytics, “by the end of 2021 25–30% of the workforce will be working from home multiple days a week.” This means people will meet in offices only for activities that require personal involvement. The rest of the time companies will allow employees to cope with their assignments remotely.
Consequently, SaaS companies offer more and more collaboration tools. People need to synchronise work no matter where they are — in the office or at home.
Employees share data in real-time with their colleagues all over the world, so cloud solutions will become more in demand than ever. Flexera notes that the usage of cloud services has dramatically increased during the pandemic. According to them, 93% of enterprises already work with different commercial clouds as Google, Amazon, MS Azure, Alibaba Cloud and other, choosing multi-cloud strategy, while 87% also use private servers, preferring a hybrid cloud strategy. More than 50% of workloads are expected to be in a public cloud within a year and 59% of respondents expect cloud use to exceed plans due to the pandemic.
The study by ArubaNetworks, The Right Technologies Unlock the Potential of the Digital Workplace, shows that productivity benefits from the quantifying of digital technology: 73% of Digital Revolutionaries reported a positive impact on their productivity and 70% cited improved collaboration.
As a result, some enterprises are using a mix of on-premises technologies and cloud solutions, keeping in mind the hybrid cloud approach. Companies like AWS, Cisco, Dell, Oracle and others are making big investments in tech solutions for teamwork. This helps businesses not only achieve maximum productivity at the workplace but also to attract new customers as remote solutions empower them to find clients all over the world.
2. Remote Face-to-Face Collaboration Becomes Essential
The #Workfromhome hashtag is used more frequently than before, it’s popularity grew to 51% and there are now 13,565,201 posts on socials under it! Remote working became reality for the majority of office workers. This drove companies to enhance their online collaboration tools and approaches. First, they had to make sure that employees have sufficient equipment to successfully conduct video meetings, which are much more efficient than voice calls.
In 2021, we should do our best to champion online team collaboration, as employees spend 80% of workdays communicating with their team members. According to the Queens University of Charlotte, 39% of surveyed employees worldwide say people in their organisation don’t collaborate enough and this can be a real issue for those who want to win the market today.
As for choosing the right tools for remote collaboration, Creately says that over 60% of Generation X and Millennials (68% of the US workforce) collaborate better through visual means.
Most companies use Zoom, some prefer Skype, others communicate through Cisco Webex Meetings or use other tools, because seeing your interlocutor face to face is extremely important. Other ways of communication are just not that efficient, keep in mind that collective brainstorming and any teamwork bring most benefits to achieving real results.
3. Safe Collaboration Within One Office Is a Must
Those companies that switch to home-office, many still require some offline collaboration. More employees are visiting offices or going to get back there soon, but they should keep in mind safety measures. Considering ongoing requirements on keeping a 2-meter distance, we should forget passing our phones or laptops to others.
Technology definitely can help your team, you can have discussions over a whiteboard or a digital presentation, or you can even use offline office collaboration tools, such as Collabio’s local P2P collaboration technology to co-edit documents with your colleagues, while maintaining a two metre distance. Your device alone will be enough to provide a similar experience as powerful cloud-based collaborative editors do. Also, you don’t need to access the Internet, as local P2P collaboration feature works with almost any local network, including iPhone’s hotspot.
4. Privacy for Virtual Collaboration Will Become a Major Concern
Confidentiality and privacy is a concern for every reputable company. Everything that is uploaded to the cloud can be tracked, hacked or lost in the Internet space. Take a look at recent September’s events in Belarus, when a Cyberpartisan group leaked the personal data of more than 1,000 police officers. This data included names, birth dates, ranks, places of work and even addresses! This is the price companies and government agencies pay for keeping data in the cloud and insecure databases.
Cyber security continues to be a hot trend. For example, confidential computing now does not only connect to the use of private data but also applies to encryption of the computing process itself. Data privacy and confidential computing appear to be among the most burning issues in our society.
Special events like Confidential Computing Consortium are being held, in which major software vendors like Alibaba, IBM, Google, Microsoft and others take part. This approach has only started to take off but it has potential to grow to a large-scale trend in 2021.
Smaller software vendors protect data by other means. For example, XCDS has developed technology for serverless collaboration that allows to share documents with specific individuals temporarily, offering more control in file management.
5. AI, AR and VR Tools Will Emerge in Offices and at Remote Workplaces
Next year artificial Intelligence (AI) is believed to transform collaboration for office workers! Companies have been using AI to optimise and automate certain processes, for example, real-time translation for foreign colleagues, automated note-taking, transcribing what has been said, and so on.
Virtual assistants for meetings and idea suggestions are next to come. Based on what’s said at a meeting, such an assistant will be able to offer new ideas. Also, these helpers could collect the information about your interlocutor during negotiations and offer more basis for making a decision on partnering or contract signing.
Aruba’s research we quoted previously also states that 71% of respondents would welcome a fully automated workplace in the future, allowing organisations to build smarter, more effective work environments.
You might have already experienced advantages of Augmented and Virtual Reality in practice. The Research and Markets company states in its Global Mixed Reality Market Analysis that AR and VR in corporate training and other activities are predicted to total $2.8 billion by 2023.
The Bottom Line
In conclusion, to make your collaboration effective and safe:
- Use tech innovations to simplify and streamline collaboration for both teams and individuals.
- Be careful with public clouds and unsecured collaboration tools, especially when you work on sensitive information.
- Pay more attention to teamwork as it drives better business results. Raise the quality of communication among employees, teams and departments.
- Keep in mind all the advised safety measures when you collaborate offline! Healthy people are always the most productive. ;)
What is your experience of changes within the work environment? Did you notice implementation of any of these trends already? Do you agree or disagree with our forecast? Feel free to comment on this article — we’ll be glad to discuss your thoughts!
