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Our workplace is evolving all the time. By virtue of being connected, we have more flexibility than ever before, for instance, we can work from home, airports and bus stops, etc. However, be that as it may, how we work and what devices and applications we use at the workplace is integral to us communicating and collaborating as a team. Whether you’re a big organization or a small business enterprise following are a few trends to enhance productivity globally.
Employee Presence
Having to keep track of your employees can affect efficiency. Businesses are now deploying technologies that can track an employee’s presence on his or her seat or tell whether or not an employee is in the office. With such technologies employees can update their whereabouts saving time and making issue resolution quicker. A classic example is the thumb-in and thumb-out process increasingly employed at workplaces these days.
More Employee Engagement
Soon employers will have to allow workers to be creative and to implement user-friendly solutions. Greater employee engagement is bound to foster opportunities to enhance productivity and efficiency.
When that happens, employees will adapt to innovative ways of working with information while collaborating with colleagues and co-workers differently from how we communicate or work as a team today.
Moreover, workers will choose their employers based on a creative and innovative working environment and what kind of work culture they prefer. Businesses that can’t provide such an environment will be at a loss when it comes to attracting employees or retaining them.
Healthy Workplace Confrontations
No one likes arguments or confrontations. However, “productive confrontations” as experts call it, can increase employee productivity and engagement and also strengthen relationships among them. What such confrontations do is help you seek advice on key decisions from your superiors and colleagues and then you can provide your input. Write down your key points in a logical manner and use salient examples during your discussion. Talk and listen – in that order. Make your point then sit back and listen. Be as professional as possible even if you feel resentful, hurt or intimidated. Try to focus on the benefits and advantages of your points. Have a friendly discussion once the meeting is over about what the next steps will be for implementation and follow up. Always minute the meeting – it’ll give you a roadmap to follow. After the meeting is over appreciate the others in person, with an email or a note even if you don’t agree with their views.
End of Email?
A lot of experts believe the days of the email are numbered. We have become used to working in an environment in which email and IM chats are used constantly. They say these messaging platforms are unplanned and unstructured and that this is not the only way to work in the digital environment.
Organizations might want to rethink email messaging as you need to tend to your inbox almost daily taking you away from more productive tasks and hindering you from producing more value for the company. International organizations almost always face unplanned network downtime making it very difficult to communicate and collaborate, especially, when you’re at the other end of the world. To overcome this problem companies are outsourcing their connectivity to third-party providers so they don’t have to manage or maintain the same.
Video Conferencing
Physical meetings take up a considerable amount of time. An employee has to stop his or her work, move to a conference room and stay there until the meeting is over. Video conferencing has become the norm these days. For large organizations, especially, with offices all over the country and the world, it does away with the need for travel and offers a cost-effective way for employees to share information and collaborate as a group saving time and enhancing productivity. If you hold a lot of video conferences you need internet services from buytvinternetphone without any lag or delay so you won’t lose your connection during your online meetings.
Autonomous Management Structure
Many organizations are now allowing an autonomous management structure to let employees manage themselves. Not only does it increase the level of employee happiness and productivity, but it can also be a great asset to an organization, for such measures would certainly enhance its reputation – it would be looked upon as a company that furnishes a flexible, employee-centric environment.
Workplace Flexibility
The way we work is changing. Gone are the 9-5 days. Accessing voice, messaging and data sharing services over the internet employees can work from any location at any time – be it home, an airport, a hotel room or the venue of a conference – flexibility that would render an employee far more efficient.
CRM Integration
Integrating their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems with their phones, businesses get updated information about the customer during every call – a great way to use data to drive sales and improve customer experience.
VoIP as Inbound and Outbound Strategy
Businesses are using Voice over Internet Protocol more than ever before. With VoIP business can manage caller ID, inbound cloud-based call recording and more. Moreover, it’s really effective in a business’s inbound and outbound strategies.
SD-WAN
Enterprise voice and communication apps need to be monitored. Data needs to flow across the network without any hitches or glitches so that employees have the tools to do their job efficiently. This is where Software-defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) comes in without which administrators can’t control traffic on their network.
Unified Communications – Where it all comes together
UC is where a variety of enterprise communication services like chat, voice, mobility, and others are brought onto one platform. A cloud environment, it can help eliminate waste of time with greater overall experience for end-users. You can monitor which tools employees are using on a daily basis and update them as and when needed. Also, you can eliminate shadow IT.
Will Machines Replace Humans?
It is expected machines will eventually replace humans in every aspect of life. Already artificial intelligence is changing the way we work in a more positive way. Although AI is created to assist humans, rather than replace them it is taking over almost every industry right before our eyes. The smartphone is a classic case in point.
One of the most rapidly emerging technologies, looking forward it’s clear that AI will continue to be at the forefront of almost any industry. From cybersecurity and data protection to helping employees with prioritization and objective decision making, AI will also be crucial as far as big data is concerned. It’ll serve to sort through complex data sets to identify key trends and opportunities, which will be invaluable for marketing and businesses alike.
AI will eventually take over all high repetition and high volume tasks. However, experts do say human involvement will still be required where a task calls for creativity to tackle novelty or complexity. AI will change the way we work, where we work, what we work on, when we work and why we work.
HR as a Service
Even human resources aren’t safe from so-called disruptive technologies. According to experts, it is anticipated that HR professionals will be replaced by automated, cloud-based and mobile technologies.
Cloud technology is already in use in the HR environment. As cloud computing software is customizable, it provides real-time updates to HR personnel without relying on IT, allocating resources as and when needed. Employees can also access information and services on their cloud server whenever they need to. This means that HR professionals have to understand and become skilled in cloud computing for HR as a service to survive.
The Take-Away
We are yet to see these work-related trends and technologies entering the corporate world fully. What the future of work environment will look like we can only speculate. However, one thing is clear workplaces are evolving and evolving fast and organizations have to evolve alongside.
You’ve read Latest Trends to Enhance Productivity in the Work Environment, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.