It’s clear that the working world remains in a state of flux in the post-pandemic era.
On the one hand, the shift to remote work and the rapid rollout of communications platforms such as Zoom and MS Teams has proven that home workers, when supported by the right technology, can be as productive as their office-based counterparts.
On the other, questions continue to hang over what ‘hybrid work’ really looks like, and by extension what technology will be needed to facilitate it in the years ahead.
To find out more about what lies on the horizon for communications technology, we spoke to Dave Michels, Principal Analyst and Founder of Talkingpointz, a research, communications and thought leadership provider for the enterprise communications industry.
Where We Work
For Michels, communications technologies will be vital if businesses are going to get the most out of the shift to remote work.
“We now know that we can be productive remotely, but at the cost of camaraderie and culture propagation,” notes Michels. “During the pandemic we nailed meetings, but we haven’t mastered serendipitous communications, relationship building, mentoring and more.”
Michels adds that overcoming these obstacles will require experimentation around hybrid work, including the rollout of new hotdesking technologies, new social networks and refreshed thinking for webinars and events.
“The answer will take many years to complete, and for most of us it’s about replacing a how-to-work mental manual developed over a lifetime,” he adds. “There’s a lot of reimagining to be done.”
Slow Steps Forward with AI
It’s difficult to have a conversation about the future of communications technology, or the future of any technology for that matter, without straying onto the topic of AI.
