This year’s UC EXPO was yet again another chance for our industry to showcase its vibrance, dynamism and cutting-edge technology. And it didn’t disappoint. GDPR, AI, cyber security were all big themes this year, as you’d quite rightly expect with GDPR being officially introduced to the UK this month and AI and cyber security constantly in the headlines this year.
The big winner in my eyes, however, was undoubtedly workplace collaboration and looking at how the industry is adapting to the changing demands from workers and the modern-day workplace.
There’s no doubt that the workplace is advancing to become more connected, collaborative and flexible. But, with this change comes an increasingly confused organisational hierarchy where employees are given more freedom, expected to self-manage their time and become more productive.
This is not an isolated problem for a small number of businesses. In fact, research from Timewise suggests that nearly nine in ten (87%) of the UK’s full-time workforce either currently work flexibly or would like to do so. It’s clear that remote working is causing the boundaries between work and play to shift with business hours becoming more fluid as opposed to the rigid 9 to 5 working day.
But, this trend isn’t just confined to the workplace. How people are interacting with media, information and each other is changing and we are demanding more depth and more detail at a faster pace. You can now see your doctor at the touch of a button, order online goods and take delivery within the hour and have fast, free access to rolling news coverage from digital news channels and social media. Continuous workdays and instant messaging means there’s also less time between interactions and these in turn are shorter; there’s no need to leave a long complaining review on a website when you can instantly talk to a chatbot in short, snappy sentences.
With these trends becoming increasingly mainstream, workstream collaboration – the topic of Dave Michels’ excellent session at UC EXPO – has taken off in a big way. What UC EXPO showed was you can expect to see more firms opening discussions about best practice in team collaboration to keep staff happy, engaged and productive.
