The future of work: 10 workplace tech trends SMEs need to know and understand

6. Improving productivity relies on merging those two worlds

Slow businesses won’t understand how to use these types of consumer services in work. Succeeding relies on adopting these quickly, it argues.

“Workplace-based analytic engines will interact with employee provided data to seamlessly suggest (and change) benefit coverage for major life events such as the birth of a child,” it predicts.

7. Dynamic staffing will be the next big thing

Instead of just adhering to a traditional corporate structure, the report says nimble organisations will form groups of employees who can help on a particular project at any time.

“Contributors could come from multiple geographies, and in some instances would be drawn from outside the company to fill gaps for specialized skills.”

You see this already in companies that use flat management structures, but as technology grows these will become more common.

8. Compensation will be tied to results, not hours

As work-life balance becomes even harder to track, businesses will move towards a model of paying out compensation based on results rather than simple hours worked. This will be a huge shift for human resources professionals, who will need to come up with new methods of tracking this type of work.

In some cases employees may choose to distribute a portion of their compensation to leverage other employees as sub-contractors.  Employees will exercise more control over work selection, work load, and salary.

9. More flexible roles demand flexible offices

Because employees will be working on different projects at different times, workplaces must change to accommodate for different needs.

“In some cases this will mean open environments designed for group collaboration and opportunistic encounters, in other cases it will be private areas that allow for quiet thinking or heads down engineering.”

10. And those spaces will be more personable than ever

Imagine, the report suggests, a digital assistant that would change the workplace environment based on that person’s needs.
“Individual workers would be able to use the computer environment at each location in concert with their mobile digital assistant to complete their job.”
“Meeting transcription, identification of key points and decisions would automatically be documented and summarized so all people would be free to concentrate on the topic rather than the process of articulating what occurred.”