Reflections from the Consumer Electronics Show and predictions for the yr in tech
At Cisco, we empower folks to attach and collaborate with one another from anyplace. From dwelling, the workplace and all over the place in between, we use Cisco collaboration options to resolve hybrid work’s biggest challenges, whereas inspiring innovation, enhancing productiveness and simplifying communication.
As the world continues to transition right into a extra everlasting hybrid workforce, 80% of leaders are assured of their present hybrid work technique – that’s in response to the third annual EY Future Workplace Index. Not surprisingly, the largest problem employers are dealing with in optimizing workplace areas is creating the proper of area for his or her workers. One that makes folks need to return into the workplace. One that delivers an expertise extra distinctive, immersive and seamless than what they expertise of their dwelling places of work. Leaders need to strike the correct steadiness between investing in bodily workplace areas and empowering staff with the flexibleness to get work achieved on their very own phrases, with the top aim of optimizing the efficiency of immediately’s hybrid workforce.
So what does 2024 have on the horizon for putting that steadiness? Conversations stemming from final week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will help reply this query, because the occasion offers a window into rising tech tendencies. With no shock, AI was a big subject at CES. In 2023’s AI growth, direct interplay with AI elevated tenfold. At CES there was additionally an emphasis on know-how designed to make the day-to-day lives of customers simpler.
Reflecting on Cisco’s improvements in 2023, the tendencies unveiled at this yr’s CES, and the options we’re prepping to unveil this yr, these are my predictions for the yr forward.
AI will improve collaboration experiences for hybrid staff.
The ‘Year of AI’ was echoed at CES, throughout industries like tech, meals & beverage, leisure & media, authorities & safety, agriculture, retail, healthcare… each nook of business. At Cisco, our collaboration options have leveraged AI for years, as a robust software to make hybrid interactions seamless (our options additionally characteristic NVIDIA’s Jetson edge AI platform — an organization which generated huge buzz at this yr’s CES). As workers proceed to embrace hybrid work, there is a gigantic alternative to leverage AI to reinforce the way in which we work and collaborate.
This previous yr, Cisco Collaboration introduced the idea of Distance Zero, our north star; it’s an aspiration to construct know-how that delivers the sensation of being there – even whenever you’re not. Distance Zero can solely be completed with highly effective AI, bringing the wealthy, human interplay occurring into the assembly room into the digital area.
Since 2016, we’ve been constructing audio and video intelligence to help reimagined collaboration experiences. Today, with the mix of highly effective video and audio AI, Cisco units comply with presenters across the room, intelligently pay attention for audio cues, and swap between a number of cameras. Combined with framing, zoning, a number of streams and extra, our know-how chooses the very best view of any assembly at any second— making it really feel such as you’re within the room together with your digital colleagues. In 2024, we’ll get even nearer to essentially eliminating distance in any room sort.
As organizations map priorities for the yr, will probably be essential to put money into know-how which helps the mixing of quickly evolving AI capabilities, which in flip will improve the longevity of their office investments. And, has huge implications for inclusivity and equitability – an excellent segue into my subsequent prediction.
There might be an elevated want to handle location boundaries to make sure equitable and inclusive conferences.
Meetings the place everyone seems to be bodily current are now not the norm. In reality, 98% of conferences going ahead can have no less than one distant participant – it’s essential to offer equitable and inclusive assembly experiences. This shift has been so impactful, that the kind of work that occurs within the workplace has essentially shifted. Prior to the workplace reopening, those that labored in workplace had the bottom common variety of digital conferences. Today, folks within the workplace have considerably larger digital assembly quantity than different working modes, going from 50% fewer digital conferences earlier than reopening to 40% extra immediately (take a look at Cisco’s 2023 Future of Work survey to study simply how considerably in-office work has modified for the reason that pandemic).
Still, solely about 15% of convention rooms are geared up with video conferencing know-how. For rooms which can be geared up, primary digital camera and audio options aren’t sufficient to attain equitable and inclusive conferences. They miss the Distance Zero-inspired, wealthy context that makes face-to-face connections so magical. And, it has huge implications for leaders and groups. Reflecting alone expertise, my workforce is the earliest adopters of Cisco Collaboration know-how— and we join and innovate from across the globe. Our newest product to launch was engineered, designed, and dropped at launch by a workforce spanning 10 cities and eight international locations. That’s important, and it has implications for entry to expertise, innovation, effectivity — and a lot extra.
Companies might want to deploy options that assist all attendees really feel like they’re within the room collectively, even when they’re bodily distanced, by deploying applied sciences that transcend location boundaries and embody the sensation of face-to-face collaboration for everybody.
Businesses will reimagine and reconfigure workspaces to make the workplace a magnet.
Hybrid work is right here to remain. And providing workers flexibility & alternative of their work will increase engagement, acknowledges the various wants of immediately’s workforce, and helps expertise recruitment no matter location. It’s an worker -centric mannequin that advantages people and organizations alike.
Still, when anyplace will be an workplace, getting folks again into the company workplace is a challenge- organizations should essentially reimagine and reconfigure workspaces to generate pleasure, by making the expertise higher than at dwelling.
How do you do it? By constructing areas that help interactions that occur greatest on the workplace. Consider this – you’ll be able to’t schedule creativity from 4:30-5:00 on Wednesdays. Creativity and teamwork thrive on serendipitous, happenstance run-ins on the workplace. Offices ought to have areas that help these interactions, like brainstorming areas and know-how that helps cocreation and whiteboarding with in-person and hybrid members alike. The habits we construct are additionally key – at Cisco, we discovered that workers admire distant working but additionally crave in-person contact factors. Bringing folks collectively for intentional and purposeful causes like relationship-building, innovation, coaching and mentorship.
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