Reflections from the Shopper Electronics Present and predictions for the yr in tech
At Cisco, we empower folks to attach and collaborate with one another from wherever. From house, the workplace and in every single place in between, we use Cisco collaboration options to resolve hybrid work’s best challenges, whereas inspiring innovation, enhancing productiveness and simplifying communication.
Because 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 based on the third annual EY Future Office Index. Not surprisingly, the largest problem employers are going through in optimizing workplace areas is creating the correct of area for his or her workers. One which makes folks need to return into the workplace. One which delivers an expertise extra distinctive, immersive and seamless than what they expertise of their house workplaces. Leaders need to strike the best stability between investing in bodily workplace areas and empowering employees with the flexibleness to get work carried out on their very own phrases, with the tip objective of optimizing the efficiency of as we speak’s hybrid workforce.
So what does 2024 have on the horizon for placing that stability? Conversations stemming from final week’s Shopper Electronics Present (CES) may also help reply this query, because the occasion offers a window into rising tech tendencies. With no shock, AI was a major matter at CES. In 2023’s AI increase, direct interplay with AI elevated tenfold. At CES there was additionally an emphasis on expertise 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 employees.
The ‘Yr of AI’ was echoed at CES, throughout industries like tech, meals & beverage, leisure & media, authorities & safety, agriculture, retail, healthcare… each nook of trade. At Cisco, our collaboration options have leveraged AI for years, as a strong device to make hybrid interactions seamless (our options additionally characteristic NVIDIA’s Jetson edge AI platform — an organization which generated large buzz at this yr’s CES). As workers proceed to embrace hybrid work, there is a gigantic alternative to leverage AI to boost the best way we work and collaborate.
This previous yr, Cisco Collaboration introduced the idea of Distance Zero, our north star; it’s an aspiration to construct expertise that delivers the sensation of being there – even once you’re not. Distance Zero can solely be achieved 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. Right this moment, 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 change between a number of cameras. Mixed with framing, zoning, a number of streams and extra, our expertise chooses the perfect view of any assembly at any second— making it really feel such as you’re within the room along with your digital colleagues. In 2024, we’ll get even nearer to basically eliminating distance in any room kind.
As organizations map priorities for the yr, it will likely be vital to put money into expertise which helps the mixing of quickly evolving AI capabilities, which in flip will enhance the longevity of their office investments. And, has large implications for inclusivity and equitability – an excellent segue into my subsequent prediction.
There can be an elevated want to deal with location boundaries to make sure equitable and inclusive conferences.
Conferences the place everyone seems to be bodily current are not the norm. In truth, 98% of conferences going ahead may have a minimum of one distant participant – it’s vital to supply equitable and inclusive assembly experiences. This shift has been so impactful, that the kind of work that occurs within the workplace has basically shifted. Previous to the workplace reopening, those that labored in workplace had the bottom common variety of digital conferences. Right this moment, 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 as we speak (take a look at Cisco’s 2023 Way forward for Work survey to study simply how considerably in-office work has modified because the pandemic).
Nonetheless, solely about 15% of convention rooms are outfitted with video conferencing expertise. For rooms which might be outfitted, fundamental digicam 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 large implications for leaders and groups. Reflecting alone expertise, my crew is the earliest adopters of Cisco Collaboration expertise— and we join and innovate from across the globe. Our newest product to launch was engineered, designed, and delivered to launch by a crew spanning 10 cities and eight nations. That’s important, and it has implications for entry to expertise, innovation, effectivity — and a lot extra.
Firms 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.
Companies will reimagine and reconfigure workspaces to make the workplace a magnet.
Hybrid work is right here to remain. And providing workers flexibility & selection of their work will increase engagement, acknowledges the various wants of as we speak’s workforce, and helps expertise recruitment no matter location. It’s an worker -centric mannequin that advantages people and organizations alike.
Nonetheless, when wherever might be an workplace, getting folks again into the company workplace is a challenge- organizations should basically reimagine and reconfigure workspaces to generate pleasure, by making the expertise higher than at house.
How do you do it? By constructing areas that help interactions that occur finest on the workplace. Take into account this – you possibly can’t schedule creativity from 4:30-5:00 on Wednesdays. Creativity and teamwork thrive on serendipitous, happenstance run-ins on the workplace. Places of work ought to have areas that help these interactions, like brainstorming areas and expertise that helps cocreation and whiteboarding with in-person and hybrid contributors alike. The habits we construct are additionally key – at Cisco, we discovered that workers respect 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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