Woman working from a remote location on her laptop

Digital workplace trends for 2022

Having an effective, agile, and reliable cloud-based collaborative platform is one key to the future of the digital workplace. Collaboration and communication platforms are the foundation of success for any company working virtually.

Even so, employees’ physical and emotional well-being remains another important consideration, even in the digital workplace. Let’s take a closer look at trends making the digital workplace successful in 2022.

Innovating the employee work experience

According to a poll, 50% of remote workers surveyed feel lonely at least once per week. This is a problem that affects the entire company, even if it isn’t immediately visible.

This is especially true when you consider that a recent study shows that 78% of employees feel their employers have a responsibility to keep them mentally and physically well.

A well-planned implementation of a virtual workplace is a good way to address these concerns. Roughly 75% of employees regard collaboration and teamwork as important. Online collaboration tools and digital workplaces facilitate increased productivity up to 30%.

Hybrid work models

The future of work hinges on putting together a good hybrid workplace model. And employees have come to prefer such models, too. In a recent study from Slack, 63% of employees favor the flexibility of a hybrid remote-office model while only 17% said they want to return to full-time office work.

Cloud and IT infrastructure

Cloud computing and hosting solutions are essential to workplace agility. They provide remote workers the tools they need to get their work done, offer multi-layered data security, and assure operational continuity across great distances.

Improving cloud-based collaboration

A managed cloud service provider can help you develop, customize and deploy secured, flexible, and scalable public, private, or hybrid cloud solutions.

And this is a big deal. The online collaboration market is expected to grow from $12.4 billion in 2019 to $13.5 billion by 2024. Teamwork applications based on cloud collaboration are the highest growth segment at 60%.

Keeping employees connected and productive, developing their talents, reducing turnover and disgruntlement, and generally improving business communication and collaboration are reasons enough to further the investment in cloud communication technology.

Flexible workspaces

A company’s biggest asset, of course, is its employees. And while many of these employees enjoy working from home, others need a different environment to thrive. This is where workplace flexibility comes in. According to Gartner, flexibility is key to digital workplace productivity.

Companies have developed health and wellness initiatives to keep employees happier, healthier, and, therefore, more productive.

Creating a smart and safe workplace

The nature of remote work has compounded the stress employees have felt since the start of the pandemic. Daily concern has risen to 60% from 37% pre-pandemic.

Designing a smart and safe workspace helps ease employee anxiety. A safe workplace these days usually means a hybrid one – some employees work remotely while others come into the office and are spaced far from one another.

Managing physical office workspaces to accommodate all employees is another type of flexibility businesses must embrace.

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Security

72% of IT security leaders rank the cloud as a top digital transformation priority; yet 98% of organizations that heavily utilize cloud communication technology have experienced cyberattacks since March of 2020.

Implementing security best practices including multi-layered protocols, additional support like managed security services, and tools like RansomCare can limit the potential damage of a cyber attack.

On-site and virtual collaboration merge

4.7 million employees work remotely at least half the time, despite the fact that 44% of companies do not allow remote work. (16% of companies have adopted a remote-only protocol.)

Any way you look at it, remote work appears to be a permanent and vital part of today’s workplace.

Collaboration tools

From simple and effective whiteboards to sophisticated, cloud-based communication tools, workers need to be kept in the loop and stay productive regardless of where they work.

Keeping in constant, close contact has many benefits. It builds trust between senior and junior employees.

Centralized strategy

A centralized strategy is necessary for any company with a hybrid workforce. An unconnected network will cause trouble for a geographically disparate workforce. Companies need to keep centralization in mind when designing, developing, and implementing technologies that bolster a company's core purpose while allowing for employee-friendly flexibility.

Decentralized services

Companies are hurrying to digitally decentralize their operations to avoid disruption. From technology set-up to maintenance to cybersecurity, information technology professionals are in greater need than ever.

Re-imagining and automation of workflows

A major part of decentralization is automation. Automation cuts down on manual, paper-driven workflows so employees can reserve time for more sophisticated, strategic tasks.