With the entire workplace moving online – everyone has had to sharpen their digital skills in order to function. Using technology has now become a necessity rather than a choice. Technological advancements have been evolving since the beginning, but since the pandemic, companies have heavily invested in infrastructure, technology and online platforms to help make workplaces more efficient.
In this era, improving digital skills is really important to stay relevant and dynamic. At a minimum, employees need to be familiar with using mixed reality tools like Zoom, Teams, and Slack that enable them to meet in virtual locations. By merging real and virtual worlds to produce new environments, employees who relied on in-person office interactions can now meet on virtual platforms to create a new experience.
But these experiences are just the tip of the iceberg of mixed reality offerings. Augmented reality technologies have become regular features in product offerings, along assembly lines, and even in surgeries. Now, with 42 percent of American full-time employees working from home for the foreseeable future as the pandemic lingers, new forms of mixed reality technologies are creating mainstream virtual substitutes for offices, and redefining the future of work in the process.
Using these mixed reality platforms benefit companies by:
- Creating suitable conditions for remote collaborations
- Indulging in innovative practices
- Improving knowledge and employee productivity
- Creating a seamless workplace environment
- Cutting costs and boosting revenue
With the next generation of office communication technology booming, it becomes imperative that in order to prepare yourself for the future of work, you need to stay digitally relevant. There are numerous developments in the multidimensional “collaboratories” space that are improving knowledge worker productivity and collaboration. Here are three innovations we can already see in the workplace:
- Virtual Offices
When teams are spread across geographic locations, they feel disconnected and isolated because they don’t get to see each other. Lack of social encounters hurt not only their morale, but also their ability to collaborate and innovate.
Large financial service companies and retailers now use programs like Sneek and Pukkateam to create virtual offices with augmented reality. They create a sense of togetherness by showing colleagues in tiles with periodically updated snapshots, so they know who is at their desk, on a call, or drinking a coffee and perhaps up for a chat.
With the click of a button, co-workers can now hold video conferences in a live video call, teams can chat with each other with emojis, status updates GIFs and jokes! If you’re camera shy, you can even use programs like Sococo to create avatars and bring them to life in illustrated virtual offices complete with conference rooms, guest waiting areas and pantries!
- Virtual Focus Groups
Market research has new reached new heights with artificial intelligence-powered virtual focus groups that permit companies to go beyond what’s possible in physical conference rooms. Virtual environments created by platforms like Remesh enable companies to gain rich insights that can be achieved from small focus groups but at the scale of massive digital surveys, without the drawback of only capturing one-way feedback.
They collect and summarize the anonymized views of up to 1,000 participants on a topic or new product concept. Equipped with an artificial intelligence and upvoting engine that clusters and aggregates responses, facilitators can also react and adapt the discussion in real time to explore ideas as they arise.
This helps increase inclusion and allows managers to access opinions from consumers that may be too shy to speak up in person. It also allows you to be a better listener for each individual consumer. This helps in improving overall diversity and inclusion while gaining massive insights and data.
- Virtual Collaboration
When COVID-19 hit, many companies were forced to freeze projects and R&D because they could not gather in groups to work. Fortunately, various collaborative tools like online sticky notes, shared digital whiteboards and live co-editing of wikis, slides and documents helped bring people together. This not only allows for remote collaboration but allows more ideas to be shared and reviewed simultaneously, on multi-editor collaboration tools than if they all had to flow through a live facilitator at a whiteboard. Outputs are instantly formatted and digitalised, even offering the ability to export into reports and excels, saving time and manpower.
A year ago, nobody would have believed that everyone could work from home 5 days a week and work on collaborative projects and designs from the comfort of their home offices. We are just starting to see what the future of mixed reality work will look like. Companies are asking for innovations to make virtual working sustainably productive. The market will keep evolving and growing – constantly moving forward and waiting for no one. With competition and employability becoming harder, upskilling and making yourself future proof is the best way to stay afloat.
Career Money Life has a wealth of programs, tools and resources designed to help you future proof your job and skillsets. Upskilling and making yourself job ready have never been easier – learn how you can develop your career and build you skills on a single seamless platform by heading to our website at www.careermoneylife.com or request for a demo with our Account Specialists here.
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