The ongoing pandemic crisis has turned the way of work upside down. People have been confined to their homes, leaving them working on their laptops from the comfort, or maybe discomfort, of their homes. As the workforce around the world is getting habituated to the new way of working, it goes without much thought that people in the near future may shift their workplaces to homes temporarily or companies may grow more accommodating towards work-from-home policy after discovering that business can go on regardless of where people work from. Technology, certainly, has its role to play and enable a positive work environment for people, lest they become lazy and isolated at home.

Virtual reality offices

No wonder we are working and collaborating on various video conferencing tools today, the future may deem this practice as quite primitive. In the future, and I mean very near future, we shall have people joining for office wearing a headset at their home. The virtual reality headset will teleport an employee into a virtual world, where she will feel as if she is sitting just beside her colleagues. Her colleagues would also be joining through virtual reality headsets and the virtual realm will look like a simulated office environment. The employees will be able to customize their appearance in the virtual world and will select the type, colour and fashion of their formal or casual attire, their hairstyle and their facial expression. It may very well be your son or daughter tomorrow working in this virtual realm. Regardless of what kind of clothes they are draped in reality and how their appearance may be, their digital avatars will be the smartest versions as per their preferences.

Meetings will happen in this virtual world, they may debate on ideas, conduct design thinking sessions and may even celebrate team’s success remotely. Each employee will choose a custom meeting room in terms of space, décor and facilities for themselves so as to elevate their mood. The virtual realm will a simulation of office space and therefore, companies may not need to actually invest in large real-estates for most of the activities shall happen on simulations of the real world.

Employee engagement virtually

Fun should be an integral part of work. And with workplaces moving virtual, the employee engagement activities shall also follow suit. We already have people joining town hall meetings on video conferencing and celebrating team success remotely from various locations. Soon, our next generation of working population shall have virtual spaces to celebrate occasions, festivals and success parties. Yes, the food and drinks cannot be enjoyed virtually, but the convergence programs may feature virtual dance performances, music concerts and leadership talks. People will join their colleagues virtually. Private messages to each other will replace today’s whispering of jokes, chatbots will act as microphones for asking questions and augmented reality enabled presentations will replace today’s traditional PowerPoint slides. The experience will be much more immersive for the mind, albeit not for our taste buds though.

Remote operations in factories

Virtual workspaces will not be reserved only for people in software industry, but will also have its doors opened for people who work for production units. We will soon have an armada of intelligent robots handling the manual operations autonomously. The production facility manager will connect with the head of robots, possibly a central data centre enabled by edge computing, to gather vital performance statistics. The manager will interact with the machines directly and will check remotely the functioning of the entire plant. Any kind of anomaly will be alerted to the central computing centre and predictive maintenance facilities will usher in proactive maintenance of machines, which will prevent any kind of disruptions in the production facility.

The entire factory will be a single breathing entity, full of its own life and intelligence, sensing the environment around itself and thinking rationally on its own how to keep the show going.

Productivity Analytics – boon or bane maybe

It may get difficult for organizations to keep a track of the efficiency of their employees. Not that every person is highly productive inside an office space, but companies will certainly need to justify the fee they charge their clients. In order to check for the efficiency of their employees, companies may end up monitoring employees’ activities throughout the day and perform analytics to check the duration for which an employee generated the maximum output and the time of day when he went lazy. Every team leader will gain deeper insight into the work habits of his team and will be able to distribute the work effectively, again perhaps through an AI-enabled work scheduler.

Some people may find it equivalent to snooping a bit too much, and honestly, I don’t disagree with those people. However, in case corporations deem it necessary, such productivity monitors may soon become ubiquitous in the work-related devices, thereby holding everyone by the noose. This does increase transparency, but at the cost of employee happiness.

Cybersecurity of X

With the world moving to virtual reality that’s enabled with analytics and Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity will gain a new definition altogether. The virtual reality devices will be connected over internet and the virtual spaces will be full of enterprise-level confidential information. These virtual spaces will be the new bulls’ eye for the hackers and cybersecurity measures will have to be taken for keeping the virtual spaces alive and kicking without any ailments. Therefore, cybersecurity will not be restricted only to physical systems, but will expand to everything and anything under the web. Organizations will have to invest in data security much more than ever.

Conclusion

Workforce transformation is going to happen at an unimaginable magnitude in the near future. Our next generation may wonder at the ways of our working and may just see them in movies based on historical events. It may be tough for them to imagine how their parents could devote long hours to a place away from home only to work on things that they would do seamless from home. It remains to be seen whether they will feel more isolated or more detached from their colleagues, unlike us who love to enjoy coffee breaks with our peers and bond over lunch hours.

But yes, work life will certainly merge into personal life and soon, the distinction may just fade away. Years later, in case your child laughs at the way of our work, don’t be surprised.