The future of the workplace includes varying return-to-office plans, flexible work locations and AI assistants to help employees with collaboration and productivity.
The future of the workplace was a prevalent theme at this year's Enterprise Connect conference. The annual event, which explores business communications and productivity, showcased prominent thought leadership about modern workspaces.
Nearly every panel discussion, keynote speech and hallway conversation at the event seemed to focus on the future of the workplace. I participated in one such session, titled "Have we arrived at the future of the workplace yet?" The session was unique and interesting because it mostly focused on people and behaviors and less on technology.
In addition to me, the panel included the following:
Lisa Schmeiser, editor-in-chief at No Jitter, as moderator.
Robert Harris, president at Communications Advantage Inc.
Dave Michels, principal analyst and founder at TalkingPointz.
Irwin Lazar, president and principal analyst at Metrigy.
Jon Arnold, principal at J Arnold & Associates.
The session explored some key themes.
Flexible work is ideal
Starting off the session, Michels underscored the weakness of the case for return to office -- at least for complete RTO. The rest of the panel was quick to pile on.
The arguments for greater productivity, creativity, innovation and collaboration in the workplace did not sway the panel or the audience at the session. It's been five years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and remote workers worldwide have shown they are just as productive, or even more productive, working at home.
The other arguments for RTO are more community-based. Many people prefer to be around other people sometimes. They don't want to feel like contract workers dialing in for projects. Being physically present with your team even just one or two days a week can be nice, regardless of productivity benefits.
Community benefits go beyond a small group of work friends. Downtown businesses, such as coffee and pizza shops, rely on commuters in many areas. In the long term, organizations should structure these businesses to support the future of work, not the other way around. In the short term, employees can ease the pain and help the economy by working at the office when it makes sense.
At the end of the day, flexible work is nirvana. Enable each employee to work where it makes sense for them on any given day. Many vendors at Enterprise Connect are working on AI technologies to help make flexible work happen. For example, if employees want to go into the office one day a week, AI can ensure that it's the same day when other team members are in the office and that desk and room space are available and reserved.
It's been a long time since the pandemic made remote work a thing, but we still haven't figured out the new routine.
Where we work vs. how we work
In recent years, I've participated in similar panels, but this one was different. The other panels basically focused on whether the future of work would be remote, at the office or hybrid. The panels also discussed the technology innovations that enable hybrid work, such as better meeting room video systems and more integrated productivity tools. But the assumption was employees would be doing the same work, albeit at home sometimes. At this panel, that assumption went out the window.
The AI announcements over the last year -- and at Enterprise Connect -- have massive implications for the future of work. A big theme this year is agentic AI, which basically means AI that can do stuff in the real world. Regular AI can read email and meeting summaries and create a task list. Agentic AI can perform some of the items on that list.
Are people going to be bosses for their little AI assistants as they help human workers? Or are the AI assistants the new little managers as they manage employees' task lists and tell people what to work on?
New normal remains elusive
Since the unified communications world is still having this discussion, that suggests that the industry has not quite figured out the future of work. Frequently, news stories report that massive, leading companies are mandating full RTO, despite worker protests. But, for many other workers, there's no new normal yet.
Looking at the big picture, whether it's called hybrid work or flexible work or something else, that's what most companies are doing. But there's no consensus on how they're doing it -- whether it's assigned days, pick two days a week or go into the office whenever it's convenient.
It's been a long time since the pandemic made remote work a thing, but we still haven't figured out the new routine.
David Maldow is founder and CEO of Let's Do Video. He has written about the video and visual collaboration industry for almost 20 years.
