Let’s look at IDC’s 2023 Future of Work predictions for today’s list. Quote:
Prediction 1: To address health, sustainability, travel, and other disruptions, 30% of G2000 organizations will adopt immersive third-party metaverse conferencing tech services to enable client engagement by 2027.
Prediction 2: By 2024, the business developer role will be ubiquitous, with more than 60% of enterprises training and supporting business users to build their own applications and automated processes using low-code tools.
Prediction 3: Driven by skills shortages, CIOs that invest in digital adoption platforms and automated learning technologies will see a 40% increase in productivity by 2025, delivering greater speed to expertise.
Prediction 4: By 2024, organizations deploying employee micro-monitoring measures (camera/keystroke) will see a 20% decrease in actual employee productivity.
Prediction 5: G2000 companies that deploy reactive and tactical hybrid work models will see a 20% revenue loss in 2024 due to job attrition and underperforming teams.
Prediction 6: By 2025, organizations that have created dedicated hybrid security policies and developed a culture of trust will be 3x less likely to suffer a security breach.
Prediction 7: By 2024, companies offering frontline workers democratized access to digital collaboration, process automation, and similar tools will see a 20% increase in revenue due to improved productivity.
Prediction 8: Holistic and integrated analytics within an intelligent digital workspace (IDW) ecosystem will drive a 70% increase in differentiated business outcomes for adopters by 2026.
Prediction 9: Effectively blurring space and place, by 2025, 65% of G2000 companies will consider online presence to be at parity to “in real life” across their engaged workforce.
Prediction 10: By 2024, 55% of C-suite teams at global enterprises will use intelligent space and capacity planning technology to reinvent office locations for gathering, collaborating, and learning.
So let’s couple that with some insights from another research study.
Although more than two-thirds of decision-makers believe employees are more innovative in the office, employees are less likely to agree, according to a survey conducted by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by VMware. Fewer than 3 in 5 employees believe they are more innovative in the office. The more flexible the workstyle policy, the more likely it is that an organization measures innovation levels. More than 4 in 5 office-only organizations track innovation, but 97% of remote organizations track innovation, according to the report, which surveyed 5,300 IT and HR decision-makers and employee-level respondents. That is from CIO Dive.
Staffing concerns continue to dominate the lists, and that’s worth noting.
The business developer role is an interesting set of insights – will that happen in the SMB the same way, or is that a required role for the MSPs who serve them? I’m willing to say I think the answer is YES.
Thematically, the predictions say this – continued investment in automation and the technology behind it, smart organizations will be focused less on micromanagement and asking questions like how many days in the office employees show up, and it’s all about the data.
Now the trick is delivering those services.