Johannesburg, 10 Jul 2014
Four out of five employees agree: workplaces will be transformed by 2036 by technology and processes that do not even exist today.
That insight comes from a Coleman-Parkes research report commissioned by Ricoh Europe.
"Unsurprisingly, people believe they will be working in companies that are more interactive, collaborative and streamlined as a result of new technology and processes that underpin innovative ways of working," says Richard Pinker, MD of Ricoh SA. "But what does that mean? People in financial services, healthcare, education, the public sector - and more - see touch-based interactive devices being used more prolifically, that they will have the ability to perform tasks by voice recognition and that they will have augmented reality glasses."
The research also divulges a prediction by 59% of people that within 20 years people will send virtual assistants or holograms to attend meetings on their behalf. They also see drones actually entering commercial service, Bluetooth from brain-to-brain and carrier nodes, which are small devices fitted to the ear that allow audio and video data to be transmitted directly to the brain as electric signals.
"Some of those expected advances come as no surprise," says Pinker, "but the realisation of brain-linking electronic signals is pure Cyberpunk straight from the science fiction of William Gibson. While the tech gadgets are cool and will certainly grab peoples' imaginations, it's interesting to see that they slot into three primary areas of focus: optimising core business process, better access to information, and the ability for people to get their jobs done faster."
He says it indicates that digitised processes, the ability to view and use data when required, and adapting quickly to technology-led change will remain crucially important into the future - just as they are today.
Yet, despite the widespread excitement and value placed in a tech-evolved workplace, less than a third of employees surveyed (29%) say their company has a strong appetite for creating new ways of working and deploying technologies to make the future a reality.
"That's going to be a real problem for companies in the future," says Pinker. "Besides losing a competitive edge, companies that don't at least start figuring out how they're going to adapt will end up losing key personnel and that will hit them very hard in the long run. They'll also lose the knowledge to be gleaned from exploring the options and opportunities that exist today and lose out on the ability to learn and adopt gradually as the technologies evolve and emerge."
Current technologies are oft-talked about in various media and online forums, but will need to see increased market penetration:
* Internal collaboration platforms, Web-based meetings and follow-me printing, in that order, are the top-three rated systems that employees currently do not use, but want to, in order to make their job more valuable today;
* Electronically stored information remains the most valuable technology capability, beyond e-mail and Internet, for today's employees; and
* Although 62% of respondents both use and find it valuable, one in six still desire but do not have access to digital information.
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