By: Dennis Otwori

Remote work has been in existence for many years. It grew until Covid-19 prompted most organizations to rethink their employees' workplaces. Covid-19 essentially accelerated a workplace experiment that has revealed the potential, benefits, and limitations of remote work. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has broken most barriers that slowed down the widespread adoption of remote work. However, it is not clear how long those changes will last. In other words, workers are increasingly concerned about how workplaces will look like in the future.

This article seeks to reveal the changes to workplaces that are expected in the future. 

Hybrid Models Are Gaining Traction Among Organizations

Remote work has gained too much traction over the past few years to the extent of many people overlooking the fact that there are tasks that cannot be completed from home. As much as remote work offers many benefits, some work cannot be done remotely. 

According to a survey from McKinsey Global Institute, remote work has huge potential among workers with a high level of education and advanced skills in a few occupations, industries, and geographies. Workers who need specialized machinery such as CT scans to carry out tasks or need to be out and about to carry out tasks like making deliveries cannot work from home even with sophisticated technology. Only less than 20% of the workforce can work from home for at least three days a week and remain as effective as they would if working from a physical office. 

This means that some workers will continue working from a physical space going into the feature despite the rapid changes necessitating the adoption of remote work. Essentially, organizations will continue striking a balance between remote work and office-based or site-based work following a hybrid model. Hybrid models help organizations to benefit from both sides of the divide. 

Better Internet Options Beyond Wi-Fi and Cellular Dongles

The existing Wi-Fi and cellular dongles currently underserve many remote employees. They juggle between various dongles and passwords to gain access to secure and reliable Wi-Fi. Fortunately, it has been foreseen that cellular-enabled portable computing devices will complement Wi-Fi going into the future. 

In the wake of the increased traction for hybrid models of work, the form factor of the cellular-enabled devices is growing with time. It will improve further as 5G is being rolled out on large-scale increasing signal reliability. As a result of the widespread adoption of cellular-enabled devices, organizations are likely to become more efficient and customer-centric, allowing workers to become more flexible and empowered to work from anywhere. 

Both employers and employees benefit from this development. On the one hand, employers will be able to manage talent effectively since employees will experience more agency as well as less friction while doing their jobs. On the other hand, there will be more employment and career development opportunities for employees. 

Increased Use of Virtual Desktops

Virtual desktops are still unpopular among remote workers. That is likely to change with time, given the benefits associated with them. Users of virtual desktops do not have to worry about the computing resources of their devices because they use the resources provided by a server in the cloud based on the concept known as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

VDI is designed to give a user remote access to his desktop from anywhere at any time, provided there is an internet connection. A hypervisor is used to deploy the virtual desktops making up a VDI. The main concept behind this technology is a desktop on demand. 

Small and medium businesses have started utilizing virtual machines with others encouraging their employees to get their personalized cloud computers from reliable cloud service providers. It is predicted that the benefits accrued to the use of the virtualized desktops among remote workers will continue increasing their adoption swiftly going into the future. 

Automation

The concern of automation leading to job losses has existed for many years before Covid-19. It is estimated that each industrial robot carries out work that 1.6 human workers would do on average. In the wake of the pandemic, the automation of repetitive tasks is a good thing since it eliminates the number of employees on a site reducing the risk of spreading the virus. 

How will automation affect remote work? It will affect it the same way as office-based work. Remote workers carrying out routine tasks are likely to be declared redundant.

Bottom-line

Many things have changed in ways that we would not have imagined in just one year. As a result, many people are confused about where they are heading. Specifically, remote workers do not know their fate after the pandemic. However, the uncertainty should not worry them as long as they keep watching current trends and adjust accordingly. Remote work is here to stay, and remote workers who embrace tools such as virtual desktops and make themselves indispensable will also persist through time.