“Even though a large portion of employees may remain virtual, they’ll still need to come into the office for training and to collaborate,” said Michael McDaniel, VP and general manager of the Modern Workplace unit at Tysons, B2B IT services company DXC Technology, who shared that collaboration and flexibility are among the leading factors driving the IT business currently.

But the return of in-person business hardly means the end of technology as a collaboration tool especially as companies continue to expand their offerings in this space, such as Microsoft Hub Room and Cisco Collaboration Room.

He noted that 15% of his clients used the virtual meeting software Microsoft Teams a year ago; now it’s greater than 80%. And Microsoft continues to remake our work lives. In early February, it unveiled Viva, an employee experience platform, to help motivate employees.

Marketing executives are busy preparing for this new, hybrid world of in-person and remote collaboration post-pandemic.

Barry Lowenthal, CEO of the New York-based media agency Media Kitchen, with clients including Victoria’s Secret and Loews Hotels, sees emerging technologies as fostering the ease of working together. “All these technologies, from video to chat to better cloud-sharing tools, have just brought us closer together and allowed us to successfully service our clients and pitch new business,” he said.

Aside from helping along business through the pandemic, he expects them to continue to be a vital part of the business. “They are all going to become standard tools,” he said. “Anything that improves service and employee quality of life becomes standard.”

Even before the pandemic, B-Reel, a Stockholm-based creative agency, did a large amount of work for clients, which include H&M and Hyundai, on platforms such as Slack, Figma and Google Workspace, said Petter Westlund, co-founder and executive creative director of products and services at the company. “It just feels like we’ve evolved to more of a shared sense of remote work etiquette than we’ve had before,” he said. “Everybody has to invest in making collaboration work.”

While he believes virtual working is here to stay, Westlund is among those who look forward to a return to the physical headquarters. “The flexibility is great, but it also makes you appreciate the quality of interaction you get from being in person, and that there are benefits from the ritual of going to work and having a shared space with your colleagues, and clear boundaries between work time and free time,” he said.

Westlund envisions technology will help employers with not just collaboration, but other elements of the business, and in everyday life. “This is just the beginning,” he added.

Joshua Evan Greenberg, managing director at the Los Angeles creative studio Caveat, …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron