A typical office used to be an entirely different place: strictly-dressed people would work under desk lamps in rows of desks with the sound of typing machines in the air. Nowadays the dress code at most offices is much leaner, meeting rooms are filled with bean bags and stress balls, while some employees work from home. Things have changed a lot indeed, and most of these changes are due to office tech advancements which allowed for more freedom in certain areas and have resulted in increased productivity in others and pushed businesses to develop in directions they haven’t perhaps even imagined.
With that in mind, here are a few ways that technology has shaped the modern office.
Moving to the cloud
There are several reasons why you should move to the cloud if you haven’t already. For starters, you won’t need expensive hardware and additional employees to maintain your servers for the purpose of backing up data and daily business functions. This way you will save up a lot of money and make sure that your data are tended to by experienced professionals.
Also, companies that offer cloud storage services have taken the question of safety to the highest levels so your business and private customer data will be much more protected from human error and cyber-attacks. As for your employees, this change has helped them be more productive since the data can be accessed anytime and from anywhere, which means that they can prepare for business trips while travelling to the location and check a document in the middle of the night if they remember something important.
Putting employee comfort first
Employers have long ago realised that employee productivity greatly depends on them being well-rested and having optimal working conditions. If they don’t get enough light and if they sit in uncomfortable chairs, they will only experience back issues and headaches which will eventually cause them to take time off so it will affect their health, productivity, and perhaps even your budget if the projects aren’t finished on time.
Besides ergonomic chairs, keyboards, and wrist support additions which have been a must for some time now, human-centric industrial solutions for lighting have become one of the primary investments on the part of employers. With light being arranged properly around the floor, each employee gets enough light so their eyes don’t get tired as much, which affects their performance, and not only eye comfort and visibility. It is important to note that seating arrangements, office tech and office design are closely knitted with efficiency, so an open-floor office layout often demands noise-cancellation headsets and employees who are collaborating together to sit close, as well as to have a separate room for brainstorming sessions.
Embracing office tech, allowing for remote work
Technology has given entrepreneurs a chance to connect on many levels and to search for partners, suppliers, and employees all around the world. In fact, limiting yourself to the local talent pool can be detrimental to a business because you are depriving your business of people who can bring knowledge, experience, enthusiasm and many other vital elements to your team and in that way help your business grow and expand its customer base.
A quality internet connection and a laptop or a computer are all your remote employee needs to begin working with you, while all apps and software tools can be easily installed. Cloud storage and modern communication channels allow for real-time collaboration between team members and they also provide the employer with real-time monitoring options to make sure everything is going smooth. Even different time zones don’t have to be problematic if the workload is allocated with prior preparation.
Automating processes
Manual data entry, and especially management can lead to human error, which is most often the reason for data-breach problems. Mistakes don’t only revolve around data since employees are usually concentrating hard on a particular task so they omit to update a password or to double-check the source of the link they got in the email instead of clicking it right away. Different software solutions can prevent many of these mistakes by way of monitoring and sending different warnings and notifications so that the employees can focus on their work and leave the technical stuff to technology to take care of them.
Modern tools not only help employees focus but speed up many processes because the search for any necessary data is quicker, making the average employee more efficient. Needless to say, preventing errors and data leakage can save you a lot, so automating certain processes has influenced many areas of business.
Offices have changed a lot and even displaced themselves at homes and outdoors. Technology placed emphasis on efficiency and showed that strict office design is not a prerequisite for achieving business success. Creativity and productivity can originate from many places and by providing satisfactory work conditions to your employees, you are, in fact, giving them the tools to do better.
Taking care of your employees’ health with appropriate furniture, lighting, and seating arrangements can be an incredible motivator for them to achieve things even ahead of schedule and if you facilitate their work with proper software tools, your business will soon be on its way to growth. The sooner you start embracing technological solutions in the workplace, the quicker the positive results will come.
Do you manage your own workplace, team or office? What are some of the office tech advancements which you’ve made in your business? Let us know in the comments section below.