As the working environment continues to change, transformative technologies will allow business owners and employees to take advantage of the shift, and ensure that productivity and efficiency are maintained throughout the process.
Telecommuting has become a popular prospect for many businesses over the last few years — and now we’re seeing the data that shows how beneficial it can be.
Professor Nicholas Bloom from the Stanford Graduate School of Business did a recent study of China’s largest travel agency, Ctrip, which employs 20,000 people. The company’s leaders started a working from home experiment with a large number of volunteers over a nine month period — and the results were pretty clear.
Tracking the employees that worked from home, Bloom found a massive uptick in productivity, and the rate of turnover dropped significantly among those employees. The company reported that they made $2,000 more profit per person at home. It was so successful that Ctrip rolled out the work-from-home option for the whole company.
This kind of a shift in working environment poses challenges to businesses that want the benefits of allowing employees to work from home, but want to keep communication around projects efficient and easy to coordinate. There’s also potential for a reorganization of the working space that utilizes new technology to improve performance.
Here are a couple of examples of new technologies working to innovate along with a changing working environment.
Samsung’s DeX emphasizes convenience. It allows mobile Samsung users to link to a desktop display in a straightforward fashion. Microsoft has already seen the potential in this mobile-to-desktop functionality, and Samsung’s push to make it happen for their ecosystem shows that this is an attractive prospect for some of the bigger names in tech.
READ MORE: Samsung thinks its DeX technology can transform the way you work
Samsung hopes that DeX will appeal to workers who are reliant on their phone — using it to keep notes, capture live event coverage, or compile reports — but still use a PC part of the time.
A new prototype, called Desktopography, is also revealing how the physical space of the desk is changing thanks to augmented reality. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created a compelling prototype of an augmented reality system for desk space. The device projects different convenience apps, such as calculators or calendars, onto the desk from a light bulb socket, allowing you to easily manipulate tools while working on your laptop at the same time.
Compared to other efforts in AR desk technology, the new prototype is easily moved around a cluttered working surface, as apps can be fixed in place or shifted to the other side of your coffee cup. As the technology develops, the simple interface offered by an augmented reality desk could increase productivity by letting users access apps and shortcuts with just a tap of the finger.
READ MORE: Prototype augmented reality system uses your desk as a display
