Over the past decades, technologies use in offices have changed and improved rapidly. Todays workplace is completely different as it was when we started to work. The equipment, technologies and related methods of communication are different. We needed to get used to new technologies each time some new has come. Winners are those who can adopt, the losers are those whose pace of adopting new technologies is slower. The success is hide in adoption process of new technologies for the office use.
What is the digital workplace?
The digital workplace is the virtual form of traditional office environment that consists of several connected workplace technologies and equipment that allows workers to work remotely in an efficient way. The digital workplace allows to communicate, collaborate and have access to any data from any place. The advantage of the digital workplace is the continual access to data and instant data sharing, effective communication with colleagues from any part of the world, improvement of work organization, increasing productivity and efficiency of the work.
Nowadays, in the digital era, each office worker must be trained to use digital technologies within the workplace. As the technologies are developing rapidly, the training must be continuous. Otherwise, workers will never use technologies effectively and will always only catching-up the pioneers in their adoption.
What technologies I need to know for the digital workplace?
Most of the technologies that are incorporated in the digital workplace are well known. We know and use the basic software within the Office 365 as MS Word and Excel or e-mails manager MS Outlook. During the Covid-19, also MS Teams, Zoom or other platforms for video conferencing increased their popularity. Besides that, elementary software, the online data storage is crucial for effective and continuous access to data and information. The most known is the Cloud that allows to have all data available anytime and anywhere – the only what is needed is internet connection. Most of us, even if not using cloud services, know some personal (but similar) services – for instance Google Disc that is often use with our personal Gmail accounts. The storage of information is the key aspect of digital workplace.
Digital environment brings also some danger. Digital security is more important as ever before. Even if we use some security software, it will never protect our data if our behaviour will not be not careful enough. The cyber-attacks are very common and we need to protect the storage data and information as well as to protect the content of the communication with colleagues (but also our personal communication).
Many of us use various application for personal purposes. For the digital workplace, the role of application has increased. Almost each communication platform that might be used for workplace exists as the Application. Those are available for any operation systems and then available in smartphones. As a result, many of the office work might be done via smartphones or tablets without necessity to use laptops or desktops.
Nowadays, the traditional office work does not exist. The office work is done in the digital workplaces, in any form of the used technologies. The use of new and modern technologies will always increase. Similarly, the technological level of technologies will be only higher forcing the users to learn how to use them effectively. Digital workplace is here – we need to learn how to work in this environment to perform effectively.