Digital Workplace Technologies Will Be Essential for Enabling Innovation in a Hybrid Workforce
26 August 2021 -- Nearly 80% of workers are using collaboration tools for work in 2021, up from just over half of workers in 2019, according to the Gartner Digital Worker Experience Survey*. This is an increase of 44% since the pandemic began.
"Collaboration tools found renewed importance during COVID-19 for their role in ensuring the productivity of suddenly remote teams,” said Christopher Trueman, principal research analyst at Gartner. “As many organisations shift to a long-term hybrid workforce model, cloud-based, personal and team productivity technologies, along with collaboration tools, will form the core of a series of new work hubs that meet the requirements of various remote and hybrid workers."
Storage/sharing and real-time mobile messaging tools also saw increased use during the pandemic, used by 74% and 80% of 2021 respondents, respectively (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Changes in Digital Workplace Technology Use, 2019-2021 (Percentage of Respondents)
Source: Gartner (August 2021)
Specifically, the use of meeting solutions surged during the pandemic. While workers globally reported that they spent, on average, 63% of their meeting time in-person in 2019, that number dropped to 33% by 2021 as more meetings took place over audio and video-enabled meeting solutions. The shift away from in-person meetings is expected to continue. Gartner predicts that by 2024, in-person meetings will drop from 60% of enterprise meetings to 25%, driven by remote work and changing workforce demographics.
"As IT leaders prepare for a mix of meeting modalities, it will be critical that they ensure equitable collaboration, tool and resource access for all meeting participants, regardless of location," said Trueman. "Cloud-based meeting solutions and content service platforms can support this through offerings or integrations with technologies including virtual whiteboards, rich chat features, and recording and transcription capabilities."
*For editors: The Gartner 2021 Digital Worker Experience Survey was conducted in November and December 2020 among 10,080 full-time employees at organisations with 100 or more employees in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific. The Gartner 2019 Digital Workplace Survey was conducted online from March through April 2019, among 7,261 respondents in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Gartner clients can read more in the report"Technology to Support Collaboration for a Hybrid Workforce."
Learn to make faster, smarter decisions -- and generate stronger performance – by reinventing where, when and how work is done in the Gartner Future of Work Resource Centre.
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Our unmatched combination of expert-led, practitioner-sourced and data-driven research steers clients toward the right decisions on the issues that matter most. We are a trusted advisor and an objective resource for more than 14,000 enterprises in more than 100 countries — across all major functions, in every industry and enterprise size.
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading research and advisory company and a member of the S&P 500. We equip business leaders with indispensable insights, advice and tools to achieve their mission-critical priorities today and build the successful organisations of tomorrow.
Our unmatched combination of expert-led, practitioner-sourced and data-driven research steers clients toward the right decisions on the issues that matter most. We are a trusted advisor and an objective resource for more than 14,000 enterprises in more than 100 countries — across all major functions, in every industry and enterprise size.
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