How You Can Use Smart City Technology to Build Better Workplaces

At its core, smart city technology is about using data to improve the quality of life. While people tend to think of the impact in terms of making cities more efficient and environmentally friendly, there is another area where it can have a significant impact: improving the workplace.

City leaders used to think of intelligent technologies as tools for becoming more efficient behind the scenes (Malik, 2021). Now, technology is being injected into residents’ lives with smartphones that instantly provide updated information about transit traffic and other critical issues in their communities – no matter where you are.

With the help of data and digital technology, smart cities can make better decisions to improve the community’s quality of life. More comprehensive real-time information gives agencies the ability to watch events unfold. At the same time, understanding demand patterns change over time to respond with faster solutions at a lower cost than ever before (Malik, 2021). The future is now when it comes to managing resources like energy consumption or traffic congestion because there is no need to guess what might happen next – all these and much more matter in 2022 and beyond.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is how this is done (Malik, 2021). It is the idea that all devices can be connected through embedded sensors, collecting data and information that allow individuals to make decisions about anything from manufacturing processes, city planning, traffic management, or monitoring climate change. The future of smart cities is not just about the technology but also how they use it to solve public problems and achieve a higher quality of life for their citizens (Malik, 2021).

Workplace Technology Trends

At the same time, innovative technology is also making its way into the workplace as various tools that can be used to improve everything from how quickly employees receive information from systems to increase their overall productivity. Some trends have been growing for years, while others are brand new. In a hyperconnected realm where employees may affect market performance as much as clients do, many organizations have not yet focused on how their workforce can conduct its work optimally—and this affects the prospect of the company’s advancement.

In today’s increasingly digitalized society, it has become more accessible for people from all around the globe to collaborate on projects and assessments alike through various forms. Evolving technology such as instant emailing documents back and forth or meeting face-to-face while still effectively communicating using social media platforms such as Skype or Zoom allows individuals to stay connected and relevant without missing a beat. This technology will enable people to participate in video calls without having any distance between themselves geographically speaking. These advancements also pose challenges when managing an entire company’s operations because there are so many different types of positions available today (such as remote jobs) that need to be filled.

On the one hand, there are excellent reasons for companies to fill their vacancies using digital communication because it reduces the costs involved with hiring employees. Still, on the other hand, this type of communication often leads to increased stress levels among employees. Stress can lead to someone not performing at their optimal level, which can affect both qualities of work and personal time away from the workplace, which is why it’s often considered an essential factor in workload planning (Faw, 2021).

With the future of work in mind, organizations invest in solutions that simplify lives by digital enablement and automation. One can find highly sophisticated machinery in remote or physical settings with coworkers alongside them on factory floors. At the same time, retail employees have handheld devices that help facilitate everything from product information and inventory to customer support – all without ever leaving their desks.

This, of course, has brought along the need for improved technology infrastructures and management while securing workflow data collaboration across departments to keep track of events and support each other through live streams and alerts. To best align these changes with the business objectives, it is vital to familiarize oneself with the most recent and up-and-coming technological trends and how they can specifically help the business grow. In today’s world of hyperconnected workers, many organizations have not yet addressed how their workforce can carry out work optimally in the digital environment provided for them. While this is changing as more people bring skillsets online through platforms such as LinkedIn tools that help manage activities across various devices cut down costs – especially when compared side-by-side (Garnter, 2021).

Over the last few decades, technology has become an integral part of every industry. As more organizations update their business models to fit into modern-day working environments, corporations need to understand how to use intelligent technologies to improve their workplace culture and attract top talent.

Furthermore, with employees spending most of their time outside the physical office, smart city technology has significantly increased worker productivity, mobility, and workplace satisfaction. However, most companies are still struggling to tap into the benefits of these technologies. According to a survey conducted by Garner Inc., in 2021, many organizations ranging from small businesses to large corporations failed to find the right balance between participation in workplace activities and fairness when engaging with employees (Garnter, 2021).

Workers are constantly switching between applications, costing organizations 32 days per worker. This adds up to a whole year’s worth of workplace productivity lost because employees spend 25% (or 800 hours) looking for information they need to do their jobs properly (Faw, 2021). Experienced employees can account for 40 percent or over 1 trillion total minutes spent on work-related tasks such as research papers and reports, emailing colleagues, reading blogs related directly to their field (Economic Times, 2019).

To help organizations get the most out of their investments in workplace technology, it’s essential to understand how a skilled workforce can be more productive (Bellini et al., 2020). When it comes to digital tools for the modern workplace, more is not always better. Digital solutions within an organization can often lead workers down a rabbit hole of confusing options and endless features that have no impact on their day-to-day productivity or experience at work (Bellini et al., 2020). Moreover, it may even make things more complex than they need be in many cases. Employees are at the center of the design to create a digital workplace that transforms how people collaborate, get work done, and ultimately do business successfully. As such, employees must be able to relate to those they interact with throughout their day, whether via phone call or online. Hence, productivity can increase, and employee satisfaction levels rise accordingly, making this transition more accessible for everyone involved (Malik, 2021).

What do humans want from digital interactions?

Employees should be recognized as our whole, authentic selves – including personal preferences and ambitions. Employees need to feel like they can trust the system to sense what is best for them in every way possible. Doing so would provide the technology that suits their needs without extra effort and make everything easy to use through one seamless experience to boost productivity. Automatically individuals also expect the system to adapt and cater to their needs when they change or evolve, such as a new position or promotion. Finally, workers may seek digital interactions to be fun, user friendly, and rewarding, which ties into building better workplaces.

What can intelligent city technology do in the workplace?

With technology now more advanced than ever before, even cities are becoming ‘smart.’ It is all part of the rapidly changing and evolving world we live in – so why not take advantage of it by using smart city tech to improve workplaces everywhere? Here we reveal how you can do just that:

The development of this leading-edge technology is accelerating thanks to the continued advancing infrastructure and support from major players like Google, Microsoft, and IBM’s groundwork (Garnter, 2021). They continue investing heavily into new initiatives with potentially lasting effects on humanity’s future. This has created a new set of tools developers can use to make digital experiences more human by building rich, dynamic, and intuitive interfaces. Organizations now have the power to gather real-time data from their businesses and then leverage that information like never before. For example, the digital workplace is a product of the ever-changing world. It is imperative that society redesign workplaces be more than just computers with Internet access, but instead environments where people connect and collaborate in ways conducive to getting their job done efficiently while also enjoying themselves when on duty.

To support a post-pandemic new reality, pertinent leaders must consider the employee’s total experience. Organizations should prioritize technologies that enhance privacy while also focusing on cybersecurity (Faw, 2021). Moreover, it is imperative to promote improved productivity within the business and protect it against outside factors such as data breaches or hacks from competitors who may be trying hard to get past firewalls and implemented security. Balanced experiences will give companies all the advantages needed internally with coworkers/team members alongside clients observing toward the goals set out by the company’s leadership through relevant data that can be made available to everyone.

In the end, focusing on the user experience of new smart city technologies and applying them to the workplace can lead to a more competitive company that may find itself on top of innovations. In addition, it can create more productive workers who are fulfilled by their experiences with the company and who are content toward goals set out by leadership through relevant data that can be transparent and attainable.

Reference:

Gartner Inc., Architect the Future of Work With the Digital Workplace Framework, Jim Murphy, Gene Phifer, 29 June 2021 Architect the Future of Work With the Digital Workplace Framework (gartner.com)

Employees spend more than 25% of their time searching for the information they need to do their jobs: Survey, Economic Times, June 18, 2019, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/jobs/employees-spend-more-than-25-of- their-time-searching-for-the-information-they-need-to-do-their-jobs-citrix/articleshow/69839496.cms?from=mdr

Heather Bellini et al., The Battle For Our Screens, Part 2: The Future of Work, Goldman Sachs, September 22, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ITRXtS8DnE&ab_channel=GoldmanSachs

Larissa Faw, Workers Waste 32 Days A Year Due To ‘Workplace Efficiency’ Apps,” Forbes, March 5, 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2021/03/05/workers-waste-32-days-a-year-due-to-workplace-efficiency-apps

Malik, P.K., Sharma, R., Singh, R., Gehlot, A., Satapathy, S.C., Alnumay, W.S., Pelusi, D., Ghosh, U., and Nayak, J., 2021. Industrial Internet of Things and its applications in industry 4.0: State of the art. Computer Communications, 166, pp.125-139.