Digital Outlook 2030: Employee

The improvement of communication technology will continue into the next decade, whether this is in the metaverse or in the form of hologram- like experiences. As the experience becomes more immersive and more natural to our brains, the need for physical presence will reduce, and more tasks will move online. Communication technology will enable a more efficient work life as well as a life away from the office. Multilingual meetings can be translated live, allowing for increased collaboration across special and linguistic barriers. Communication technology will, in short, be a force that reshapes our way of work and beyond. Proximity to work becomes less important for where you live, the job market becomes less determined by geography, and cities will be reshaped.

Not all changes are viewed as positive. Working from everywhere has left many leaders with a heightened sense of less control over their employees. Some companies will turn to technology to regain control, using the opportunities provided by digital work to collect data on their employees.

Other companies may embrace the opportunity to empower employees with greater responsibility by investing in trust and leadership. Still, even these companies are likely to collect more data on their employees. In this transition from a physical workplace to a virtual workspace, we are provided with new opportunities but also a reshaping of the rules of corporate life. We have started the discussion on what working from home might mean for gender equality, promotions, and inclusion. As new tools are taken into use, new discussions will arise. The technology could, for example, screen for mental imbalance. It could do so in a privacy- respecting way by keeping the results private to the employee, but perhaps the employer has a right to know. Similarly, technology might suggest, based on data from many companies, what kind of diversity would work best for a particular team. This could be a great tool when hiring leaders, but the algorithm might be biased or locked in the past.

We are on a path towards ever better communication technology and increased use of digital tools. This will have a positive impact on many employees and companies. At the same time, technology touches us and changes how we work and act, providing us with small and large dilemmas as we move from workplace to workspace.