Life in the Workplace after the Layoffs…..the New Experiences

The job market is at a historic crossroad. There have been more layoffs in the first quarter of 2023 than all of 2022 – employers had “over-hired” during the pandemic and are now self-correcting to the realities of the market. At the same time, for workers not laid off there are mandates including formal return-to-office (RTO) policies and serious questions on their productivity away from the office.?

The second casualty after a layoff is the workplace – employers naturally gravitate towards cutting space and “other perks” associated with the office. It’s ironic that the new tech companies that promoted the flexible and employee-friendly workplace experience are the ones taking the toughest measures. Google, as an example, is mandating two employees to a desk, dinner service only after the last bus departs the campus, staplers and sticky tape by request only – all bean-counter measures primarily focused on the bottom line. At Amazon, there is apprehension among employees as their 3-day mandatory work in the office date of May 1st?is approaching. Nearly 30,000 employees signed a petition asking to retract the policy which seems likely to be implemented.?

As I said in my?first blog, there is no going back to 5-days a week “in the office” as work is from anywhere. The other reality is that fully remote only works for certain job functions and they need to be far and remote for the most productive workforce.

But is there something fundamentally wrong in never ever meeting your team-mates in person?

From times immemorial, technology has enabled humans to interact without having to be meeting in person. For my generation, it started with the cell phone that allowed us to talk from anywhere not limited to a physical location – this disrupted the landline phones where you had to be at a specific physical location to talk to someone. The evolution of the cell phone to the smartphone enabled us to text, video chat and connect via social media to co-workers and industry partners. All this made us more productive, more time-efficient and also more reclusive. We don’t actually need to meet anyone in person to get things done – actually in some situations we don’t like to meet people to get things done!?

Yet we all know that even with all these technology advancements, for a team to gel and create amazing products it is super-critical to meet and work in person, for closing the sales deal that final handshake is necessary and for anyone to really appreciate and admire someone’s work it’s always good to see them in person.?

So yes, we need that face-to-face interaction- but with a new set of engagement tools for this new workplace age.??The employees need tools that will allow them to be empowered and engaged to work from anywhere like the smartphone enabled a new way of interacting and we need the managers and employers to have similar tools that allows them to guide and nurture their employees in friendly environments.

The Workplace SuperApp?by CXApp provides a full-stack solution that allows employees to experience all their work tools and their life needs in an employee engagement app. Not only from one single app can they make their video calls and chat sessions, they can set the perfect temperature for their meeting room, they can book the ping pong table and they can also sign-in to the latest event in another department - all from the from the palm of their hands. …check out this demo here.

Human interaction is best in-person and nothing can replace that special experience – we need to?augment it with new experiences?enriching us in ways we never knew before. We need to know if we are going to meet someone that they are able to meet us at the right location in the right setting, we may need to be part of a larger team on an ad-hoc basis for a week or we may just want to our quiet time in a corner away from the sales conference. The flexibility and convenience of work is not just from anywhere but also?anytime and on-demand. The new experiences include using state-of-the art location-based technologies that give you precise location of your assets as well as navigate you seamless through the maze of office campuses. And then as the human-machine user interface evolves with augmented reality it will lead the workforce into a new universe that gamifies the workplace experience – and so work will finally become fun once again- RTF is what we will talking about versus RTO....