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- Global Hybrid Work Study | Employee Insights, In-Office Challenges, and the Role of AI
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Cisco Workspaces, Collaboration Solutions, Enterprise Connect, Enterprise Connect 2024, Work from Anywhere, Workplace Transformation
Table of Contents:
At Enterprise Connect 2024, we unveiled the results of our global hybrid work study, which paints a picture of employee and employer sentiment around return to the office. It also shows employers investing in AI to support collaboration and productivity.
The study surveyed 14,050 full-time employees and 3,800 employers from January 2023 to December 2024 across 19 countries.*
It’s no surprise that companies are mandating that employees return to work. We can see the evidence of it with more people on the road than in previous years, through conversations with friends, and in the news articles about return-to-office mandates—and now with our global hybrid work study, which illuminates employers’ and employees’ needs and expectations about returning to the office.
Our study found that:
The office is not ready for them.
Why is that?
The top challenges to in-office layouts and current technology are network connectivity, difficulty collaborating with remote team members, and inadequate equipment or tools.
Employers need to redesign their office spaces, and they recognize it.
Recent research uncovers the challenges and satisfaction criteria to creating a successful hybrid work strategy for organizations across the globe.
We at Cisco have heard similar feedback from our employees. We have been on a journey to create hybrid work centers, starting with the floor-to-ceiling transformation in our New York Office, creating a space that draws people in and provides the collaborative experiences they want and expect. Our blueprint for making the office a magnet, not a mandate, includes:
AI is infused throughout every space, software, and device, helping us digitize our workspaces and measure our sustainability metrics while helping our teams increase productivity and help people connect more meaningfully. Simply put, AI is going to play a significant role in the workplaces of the future.
Through the hybrid work study, we asked employers from organizations in the Americas (US, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico) how, and to what extent, AI is influencing their technology strategies. We learned that 73% of responding organizations will invest in AI-powered collaboration software, and 68% are planning to enhance their workspaces with AI technologies by 2025.
Additionally, by providing new ways to improve workplace and collaboration experiences, employers need to focus on upskilling employees with training on new technology. In fact, only 43% of employee respondents feel well prepared to use AI at work.
When we think about AI from the Webex perspective, it’s an intuitive experience that, when enabled, works quietly in the background to make work easier, better, and faster and to deliver unrivaled customer and employee experiences. That’s why we are excited to launch these new features.
The Webex AI Assistant is available across our ecosystem, which is made possible by our platform approach. It is:
Download the full report or read our press release.
*The countries included in the survey are grouped into three regions: the Americas (Brazil, Canada, Mexico, USA), Asia Pacific (Australia, Hong Kong, India, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand), and Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom). Data was also collected from the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East; That data is included in the global data analysis but is not included in the breakdown of the regional results.
See more from Webex at Enterprise Connect 2024: