The future of workspace collaboration in the ‘Era of the Cloud’

Workers aren’t supposed to waste many hours on their commute to work and spend at least 8 hours a day in their office boxes.

The 80/20 rule which states that 80% of the results are triggered by only 20% of your actions contradicts the false idea that productivity is higher when the worker does more things.

So, instead of a stern manager to watch over the shoulders and supervise his employees like some naughty school mates, there are new opportunities opened for the workspace that will level up the employer-employee relationship from a pyramidal hierarchy to the beneficial collaboration.

Thus, things are looking up for the future working structure. Moreover, the future is closer than you think thanks to the new Era of the Cloud. More and more employers are ditching the traditional office in favor of their employees’ home office. Let’s see if it is a truly wise strategy for the professional life of a healthy company!

Advantages of cloud workspace

There have been already carried some studies to collect data about working remotely on the cloud, and the numbers are looking good. First of all, a home office provides more productivity agents. You get to work in the space created by you, with the people you chose to be surrounded by, and the strict policies of any work office completely vanish. Around 44% of the interviewed employees noticed an increased level of productivity, and it’s no wonder why.

As long as employees are having good work results and a quality Internet connection, they are free to enjoy the dissolution of space boundaries. They can choose to work from less stressful environments, like the seaside, mountain cabins, and travel destinations from the Seven Wonders of the World.  Studies already showed that traveling is the quickest way to activate the full potential of a person, increase their imagination and open their mind to new life perspectives. These improvements show a huge impact on work life by increasing soft skills like problem solving, teamwork, or communication.

Furthermore, employees will finally get to strike the perfect work/home balance. After losing many hours on long commutes and office distractions, workers will enjoy more time on improving their own lifestyle and spend quality time with their families. Happy families improve the life of local communities, so society is another factor that will be positively improved by the home offices.

Moreover, happy employees are more prone to show loyalty to their company because it played a vital role in the higher quality of their personal life. The Millennials form a generation that is known for its tendency to change their jobs too often, so employers should have the wellbeing of their employees as a priority.

The dissolution of space boundaries presents great advantages for the employers as well. They will be able to select the best employees no matter where they are located around the globe. And investing in a multicultural team makes way to great benefits like making culturally correct decisions, accomplishing the expectations of any kind of audience, or a larger set of solutions for any problem faced by the team.

Disadvantages of cloud workspace

Most of the employers are afraid of the fact that letting go of their employees will lead to a significant decrease in the productivity levels. However, this might not be a well-calculated assumption.

A good manager shouldn’t be seen as a drastic supervisor. Their primary role is to find a great team with high work ethics based on proactive attitudes, teamwork, openness to communication, willingness to share and learn from one another, and high aspirations for personal and professional progress.

The hardest job of a good manager should not be on supervising their team their whole life, but it should be at the beginning. They should do their best to train and teach the new team everything they know, every vital protocol, trade secrets, and invest in training and courses.

Only after all these, a good manager can take a breath and watch their team deliver excellent results. They should not position themselves above their team, but work side by side with them and manage their activity as a whole.

In conclusion, a well-trained employee shouldn’t even be supervised. They should be fully aware of what they has to do, what targets they must reach and what their manager’s expectations are.

So, the disadvantage of the remote workplaces, such as those on the cloud, stands not in the obstacles that block the option of surveillance, but in finding a suitable digital substitute for face to face meetings. Working far from your teammates can trigger chaos factors that affect the quality of the work results. Online tools like WhatsUp, Skype, DropBox, Google Drive are there to solve these problems. Nonetheless, a company should get accustomed and streamline the remote collaboration means before adventuring itself in the future of remote workspaces.

All things considered, there is still room for improving the migration from the work office to the comforts of the home office. But this is just a small obstacle for the monumental movement that is about to positively change the work experience for good.

Mike Jones is a Boston University graduate, with an MS in Mass Communication. He is now a full-time writer, passionate about everything related to business and technology. He sometimes writes for TheNextDigit.