The “Augmented Connected Workforce” is certainly one of Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2024.Which raises the query: “Wait, what?”The Augmented Connected Workforce (ACWF) is an idea or a paradigm the place superior applied sciences are used to offer staff what basically quantity to tremendous powers. Specifically, the concept envisions integrating employees with Augmented Reality (AR) glasses, AI instruments of each description, wearable sensors, wearable communication instruments, IoT, robots, exoskeletons, machine imaginative and prescient and cloud computing.In quick, the Augmented Connected Workforce idea builds a greater employee by outfitting them with related instruments that ship immediate entry to data and communication.That sounds lots like science fiction. Specifically, it appears like cyborgs assimilated into the company hive-mind. But in reality, all tendencies in workforce expertise level within the path of the Augmented Connected Workforce idea.Here are a few clarifying situations.
A fancy manufacturing atmosphere is run by meeting line employees outfitted with augmented security glasses and exoskeletons, enabling every to carry 5 occasions extra weight than an un-augmented human. New procedures are introduced and demonstrated in augmented actuality, with educational overlays on precise gear. Workers on reverse ends of the manufacturing facility collaborate in actual time as in the event that they have been side-by-side. Wearable sensors inform all robotic gear of the presence of a human, inflicting them to cease shifting when an individual is close to or work round individuals.
A CEO working from dwelling meets with the board, every member of which is represented by a life-size, life-like hologram sitting round a desk. She’s capable of conjure up real-time dashboard like enterprise course of knowledge, which is represented in 3D hovering over the desk. A query comes up about compliance, so the compliance officer is introduced into the assembly, additionally as a hologram. AI takes notes and communicates particulars with the 3D knowledge to all board members.
The advantages are clear: particularly, the elimination of friction for fast actionable data and communication (and with it, the breaking down of departmental silos), the enhancement of the human mind with AI, the enhancement of the human physique with exoskeleton expertise and the overall integration of human and machine. This is all designed to end in improved problem-solving and decision-making, higher automation, streamlined communication and collaboration, decreased errors and improved security, higher particular person productiveness and operational effectivity, higher asset administration and different advantages.One central idea to the Augmented Connected Workforce is the significance of seamless, immediate communication and collaboration no matter location. In different phrases, the “workplace” is a worldwide, non-geographic digital house. This helps collaboration between individuals globally, and distant work. Meetings are digital, and particular person employees hook up with troubleshoot points and brainstorm, regardless of the place they’re. In truth, the “workplace” is a shared set of assets primarily accessed via augmented actuality. The concept is to make use of these digital applied sciences and new person interfaces to foster a way of collaboration and neighborhood. Onboarding, coaching and team-building all occur in shared digital areas.We also can count on a blurring of the road between work and coaching for that work. Here’s what I imply. Training will happen more and more via VR and AR, giving the worker a visceral sense of really doing the work earlier than truly doing it. Then, whereas on the job, new processes and strategies and strengthened studying also can occur via AR on an ongoing foundation, with competence and efficiency measured by AR gadgets, wearable and IoT sensors and AI.The Augmented Connected Workforce will each require, and facilitate, fixed coaching.Sounds nice — however why now? While analysts have been speaking in regards to the Augmented Connected Workforce for just a few years, three tendencies are shifting this to the forefront (and convincing organizations comparable to Gartner to say it’s one of many prime tech tendencies this 12 months).The first, after all, is the generative AI (genAI) revolution kickstarted a 12 months and a half in the past by OpenAI’s public launch of the ChatGPT chatbot. Since then, the sector has exploded, with tons of of recent enterprise and productiveness instruments rising that leverage genAI.Second, a surge in spatial computing platforms such because the Apple Vision Pro and a brand new compelling class of heads-up show AR gadgets and platforms has made AR ripe for widespread, across-the-organization enterprise use. The mainstreaming of AR glasses will gasoline large improvement of enterprise instruments that give customers real-time visible knowledge hovering in bodily house.And third, the AI glasses revolution signifies that white collar staff and others will be capable of put on gadgets that appear to be unusual glasses (and should in reality have prescription lens) that ship real-time entry to AI all day, on daily basis. Now, we are able to count on a brand new technology of options that mix AI and AR with sensor-based gadgets, robotics and cloud computing. In truth, firms like Glartek and LightGuide are already delivering options that explicitly assist the Augmented Connected Workforce idea.The challenges forwardThe coming transformation represents a radical leap ahead in how companies function. Gartner predicts that by 2027, one-quarter of CIOs will use augmented related workforce initiatives.But challenges abound. The prime concern but to be tackled in any significant and systematic manner entails cybersecurity. The diploma of connectivity between methods and friction-free entry to knowledge affords an unprecedented assault floor that must be mitigated by new safety applied sciences and strategies.Another is value. Beyond the {hardware}, software program, cloud, and repair options, Augmented Connected Workforce transformation would require fixed coaching and upskilling and extra refined change administration.And yet one more problem would be the integration of assorted next-generation expertise methods with one another.It’s early days for the Augmented Connected Workforce. But even now, it’s time to revisit the IT roadmap and begin taking note of the part elements of this development, beginning with AI, AI automation, AR in all its variations and the rising world of genAI-enabled instruments.The fears round AI and different applied sciences changing employees is overblown. What’s much more probably is that employees will likely be enhanced by AI and different applied sciences and remodeled into tremendous employees.
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