New work is considered the trending topic in the world of work. What influence usability & user experience have on the current work concepts, explains Dr. Benjamin Franz, founder of Custom Interactions GmbH.
Open-space offices, the six-hour day or the four-day week – terms often used concerning new forms of work. They are becoming more and more critical in fast-moving digital times. According to a current study by the management consultancy EY, more than sixty percent of the around 16,000 respondents worldwide would like to expand the technologies in their company and expand home office options. New York offers an approach to design the daily routine individually and enable location-independent work. In digitization, the business world continues to develop in this direction, but it is only at the beginning of an agile and individualized working world.
To not leave the workforce alone on the path of this development, technology – which is supposed to support the exercise of a profession – must not represent an additional burden. It is primarily intended to relieve people, not confuse incomprehensible usability. However, companies must first meet the technical requirements to adapt to changed conditions and to be able to incorporate New Work into day-to-day business in the future exhaustively.
Usability And User Experience – New Work: Create An Ideal Working Atmosphere
Flexible work is always tied to the environment. From the smartphone in real-time to the computer, in the office, home office, or on the go – this only works if the technical conditions ensure that work can be started straight away without significant set-up effort. The aim must be to establish an ideal working atmosphere – regardless of work and personal time management.
At the start of the working day, it should be enough to open the laptop and work without encountering problems when working together in a team. However, standard B2B technology often proves to be a stumbling block for employees. This is supposed to relieve the burden through automated applications, but many users encounter problems with understanding. To use this type of technology, it is not uncommon for employees to have to attend external training courses. Only then do they fully understand and use it – a typical example of how things shouldn’t go.
First and foremost, the technology must ensure smooth transitions in all processes. Agile teams don’t bother with such technical problems if it makes their contribution unnoticed in the background in day-to-day use. Instead, you can concentrate fully on your actual field of work. This fact can also positively affect the satisfaction of the workforce. Employees can work more concentrated thanks to the time saved – which the optimized process design entails.
Concentration On The Implementation Of Suitable Concepts
To establish a new work concept that is adapted to the needs of its users and thus increases efficiency for different professional fields, potentials must be recognized and implemented, especially from the point of view of a usable user experience and usability. This can best be analyzed based on the people involved—interviews with specialists from all departments who focus on individual perception help identify current needs.
In a second step, the knowledge gained from user research can be used to adapt the technical conditions according to the ideas of the workforce. How usable technology – which is of great importance for an agile work concept – proves to be can also be determined with usability tests. Ultimately, New Work requires technology that enables working people, through everyday usability, to concentrate on the goal of an activity without having to devote themselves to secondary scenes. This is the only way to exploit the potential of New Work fully.
ALSO READ: HR Trends 2022: 6 Essential Predictions From Experts
