Euroviews. Bad tech is the reason you hate your office

Most workplace tech isn’t helpful. Here are three ways to make office technology work for us, not against us.

As employees return to the workplace — and companies remodel offices at a scale never seen before — an unprecedented opportunity to rethink office technology is upon us.

Many CTOs are seizing the moment by infusing the office with vast amounts of new tech. 

In the next five years, approximately 75% of leaders will adopt the Internet of Things and connected devices, as well as AI. 80% more will incorporate big-data analytics. 

The intention is to accommodate new ways of working, increase efficiency, and improve employee satisfaction too.

Yet more tech doesn’t always mean better tech. In fact, most new sophisticated workplace technology creates more problems for the office than it helps solve.

This is ultimately due to poor strategy in implementation.

In my role as head of digital, I lead smart and data-driven workplace space management and planning. That includes envisioning new office technology solutions and rethinking old, outdated ways of operating.

The most common mistake I see big companies make is over-relying on useless technology.

What’s needed when integrating new office tech is something more mindful: an employee-first model. 

That means prioritising the real assets of the company — the employees and their well-being, and the physical office space — and using technology to support and enhance those elements, rather than the other way around.

Technology shouldn’t alter our behaviour; it should optimise it.

For generations, companies have been forcing people to work within the constraints of the physical office. 

Employees have been placed in cubicles, then open-plan offices, and then at home, and then in a mixed