Will You Still Have To Commute to the Office in 2025?

In an age that’s becoming increasingly dominated by the “digital nomad” (if you’re wondering what that is, go sit in a Starbucks and look for the guy with the MacBook), is it safe to say that the days of travelling to work in the morning are done?

In order to find out, we’ve written a short piece on how digital transformation has changed the game and what it could mean for the future of commuting in business.

Rise of the remote worker

With a recent study claiming that as many as 60% of office-based employees will be working remotely by 2022, there’s no doubt that the number of people currently commuting to work is set to drop significantly.

Unlike before, in a world so heavily dominated by the cloud, businesses no longer have to run their offices in the traditional way, and it has been proven that as much as 70% of managers believe remote working drastically improves the efficiency of their staff.

Bring your own device

One of the main reasons for this is the rising number of UC applications that support BYOD and allow users to manage all areas of their business communications in any location with internet access from their own smartphones, tablets, or laptops.

As well as adding much greater mobility to each agent and allowing them to work wherever they please, BYOD is an efficient solution that is beneficial to both the business (which no longer has to pay for office hardware such as desk phones and PCs) and the employee (who can control all of their communications from a device of their choosing).

Video calling and conferencing

Before digital transformation, organising conferences and attending meetings with colleagues and clients in person meant wasting a great deal of company time and money by travelling from points A to B (and back again).

As more and more businesses begin investing in cloud UC solutions, however, the video calling and video conferencing features they offer mean that businesses can easily engage in face-to-face meetings whenever they want without ever having to get out of their chairs.

Team collaboration apps

One of the major concerns for business owners regarding remote working is how well their employees will be able to collaborate and work successfully together as a part of a team if they are never even in the same room together.

However, with a team collaboration app such as RingCentral Glip, businesses are given a virtual replication of an office environment that enables team members to instantly share information and communicate through instant messaging, voice, and video from any location.

So, is this the end for commuters?

As we saw at the start of the article, the number of commuters is said to drop considerably by 2022, and each of the points mentioned offers a clear justification of how cloud UC provides a much more efficient and cost-effective alternative to commuting.

Having said that, though there will be much more flexibility with regard to commuting as the digital transformation spreads, we think it’s highly unlikely that it will have disappeared completely by 2025, so you’ll continue to see me sitting in Starbucks with my MacBook—for now at least.