Tech Trends to Watch in 2022

For two years, businesses and their employees have adapted rapidly to new ways of working amid a pandemic, including from where—whether at home, in the office or in a hybrid context. As 2022 dawns, we continue to adapt to new ways of working that likely no longer require commuting, physical presence and office space. These changes have impacted our business spaces and highlighted a need for our homes to accommodate our work. The main trends that I’m watching in the coming year are supportive of this new reality in which many will never return to full-time in-office work. The landscape of what an "office" is and how business is conducted within it will be defined more sharply this year.

AI-driven innovation remains center stage.

Behind the scenes, innovators are hard at work on AI capabilities ranging from discovering more ways to capture real human emotion to exploring how to enhance the experience of hybrid rooms in which some meeting participants are physically there while some are not. One way that could be accomplished is through holograms as a way to give meeting participants 3-D depth, something early adopters of this technology credit with giving a more personal sense to virtual meetings because it makes body language easier to read. Ultimately, every room in your house, or in any space in which you live and work, may end up accommodating such holographic displays. There is an upside here not just for work but also for families who have been separated from each other due to the pandemic. Imagine the joy of grandparents who can truly gauge the size of growing grandchildren via holograms.

In 2022, we’ll remain far away from a "metaverse," but tech innovators will continue to build out virtual reality and other technologies supportive of more immersive work experiences for distributed workforces. We’ll build on these last two years of advances to help us continue to grow and thrive in virtual workspaces. 

Collaboration and communication technologies will continue to evolve.

It became mission-critical in the pandemic to embrace effective collaboration and communication solutions. Now, those systems will continue to evolve as employers, employees and customers seek less context-switching and more integration of applications in more seamless ways. At the same time, phones will remain important; we’re not done talking yet! Both video and audio capabilities will be ubiquitous. These modalities are here to stay and must have interchangeability to support flexible work.

Additionally, our work technologies will expand to involve more voice interfaces. Such interfaces will decrease the need to type everything, as we’ve experienced within our mobile devices and smart home systems. This year, more such conveniences will take hold in the workplace, and we’ll be voicing more commands. AI will play a role here, too. After all, we no longer think twice about Google guessing what we’re searching for and assisting with that search. AI-driven support will increasingly unfold within work applications, including via voice commands.

New companies will be born in virtual space—and the tech involved in creating and supporting such companies will soar.

Leading RingCentral Ventures, I’m seeing firsthand how more venture businesses are being born virtually. Companies that enable virtual data rooms and virtual events are the future. These companies help businesses around the world conduct business without ever requiring physical presence. Other companies are booming by offering products that assist such new companies with things like task and project management in virtual space. 

Many new companies are seizing the opportunity to enhance the space of productivity, now "virtualized productivity," by implementing fit-to-purpose tools by verticals. More AI targeted to productivity and grouped by specific business needs will emerge, with all of the requisite learning mechanisms and adaptable tools built-in, like taxonomies, dictionaries and workflows.

The boundaries of our world now are much less pronounced. Even on a video call, you don’t know where the other people on the call physically are unless they tell you. The majority of tech companies won’t be born in Silicon Valley anymore. They’ll be born in far-off places with staff spread all around the world. Global companies like mine were built with this consideration in mind. It is wise for new companies to think beyond borders, as we don’t have the borders of our office walls anymore and are working from anywhere and everywhere already. 

Shifts in how we communicate and how we take care of ourselves will permeate all facets of work and life.

Quick communication has become of paramount importance these days, and that’s true for everyone, from doctors and lawyers to restaurants and beyond. Some of these changes are welcome and probably should have existed prior to the pandemic, e.g. doctors allowing more communication via health apps and messaging. No matter the vertical, more intelligent messaging benefits everyone involved, and this will become a focus this year. 

Amid the ongoing stress of the pandemic, including work and home boundaries being blurred in ways that are simultaneously advantageous and taxing, we have to continue to prioritize stress reduction and fighting exhaustion. Many companies are adopting tools to help in those areas, and, hopefully, such tools offer people reliable relief systems that allow their brains to relax and rejuvenate. More technologies soon will emerge to support improving connection and reducing isolation, too—key factors supportive of mental health and wellness. Along with this, businesses need to allow for breaks; relaxation needs to be integrated into our days and not just relegated to vacation.

In sum, while it seems like we’re looking toward more of the same in 2022, we’re also watching for the ways in which our new work-from-anywhere lives will be enhanced and facilitated in exciting new ways. All of these innovations will be couched in higher-than-ever importance being placed on our wellness in this new paradigm. After all, businesses can’t care only about our work lives anymore, not since work entered our home spaces to stay.

This post originally appeared in Forbes.