Barbara Larson on how to manage remote teams and stay productive from anywhere
What is the future for remote work and how can we use it effectively? Whether you’re a manager, business leader o →
These days, you could travel every day and spend all your time in meetings, but in this time-poor world we need to work smartly, and reducing travel time is a part of that. Even if you are working in lounges and on flights, it is still incredibly taxing. While travel advances business to a certain degree, it negatively impacts your productivity as well.
Technology now allows us to be in many places in a single work day. Video collaboration is practical; you can virtually collaborate in the East in the morning, the West in the afternoon and Europe in between.
Today, climate change and other environmental issues take center stage, and international companies taking initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint will ultimately have to look at business travel as a major point of impact.
Business travel is still increasing, despite new collaboration tools, but this is more drastic because of population growth and the increasing global economy. As buildings become smarter and more energy efficient, the proportion of a company’s carbon footprint made up by business travel will increase and undergo further scrutiny.
We still need business travel to establish trust and experience certain things, but when collaboration is further augmented and virtualized, you will be able to see things with VR as though you were there, and tech will again counterbalance this need to travel.
New technology will enable that balance even in tricky tasks like site visits and inspections. Over time this will be reduced with further VR and AR tech which is helping to counteract this globalized business and the corresponding increase in travel.