Connected Living 2025 – the future of work

Last updated: 08 August 2022

CL2025

You’ll probably be familiar with the long-running debate around technology and working patterns. As we saw in our Twitter chat last week, where leading experts and influencers discussed the impact of AI on jobs, many believe that advancements in the IoT and faster connectivity are set to revolutionize the very definition of work.

Our recent Connected Living 2025 report also looked at what young people expect from the future workplace. If their predictions are accurate, we could be using our smartphone in the office a lot more – and not to procrastinate (not that any of our readers have done that!).

According to our young respondents, authentication is one area that’s expected to have evolved greatly by 2025. Rather than identifying yourself with a lanyard or a pass, nearly two thirds of young people believe fingerprint scans will be used, while around half think workplace entrances will be equipped with facial recognition software. We wonder whether the support for fingerprints suggests a wider attachment to touchscreens and touchpads.

Perhaps the most interesting findings came when young people were asked about what the office space might look like in 2025. It wasn’t good news for the desktop PC, with a majority believing that it will be replaced by – no, not the laptop – the smartphone! Yes, young people envisage a working world where employees sit in circles and collaborate, sharing knowledge and files on their mobile phones. Of course, while this environment sounds exciting, it’s crucial that we get the security right, since mobile working presents new challenges for companies’ infrastructure. That’s why we’re encouraging businesses to adopt cloud-based multi-factor authentication security systems.

If you’ve been following our Connected Living series, you’ll know that Chinese and Brazilian respondents have been the most enthusiastic – and the trend is no different for their visualizations of the workplace. A third is so ambitious they even expect employees to identify themselves through a direct brain interface. They also expected smart glasses to be important; an interesting prediction after the failure of those devices to really take off with consumers so far.

So, if our young respondents are accurate with the predictions, a working day in 2025 will involve smartphone-based working, fingerprint scanning upon entering the workplace and even direct brain scanning!

If you want to find out more about our survey, read the report, which you can find here. Plus, why not have a look at our Twitter chat based on the report’s findings, which involved leading influencers like technology evangelist Tom Cheesewright and industry expert Dan Kaplan.

How do you envisage the workplace of 2025? Tell us by posting a comment below, tweeting at @Gemalto, or by joining our conversation at #CL2025.

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