On the 21st of October Manfred Tscheligi, Margherita Kramer and Marc Busch from the Technology Experience business unit at AIT hosted a networking session on future working experiences at the ICT conference in Lisbon. The ICT conference – hosted by the European Commission – is the biggest conference related to Europe’s Horizon 2020 research and development program with a focus on emerging information and communication technologies.
In a panel international experts from law (Yung Shin Van der Sype, KU Leuven), technology (Sofoklis Kyrazakos, Aaalborg University), business (Victor Muntes, CA Technologies), industrial research (Lior Limonad, IBM) and public authorities (Lisbeth Mosnik, Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology) discussed challenges around the future of work and production: On the one hand, there will be more knowledge workers, which means that the workforce should be equipped with other skills and competences than in the past. Upcoming technologies like augmented and mixed reality applications in the workplace will open new opportunities for increased efficiency, but their introduction will bring up problems at the same time, especially for workers with low technology affinity. ICTs should support people and not give them the feeling that they are being overwhelmed.
A crucial question therefore will be: how can we design and integrate ICTs in the workplace in an ambient and even peripheral way? Changing business models will affect the economy and the workplaces of the future, companies and factories need tools and strategies to deal with these changes.
Additionally, there is one highly important aspect that has to be considered in all technology and business developments in the future of work: the privacy of the workers. Privacy as a fundamental human value has to be respected, especially in the relationship between employees and employers. Because ultimately, ICTs and technologies should be tools to help society to become better.