The pandemic forced workplaces to go digital, a way of working that has its limitations. As the workplace evolves into a hybrid of physical and digital experiences, Silicon Luxembourg examines the emerging trends and challenges that will impact how we work in the next eight years.
To an outsider, transitioning to a digital workplace seems simple. But as anyone who has worked remotely for a prolonged period of time knows, it requires more than just granting access to basic digital tools like Zoom, Skype and sharing platforms. According to Thibault Chollet, partner in Deloitte Luxembourg in the advisory and consulting group and member of the Luxembourg Proptech Advisory Board, if employers want to encourage interactions that create innovation, foster company culture, and boost remote employee engagement and retention, they need to adopt fresh solutions. “For remote employee engagement, some solutions have emerged that provide a basis. You log in to something like the intranet where you find news feeds that are particular to a team or department or even the whole organisation. Here you can have digital employee dashboards where you have different information and features that foster employee engagement,” he says.
Some solutions are already in development or on the market. For instance, Microsoft Teams has begun developing advanced features for its platform to boost engagement and Chollet says that startups are now coming up with new solutions.
But, he says that while clients are aware of the need to adopt such solutions, few are shopping around for them.
“There is a lot of data generated by the digital workspace that can be used to measure trends and for me this data is barely exploited”
Thibault Chollet, Partner at Deloitte Luxembourg
Leveraging employee data
One field that Chollet would like to see more work done in is the collection and analysis of employee data from these new digital tools to inform facility management planning, among other areas. “There is a lot of data generated by the digital workspace that can be used to measure trends and for me this data is barely exploited.” He cites an example of the Deloitte desk-booking system to extrapolate how many staff will be in the office on any given day. If that information were integrated with, for instance the company catering provider, they could better forecast volumes and reduce food waste. Chollet says Luxembourg is behind when it comes to the adoption of proptech, “because it was so easy to sell space in Luxembourg that the developer didn’t invest that much in advanced propetch or advanced property management systems or facility management systems.” He believes that will change in future as tenant demands become more complex.
3D spaces
The digital workplace solution currently receiving the most airtime is the metaverse. A collective term for virtual, 3D environments, metaverses are slowly gaining traction with employers in Luxembourg. “We have already mapped out our facility in virtual reality,” LHoFT CEO Nasir Zubairi explains. Luxembourg digital twin creators BIM-Y conducted the 3D scan while Virtual Rangers converted that data into an accessible 3D experience for potential partners abroad to pay a virtual visit to the facility. The exercise, which Virtual Rangers founder Matthieu Bracchetti hopes will be a pathway to the metaverse, serves more of a marketing than employee engagement role. Bracchetti, however, believes that metaverses can do both. His firm launched the Luxembourg Metaverse in June 2022 and has since received interest from employers to create private campuses with virtual meeting rooms accessible only for the companies that commission them. These spaces, which employees access as avatars, don’t always need to be visual replicas of real workplaces, “because we don’t have the physical limit of the real world so we can just express our creativity,” says Bracchetti.
Virtual Rangers has built a virtual campus for Luxembourg rail operator CFL and, following on from that project, the firm is developing an immersive room for CFL to brief players on specific projects. Inside the room, participants can see projected onto the walls a BIM 3D-modelled digital twin, which they can rotate and zoom into to better engage with and read the plans. The aim is for all craftspeople working on a project to meet in this room and go through the plans before working on them in the physical world.
“What’s missing is an API, the possibility to integrate these meetings seamlessly in the metaverse”
Mathias Keune, Founder of Vizz
Office tool integration into metaverses
Luxembourg web 3.0 firm Vizz launched the first Luxembourg metaverse, The Duchy, as an experiment in January 2022. Founder Mathias Keune says he has had interest from architecture firms and developers wishing to leverage the space for marketing purposes.
But he is also convinced that customised company metaverses, or microverses, will play a strong role in connecting colleagues. For this to happen, however, he says there will need to be greater adoption of VR headsets as well as improved interoperability between metaverses and existing online meeting booking solutions. “Most people use Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Webex, which are all stand alone solutions. What’s missing is an API, the possibility to integrate these meetings seamlessly in the metaverse,” Keune says. He believes that the full vision of what a metaverse can offer will be finalised over the coming decade. His feeling is that metaverses could start emerging for specific industries and that more of the digital office products that we use daily will be integrated into these worlds.
Making worlds sticky
Some doubts remain about the effectiveness of metaverse interactions and collaborations with VR headsets. Fateh Amroune, head of innovation at Deloitte Luxembourg, reckons that VR interactions are “closer to a physical interaction than actual online conference tools and still not at the level of real one. But it’s bringing a new dimension in the way that the brain can perceive this virtual experience as a real one.”
To boost adoption, some developers have begun re-examining the user experience and offering elements of gamification to bolster community building. Bracchetti’s team is overhauling the navigation of the Luxembourg Metaverse, the results of which will offer a new way of entering the world. “And we’re going to add gamification to this new version,” he says. Visitors will be able to play a multiplayer racing video game, similar to Mario Kart, but in a 3D version of Luxembourg City. Keune, meanwhile, is focusing on getting the look and feel of his metaverse right, and laying the foundations for a sustainable 3D space.
“VR interactions are “closer to a physical interaction than actual online conference tools and still not at the level of real one.”
Fateh Amroune, Head of Innovation at Deloitte Luxembourg
Physical spaces
Many employers believe that physical spaces will remain important in future, particularly for social events, to create bonds and forge a community. Until fiscal and social security matters between Luxembourg and its neighbours are harmonised, employees will, in any case, continue to spend time in an office within the duchy.
This will create new challenges for technology to solve, in particular related to facility management. Among the solutions we could see will be robotic and IoT based. Chollet believes that Deloitte’s cleaning robot, currently used to create a buzz with clients, will eventually replace the role of office cleaners.
The workplace in 2030
It is clear that the workplace in 2030 will offer different variations of hybrid working. Political and social shifts will continue to dictate the look and feel of these places as well as the technology needs. Amroune points to the demands of Generation Z and millenials for more harmonious workplaces as well as growing environmental pressures. Chollet considers that the traditional employee base will evolve, with more roles being outsourced to temporary workforce. The challenge here, he says, will be embedding these workers into companies’ core ecosystems and their digital workspaces. He says: “How do you work with those employees or that workforce that is not under permanent employee contract, but temporary? How to make sure temporary employees have access to the company’s tools and collaborate efficiently with employees.”
