Hybrid work

Women in tech plan to leave their jobs this year at a similar rate to 2022’s great resignation, according to Ensono’s fourth Speak Up survey, which consulted 1,500 full-time tech employees in the U.S., U.K. and India who identify as female.

One-quarter of respondents said they felt uncomfortable or unsafe because of microaggressions and discrimination at work this past year, and more than half said they struggle to balance caregiving responsibilities with in-person work. 

Even with clear room for improvement, nearly all — 9 in 10 — respondents say women's experiences in tech have improved in the past year as it relates to gender equity and inclusion.

The flexibility accompanying remote work had an outsized positive impact on women in tech, leading to better work-life balance and facilitating promotions, according to reports. But the majority of women Ensono surveyed found advantages to in-person work, too.

Nearly all — 97% — remote and hybrid respondents cited at least one benefit of working in-person in the past year. Nearly half said they had stronger relationships with colleagues and a similar proportion found it easier to put boundaries between work and personal life. 

Women working remotely aren’t necessarily willing to relinquish all their at-home work days, but nearly three-quarters of remote and hybrid respondents said they miss the social interaction and camaraderie of in-person work, according to the report. 

Tech leaders can bridge the gap by providing and connecting workers with more opportunities for mentorship and team-building. Across industries in IT, skilled job seekers have the upper hand and enterprises are willing to pay a premium to fill talent gaps. 

Those on the job hunt with generative AI skills, for example, can expect an average salary boost of 47% compared to candidates without them, according to an Indeed report in February. 

As enterprises execute talent strategies moving forward, leaders have to meet workers where they are, Meredith Graham, chief people officer at Ensono, said in the report.

Another wave of resignations in the sector would put enterprise aspirations in a precarious position. Women held 35% of computer systems design and related services in the U.S. at the end of 2023, up from 32% in 2019, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

It’s up to business leaders to align employee experiences with their expectations to prevent attrition.

Zoom is launching an AI-powered collaboration platform, called Zoom Workplace, and expanding access to its AI Companion, the provider said.

Zoom Workplace will act as a hub for internal and external apps, improving collaboration and productivity, Zoom said. The company will embed an AI-powered assistant via Ask AI Companion across the Zoom platform. The tool will gather, synthesize and share information from meetings, mail, documents and team chats to help users prepare for meetings.   

Zoom One bundles, the company’s all-in-one product, will rebrand as Zoom Workplace bundles, which will roll out in April and May. 

Zoom is ushering in what it sees as a new era of collaboration powered by AI. 

“Zoom Workplace as a platform, with its enhancements, represents a transformation for Zoom,” Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom, said during a press call last week. “Our goal is to help businesses reimagine teamwork.”

As AI permeated enterprise conversations in the first quarter of 2023, Zoom’s AI efforts resulted in a growing enterprise customer base. But the company's strategy hit a snag in August. 

Zoom updated its terms and conditions to allow broad control over user data for its AI projects, an under-the-radar change that spurred customer concerns. The policy language change led the Center for AI and Digital Policy to send a 45-page complaint to the Federal Trade Commission in August. 

The controversial language, since reversed, highlighted the tension between vendor plans and enterprises’ security concerns. By 2026, enterprise spending to curb intellectual property leaks, as well as copyright infringement, is expected to hurt ROI and impede generative AI adoption, according to Gartner. 

Zoom has continued to add AI capabilities to its stack, such as the revamped Zoom IQ, which created 7.2 million meeting summaries from its launch in September to the end of 2023. 

The company unveiled around 40 capabilities or updates Monday, including tweaks to its user interface, custom generative AI-powered virtual backgrounds and more ways to manage hybrid workforces. 

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By Ivanti

The evolution of the nature of work over the past several years has created a new paradigm in which workers see workplace/workstyle flexibility as being so desirable they’ll leave their jobs if employers aren’t providing it.

A few years back, Ivanti research found that Everywhere Work was already reshaping how we thought about our professional lives. This shift has never been just about the places we can work from; it involves a holistic redefinition of “work” that touches on when and how tasks are performed, and the promise of unprecedented flexibility and freedom.

But there are still many hurdles to overcome – especially for IT and cybersecurity teams burdened with supporting a dispersed workforce.

In our 2024 Everywhere Work Report: Empowering Flexible Work, we’ve dug deep into the new attitudes of the modern workforce about workplace flexibility, its impact on IT and security and the transformative potential of AI and automation for enabling it.

A massive desire for flexible workplaces

To get an updated view of the Everywhere Work landscape, Ivanti surveyed 7,700 executive leaders, IT and cybersecurity professionals‌‌ and office workers. Two of the most striking insights that surfaced are:

• The vast majority (80%) of knowledge workers say flexible working arrangements are highly valuable.
• Only 25% say their jobs afford them high flexibility.

This “flexibility disconnect” has weighty implications for employers when you consider just how much employees value flexible work, as this chart makes clear.

Among those weighty implications: the fact that 40% of office workers and 49% of IT professionals are willing to leave their jobs for more adaptable working conditions. There’s a strong emotional component to this:

• 81% felt that where they do their work shouldn’t matter if it gets done well.
• 46% felt that when their employer is inflexible about the employee’s schedule, it’s a sign of disrespect.

Burdens on IT and Security

Shifting toward the flexibility of Everywhere Work isn't without its complications, though. There’s been a concurrent surge in IT workloads, with 56% of IT workers reporting a rise in helpdesk ticket volumes – and 78% of those workers say the culprit is the embrace of flexible and remote working as they cope with software deployments, network reliability issues and security incidents.

What’s perhaps even more alarming? Nearly a quarter of IT professionals have watched colleagues resigning due to burnout. It doesn't help that IT professionals want to have flexibility in where they work, but just 46% say it’s easy to access tech tools remotely. Plus, IT teams struggle to collaborate with colleagues, get seen by managers or get tech support when they’re not in an office.

This underscores the need for technology solutions that can relieve these pressures.

Can AI rise to the rescue?

AI is a grail for IT teams, who overwhelmingly believe AI and automation can help mitigate the challenges – and workloads – caused by flexible/remote work models.

However, Ivanti’s research shows that there’s a potential problem with the headlong rush to embrace AI for IT services.  Ivanti found that 66% of IT workers claim to use publicly available generative AI tools like ChatGPT, but company oversight of these efforts is either missing or incomplete. In fact, almost one in three organizations has no documented strategy for addressing generative AI risks.

Yet when you consider how often IT teams deal with sensitive systems and data, it’s troubling to realize that these external AIs might get access to that data. This risks corporate data being accidentally exposed or becoming much more vulnerable to hackers.

And while gen AI tools like ChatGPT have seen relatively high levels of adoption, too few workers are using enterprise tools purpose-built for IT and security, like predictive IT maintenance or AI-aided ticket resolution.

Looking for balance:  IT and cybersecurity alignment

IT teams want to expand employee access to tools and services that make them more productive, even if they’re working remotely. At the same time, cybersecurity teams want to defend the organization by implementing protections that constrain devices and activities.

Who wins? Both, if they can collaborate effectively.

For instance, over half (52%) of our respondents said security and IT data are separately siloed within their organizations. Of those respondents, 84% admitted silos have a negative impact on security, with 82% saying silos drive down productivity. 

As one respondent put it:

“I often need to access customer data stored in another system. To get the information, I need to speak to someone who has access — which slows me down multiple times per day.”

To break down those silos, the CIO and CISO need to get into closer alignment on tech investments, sharing infrastructure, creating a single source of truth for both groups and other best practices.

Get even more insights about the state of Everywhere Work

“Flexibility” is the growing mantra among a huge number of workers. Find out many more details about it – and how technology can help an organization rise to the challenge of delivering flexibility to its employees in our complete report.

It includes recommendations on the substantive steps leaders can take to address the workplace revolution – not just “evolution” – that’s irresistibly shaping the future of business. See the full report. 

Meta plans to shutter its collaboration suite Workplace by 2026 as it shifts its attention to building AI and the metaverse. Axios first reported the news. 

"Over the next two years, we will provide our Workplace customers the option to transition to Zoom’s Workvivo product, Meta's only preferred migration partner," the company said in an email to CIO Dive Tuesday.  

Customers will be able to use the platform as usual until Aug. 31, 2025. After that date, the platform will only let users view or download data until May 31, 2026, when it will permanently shut down.

The collaboration software space roiled in recent years, as ongoing adoption turned into a frenzy in 2020. With companies on a slow but persistent path back to the office, growth has since significantly slowed for most providers.

Meta's Workplace first launched in 2016, at the time a spin-off version of an internal tool called Facebook at Work. By 2021, the company attracted 7 million users to the platform, including enterprise customers, such as Walmart and Deliveroo.

As Workplace winds down, Meta will turn its focus to other enterprise tools within its portfolio, such as Quest for Business, Remote Desktop, Events and Meetings. The company has also worked to develop enterprise-grade LLMs, including its open source family of models, Llama. 

Much like Meta, Zoom has turned its attention to fueling the potential growth behind AI tools. In March, the company launched Zoom Workplace, an AI-powered collaboration platform. 

The provider is working to customize and monetize enterprise use of its generative AI assistant, Zoom AI Companion, CEO Eric Yuan said in a recent earnings call.

Meta plans to support user transition toward Zoom's Workvivo system, and will offer tools for customers making the switch.

A dearth of technical skills is preventing businesses from infusing operations with new technologies, according to an Infosys report. The company commissioned a survey of 1,000 senior business leaders for the study.

Nearly three-quarters of surveyed executives said the pace of technological change surpassed their company's capacity to incorporate it into operations.

Pressed to find skills in a tight tech labor market, around 4 in 5 respondents said they prefer employees who are knowledgeable across multiple technology solutions over single-specialty experts.

Organizations must quickly deploy novel technologies to respond to market pressures and customer demands. Despite devoting resources and time to bring projects to fruition, companies often struggle to hire the talent that can bring them to life.

Specific categories are a clear and ongoing struggle for the enterprise. Infosys found a gap of eight percentage points between current skills and availability in roles related to advanced statistical analysis. Respondents reported similar shortfalls in machine and deep learning and cloud computing expertise.

Though recent official data points suggest an uptick in unemployment among IT roles, indicators of demand persist. Organizations added 185,000 new tech job postings last month, bringing the total of open jobs to 436,000, according to CompTIA.

Generative AI represents a top staffing challenge. Training in this specific technology category will be a priority as companies shape their talent strategies, according to Infosys.  

"To close these gaps, leading companies are increasing budgets for upskilling initiatives," the report said. "Hands-on training in AI, ML, advanced analytics and cloud technologies will be critical to ongoing success, and this highlights the need to balance skills required for basic infrastructure, such as the cloud, with those needed for emerging technologies such as AI."

The vast majority of business leaders responding to a recent survey said they’re concerned they can’t train employees quickly enough to keep up with AI and tech developments in the next three years.

A similar amount said AI and other tech disruptions will require companies to rethink skills, resources and new ways of doing work, according to an report by the World Employment Confederation.

“It is clear that advances in AI have the potential to transform the workplace at an unprecedented pace, yet the growing technical and soft skills gap is a critical hurdle businesses must overcome,” Jonas Prising, chairman and CEO of ManpowerGroup, a WEC member organization, said in a statement.

“While Gen AI will revolutionize many aspects of work, there are elements of jobs that are, and will remain, quintessentially human: collaboration, communication, creative problem solving, and empathy towards others,” Prising said. “Organizations must cultivate these uniquely human traits and invest in upskilling and their workforce to succeed in this new digital era.”

In a survey of 715 senior executives worldwide, including 680 from Forbes Global 2000 companies and 35 public sector organizations, 80% said it’s never been this difficult to plan for future talent requirements.

Overall, 92% of senior executives said they’ll need a more flexible workforce in the next two years. They pointed to several strategies to build this flexibility, including sectoral talent pools, a skill-based approach to hiring, online talent platforms, higher use of contingent workers, more internal flexibility through inter-department secondments or job rotations and talent from other countries.

Notably, employers are increasingly looking to contingent workers for in-demand skills and talent, with 79% saying that employing these workers with knowledge of AI and new technology is an effective way to spread understanding to employees.

Ultimately, AI literacy will be key for workforce transformation, according to a CompTIA report. To build this literacy, employers can offer learning and development opportunities such as short online programs about AI basics, targeted training for specific job roles and hands-on experiences across a company’s existing workflows.

About 90% of HR leaders believe that up to half of their workforce will need to be reskilled in the next five years due to AI shifts, according to a PeopleScout and Spotted Zebra report.

Incremental reskilling and upskilling could help, with employers communicating what the future of AI looks like in the company, addressing fears and ensuring employees receive the skills they need to meet those changes.

As AI reshapes the workplace, career development and learning opportunities will drive business agility and innovation, according to a LinkedIn Learning report. Although several barriers continue to exist for L&D, such as budget, C-suite leaders appear to be listening and are more open to conversations due to skill gaps around AI and other tools.

After a dismal year for PC sales, shipments showed upward movement in the last quarter of 2023, inching into positive growth with a 0.3% year-over-year increase, according to Gartner analysis.

Sales experienced a prolonged, post-pandemic slump dating back to the final quarter of 2021, when shipments declined to 88.4 million units, a full 25 million units more than in the final three months of last year.

Despite the slump, growth and price hikes loom as organizations enter delayed refresh cycles, according to Mikako Kitagawa, director analyst at Gartner. “PC demand is going to go up and semiconductor manufacturers have restricted component production, which means prices are going to go up, too,” Kitagawa said.

Refresh cycles are inevitable. Every organization eventually has to replace aging hardware.

But the last several years disrupted business as usual for the PC industry. The rush to purchase devices to support remote workforce in 2020 gave way to product glut, both for vendors and component manufacturers.

“Inventory surpluses was a really big problem in the PC industry for two years,” Kitagawa said. Retailers responded with discounts and promotions as shipments fell to their lowest level in 16 years, according to Gartner.

Now, with Microsoft gearing up to end Windows 10 support in 2025 and a new generation of AI-enabled PCs hitting the market, the refresh bill is coming due.

Kitagawa said Gartner expects product shipments to grow between 4% and 5% as demand aligns with supply this year.

IDC market analysis also shows the PC market bottomed out, falling 13.9% year over year in 2023. The IT market intelligence firm forecasts 3.4% market growth this year.

"Across the major technology categories, the PC market has arguably been the biggest roller coaster in terms of ups and downs over the past four years," Ryan Reith, group VP for IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in a report last week.

“While AI has clearly captured everyone's attention, it shouldn't be overlooked that 2024 is expected to be a strong year for commercial PC refresh,” Reith said.

IT workers in the U.S. earn an average annual salary of $124,931, according to Skillsoft’s IT Skills and Salary report. The company surveyed more than 5,000 IT workers and decision-makers.  

Montana, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts and Alaska topped the list of states where the highest-paid technology pros reside. Montana IT pros topped the list at an average annual salary of $283,750, though the state had a comparatively small group of respondents in the study, according to Skillsoft.

New Jersey was next with an average annual salary of $170,020, remaining in second place from last year. Maryland IT pros brought in an average annual salary of $159,669.

Last year’s top five list was dominated by inland states as hybrid and remote work opportunities expanded talent sourcing possibilities, but things are reverting back to favor coastal states as return-to-office efforts continue. 

About 90% of companies plan to implement RTO policies by the end of 2024, according to an August report from Resume Builder.

“We are definitely seeing a desire among employers to bring tech workers back to the office,” Orla Daly, CIO at Skillsoft, said in an email. Skillsoft’s research found more than two-thirds of employers encourage staff to return to the office, although only 11% plan to work fully in-person. 

“Even with more organizations embracing in-person or hybrid work over the last 1-2 years, it would appear that, with the continued gap in available technology skills, it will be possible for people to maintain some level of flexibility and earn higher salaries — in particular for those highly sought-after skills,” Daly said. 

There is slightly more geographic variation among the highest-paying states now than before the pandemic in 2019 when all of the top states were coastal. 

There are also other factors, beyond workforce strategies, that impact average salaries, such as living costs and competition.