AV IN EDUCATION
education technology, we get a lot of organic feedback from the teachers at the coalface who are doing this day in and day out. In a business environment, people approach feedback a little differently where they largely take what they’re given.” A bridge to the boardroom The business environment is where the focus is when the future of collaboration boards are concerned. Speaking to these experts within the field, it’s clear that the opportunity to do business within enterprises far outstrips the education market; even if it was the first to embrace it. Now those lucky enough to go to the schools that were early adopters are bringing the technology through to the boardroom, to the extent that it is one of the main drivers of adoption. “I think by far the biggest shift is actually the younger people coming into the workforce,” said Lampard. “Certainly the 16 to 22 year olds who are just out of university or school are used to having collaboration technology everywhere they go because they’ve grown up with it from nursery school. “That’s now pulling this collaboration through into corporate because they’ve essentially been trained on how to share and interact with content as an age group, but they turn up to the office and there’s a flip chart in the corner. “How people expect to work is
of people writing stuff in a book are gone, and the younger people will have a way of working in these spaces that revolves around a screen because that’s what they’re used to.” Collingwood summed up the attitudes of the younger people in the workforce, citing his daughter as an example as to how expectations have changed. “There’s no doubt that the younger generation view the world in a completely different lens than I ever did. My daughter’s 22, and the idea of chalk on a blackboard is an anathema. Everything has been on an iPad through high school, and that’s what they expect to see in the workplace. “One thing we’ve seen time and time again is that younger generations are coming into the workplace and have very different expectations of the working environment. They are totally au fait with digital tools and if you haven’t got them you don’t tick the right box as an employer. “The way we structure environments, not just technically, but environmentally so employees across different age groups can use these tools in an optimal way, is one of the areas where we’re going to see a lot of evolution in the next 18 to 36 months. Otherwise businesses will find they have a divergence between 20-somethings and 50-somethings. “For businesses it is going to be crucial to embrace this technology whilst also finding the right practices that support employees, regardless of how experienced they are, in order to collaborate more effectively moving forward.”
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Stuart Collingwood General Manager, UK & Europe
https://owllabs.eu
driving that change as well because that’s what these new entrants to the workforce are used to. The days
They are totally au fait with digital tools and if you haven’t got them you don’t tick the right box as an employer.
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