A large number of employers are calling employees back to offices, but a lot of them are also ensuring that their tools can support the modern workplace system of hybrid working. Tech giants have realised that hybrid and remote working are not going to disappear from the modern corporate workforce anytime soon.

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era for the modern workplace. Almost overnight companies had to shift, adapt and overcome challenges to become fully digital workplaces. Companies quickly got the hang of the ‘new normal’. Collaborative tools, productivity solutions, and communications apps were used and updated across the board to enable seamless asynchronous working.

Two years have passed since then. Offices are opening up, employees are being called back, but the new normal doesn’t look like it’s departing anytime soon. Repeated new waves of the pandemic, especially those caused by emerging variants, push back opening plans and most employees themselves prefer to be working from home. This has resulted in the advent of hybrid working – employees being able to work from both the office and their home.

Tech giants like Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce, among others, have been quick to realise the shifting dynamics. These companies, whose tools are some of the most important for shared remote workspaces, are continuing to tailor their solutions for these remote workspaces.

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Google’s latest change to Google Docs and Microsoft’s updates to Teams and Outlook are examples of this development.

Google has introduced a new feature to Google Docs that lets individuals work together on a new template to draft emails. The tool will allow users to draft emails with comments and suggestions from other team members. The update will be available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as users on the legacy G Suite Basic and Business plans. The new feature is part of Google’s “smart canvas” initiative, which seeks to seamlessly connect different Google services like Meet, Docs, and Gmail.

The idea is similar to Microsoft’s Fluid Office Document launched last year. Instead of using multiple applications like Word, PowerPoint, Excel and others, Fluid allows users to essentially create “Lego blocks” of components like tables and more. These are called Fluid components and are hosted on the internet where anyone can use these in different ways and edit them on the fly.

“Imagine you could take those Lego pieces and put them in any place you wanted: in emails, in chats, in other apps. As people work on them, they will always be updated and contain the latest information,” explained Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365, in an interview to The Verge.

Now Microsoft’s new update to Outlook and Teams is aimed at helping hybrid workers communicate and work better together with a variety of new features. Outlooks’ new RSVPs allow team members to say whether they’ll be attending meetings remotely or in person, while Loop components, an idea similar to Fluid components but for Teams, will be added to Outlook as well. Teams will also get new features like Speaker Coach, Inspiration Library, and Front Row to improve productivity for remote and hybrid workforces.

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(Edited by : Thomas Abraham)