Jenna Butler is an adjunct professor at Bellevue College, Bellevue, WA, in the radiation therapy department and is a senior applied research scientist at Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA. Catherine Yeh is a senior at Williams College, Williamson, MA, USA, where she studies computer science and cognitive science.

The future of work is a hot topic among businesses now and has been since the shift to hybrid work. While processes and personnel undergo significant transformations, business and IT leaders must focus intensely on the digital employee experience (DEX) when analyzing and deploying any operational change to the status quo of their current processes. The digital employee experience (DEX) interprets how digital workplace strategies impact employees' overall day-to-day experience. An enterprise's workforce is the bedrock of resilient and sustainable operational shifts. Measurable success cannot be achieved without employees on the same page.

Later this year, the company's video calling service, Google Meet, will be able to automatically transcribe meetings for select users. When a host enables transcription, all participants will be notified, as they are when a meeting is recorded. Then Google's artificial intelligence will transcribe the meeting, crediting comments to individual users or as an aggregate for those participating from a conference room. The meeting transcript will automatically be saved as a Google Doc, which can then be shared by the host and viewed or edited simultaneously by users.

Globally, workers want to maintain a hybrid working model where more than half of their time is spent working remotely (53%); with the rest of the time in the office (47%), and workers feel as productive or more productive than before with remote work arrangements (82%). More than half of young leaders (54%) reported they have suffered burnout, and three in 10 stated their mental and physical health has declined in the last 12 months. Nearly two in five employees are already changing or considering new careers, while 41% are considering moving to jobs with more flexible working options. And a quarter of the workforce is considering moving to another country or region. Pardon the overwhelming information, but these are some important data to take note of from HR companies Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH) and The Adecco Group's Resetting Normal: Defining the New Era of Work study, which unearthed insights into how attitudes have changed, and the implications for companies to successfully adapt in this period of transition following the pandemic, and progress in the future of work.

It is easy to give credit to the pandemic for the radical acceleration of the digital world. While it is true that it ignited digital transformation, it has always been our destiny to transform the world digitally. Fast moving companies didn't need the pandemic to drive them forward quickly- they just did it. It is quite amazing when we take a step back and realize where we were five years ago and where we are now. I sleep, eat, and breathe the tech world, and for 30 years, a unique characteristic of technology and innovation is that it comes in waves, radically accelerated by certain factors.

At Fortune 500 real estate giant JLL headquarters, there's a two-story gathering place that looks like a night club. It includes a barista bar and is called "The Point." Even though JLL employees are spread out over six or seven floors in that building, they gravitate to The Point because they are more likely to just bump into coworkers they wouldn't ordinarily see. That's led to more collaboration, according to JLL Digital CIO Eddy Wagoner. Indeed, some of the company's clients prefer to meet at this JLL building rather than go out to, say, a dinner meeting, he said.

In 2010, Microsoft's Kinect smart camera recognized you and logged you in to your Xbox. Now Microsoft is applying the same principles to meetings, announcing support for a future lineup of intelligent cameras that will zoom in and highlight you in hybrid meetings. Support for intelligent cameras in Microsoft Teams is just part of several announcements Microsoft made Thursday regarding the future of so-called hybrid work, where employees navigate between working at home and in the office. New features include the ability to tell coworkers whether you'll be working from home or in the office via Outlook, be it your weekly schedule or an RSVP for a specific meeting, and to stream video of yourself as you present a PowerPoint presentation. Intelligent meeting cameras represent the evolution of Microsoft's approach to hybrid work.

A recent IDC survey revealed that 62% of IT and business leaders believe their organizations will expand resiliency plans in 2021 and 2022 to support unique requirements of the pandemic. But what does that mean exactly? Traditionally, resiliency has been framed in terms of responding to business disruptions and restoring operations in a timely fashion. However, this definition of resiliency is no longer enough - it's not enough to simply respond or restore. Digital resiliency shifts the focus from responding reactively to adapting and moving forward proactively.