The world of work in 2023

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Marc Bory – Vice President of Digital Printing & Solutions Marketing and Innovation at Canon Europe. It’s my job to understand the biggest trends in the world of work and steer our offering to meet the evolving needs of our customers and partners.

The recent pace of change has been dizzying. In just the last 18 months, we’ve seen a consolidation of trends arising from the pandemic: hybrid working and cloud technology have become widely accepted in many sectors and print remains a critical part of most business operations in some form – whether that’s internal document management or external marketing.

As we move towards the halfway point of 2023, I wanted to look at what businesses should be thinking about to keep their growth momentum for the rest of the year.

Seamless workflow is still key for employee retention and growth

To find and keep the best talent, it’s important for employers to promote flexibility and a healthy work-life balance. And creating an effective and unified hybrid workforce means using remote and in-office tools that perform well together. Unfortunately, employees continue to face challenges with everyday document workflows when they’re outside of the office.

Our recent research into the impacts of hybrid working has flagged that while businesses may have the basics in place, many are still some way from having a setup that functions seamlessly across multiple different working locations. And as digital tools are now evolving faster than organisations can easily adopt them, picking future-proof solutions becomes a vital piece of decision-making.

Physical documents still play a key role in many sectors, especially for certain business-critical processes. So, a solid workflow strategy should look to couple the latest print and scan devices with the right cloud tools, allowing companies to connect their people with the information they need and make sure they can work efficiently, wherever they are.

Another consideration is security. Keeping information safe and staying compliant with regulations can be a major headache in hybrid working environments.

But it doesn’t have to be. Yes, sensitive data must be protected from cyberattacks. Yet it also needs to be safeguarded against simple mistakes, such as scanning and sending a document to the wrong person or leaving a document on a shared printer. Leading devices, print management and information management solutions will build in the highest levels of security as standard, closing these gaps.

And security concerns are not the only challenges that organisations are facing in the world of hybrid work. As sustainability becomes an increasingly important factor in an effective, functioning workflow, businesses are looking more closely at their supply chain to support their green credentials – and rightly so. Conscious printing will be an important part of this movement going forward, spurred on by ever more advanced digitally-enabled devices.

My final takeaway is this: businesses might be relatively new to digital transformation. Or they might have a solid strategy in place, but want to take it to the next level. Raising productivity, tightening data security, improving collaboration – every aspect of hybrid working deserves attention. Even if the digital transformation isn’t new, its implementation is the critical factor. There are still plenty of improvements that the latest technology can provide to increase business efficiency and employee productivity. In a rapidly evolving world, businesses can’t afford not to invest and lose their competitiveness.



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We offer a complete technology ecosystem that aims to integrate hybrid workspaces and optimise document workflows, ensuring our portfolio and related services are ready to meet the evolving demands of a hybrid environment. Find out more here.