Trends to watch in 2022

Personally, I am someone who always seeks to look beyond the bend. For this, I read newspapers from across the globe to follow the patterns of emerging trends that can shape the future.

Technology is of particular interest to me. Hence, I get excited about the recent advancements in technology and digitisation. The last two years have been unprecedented in human history in terms of the sudden and significant changes.

Today, no discussion is complete without a reference of the COVID-19 pandemic or its impact thereof post its appearance. To say that COVID-19 had a significant impact on our lives is an understatement. In fact, it has revolutionised our lives.

The disruption, although tragic as we lost many lives to the virus, has also given birth to a new era of renewed thinking and technological geniuses.

From the way we now complete our household chores to how we seek out employment, everything is remarkably different from how it used to be. Of all the changes, digitisation tops the chart and has completely taken over our lives.

Digitisation has been picking up pace for quite some time, but COVID-19 has certainly played a catalyst towards fastening the pace of technology.

With that being said, I would also like to share my expectations as to what 2022 seems to have in store for us.

In terms of digitisation, it will continue to creep into as many aspects of our lives as it can. From gadgets to home appliances, more digitisation will be visible. However, with this, there will be corresponding risk of cyber threats.

That is why cyber security has become the top risk for organisations and financial institutions across the globe.

Now over to the pandemic. The world has already witnessed different variants of the COVID-19 virus since it first emerged. It won’t be a surprise if more such variants come to the surface. However, having said that, the supply of vaccines has been reasonably stabilised so getting a jab would also not be a problem this year.

More use of technology could be another trend we could see in 2022.

To ensure contactless deliveries of food, businesses have already started contemplating on delivering goods and food through drones. Interestingly, even robot customer service agents have been introduced in different banks internationally to deal with walk-in customers.

Lastly, employment models. To say that COVID-19 had the biggest and most significant impact on the employment models worldwide would not be wrong.

The traditional brick and mortar model required employees to be physically present in the office. That is no longer the case. Work-from-home has become the new normal. It is not long before employers would start giving allowances to their staff to set up a place at home, completely eliminating the need for an employee to be present at the office.

— Mubashir Hashmi is an anchor at Geo News. He tweets @Mubashir_Hashmi