Workplaces with “shared seating” will be the new normal after COVID-19, reported Gartner Tuesday. It canvassed 127 finance and real estate executives last month, finding 59% expect shared seating arrangements will be the norm for at least a quarter of their employees who return to the physical office. “An increase in remote working will meaningfully change office space configurations,” said analyst Tammy Shoham. “The most obvious consequence is that firms will need less office space per employee.” More than a third of the survey respondents expect most employees to be in shared seating for at least the next year or two. This would be a “significant shift from the pre-pandemic workplace,” in which 80% of management leaders report that fewer than a quarter of their employees were in shared seating, Gartner said.

Employees’ sentiments are high for working from home after the pandemic, and management appears to support them, a Lenovo survey found. The PC vendor canvassed 8,500 respondents in the U.S., U.K. and 12 other countries Jan. 15 to Feb. 11, finding that 70% reported higher job satisfaction at home, with 56% feeling more productive than at the office. More than eight in 10 management respondents expect post-COVID-19 work to be remote “at least half the time,” it said. About 60% of employees canvassed would prefer working remotely at least half the time, and more than a third want to do so “most or all of the time,” said Lenovo. “This sentiment increases among workers in larger companies,” with about two-thirds of them preferring to work remotely at least half the time, it said. Work-from-home challenges abound, said Lenovo, with slow or unreliable internet “chief among them.” About half the employees in medium-sized businesses and 40% in small or very small businesses “report delays or challenges in getting any kind of IT support when needed,” it said.

The U.S. domestic parcel market is expected to grow to 101 million packages a day by 2022, with e-commerce contributing 86% of the growth, said Brie Carere, FedEx chief marketing and communications officer, on a Thursday call for fiscal Q3, ended Feb. 28. E-commerce was about 21% of U.S. retail sales in Q4 2020, “significantly above the pre-pandemic level,” she said: “Some of our largest retail customers reported e-commerce growth rates in the high-double and even triple digits through 2020.” As the U.S. relaxes COVID-19 restrictions, “we recognize the potential for a short-term deceleration in e-commerce shopping,” she said. “However, we are very confident that e-commerce as a percentage of retail has a long growth runway.” The “long-term outlook” is for e-commerce revenue to rise at a 10% compound annual growth rate, she said. It’s launching FedEx International Connect Plus to serve e-commerce traffic between the U.S., Europe and Asia, she said. The stock closed 6.1% higher Friday at $279.58.

The pandemic forced companies “to simultaneously transform multiple parts" and "reskill" staff in what would have been "sequential programs,” said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet on a fiscal Q2 call Thursday. The quarter that ended Feb. 28 had a return “to pre-COVID-level financial results a quarter earlier than we expected," she said. Revenue increased 8% to $12.1 billion. COVID-19 “hit a giant fast-forward button to the future,” Sweet said. “Demand to innovate at unprecedented speed and scale with rapid adoption of cloud, AI and other disruptive technologies, is accelerating.” And “digital laggards" are "determined to not simply catch up, but to leapfrog” their rivals, she said. “The move from approximately 20% to 80% in the cloud alone is a huge undertaking, and it is just the start, as companies will then continue to invest to grow and innovate on their new cloud foundations.”

The hybrid workplace is “here to stay,” and the quality of the employee experience, one year into the pandemic, "has never mattered more,” reported Citrix Thursday. The digital workplace tech provider hired OnePoll to canvass 7,250 employees in 12 countries, finding 52% say they're married to a hybrid model that lets them choose to work remotely or from the physical office each day. The poll found 16% indicating "no interest in returning to the office and would prefer a permanently remote role,” it said. Many were steadfast, with the three-quarters of respondents saying they would consider relocating “if they could perform their role to the same level without commuting,” said Citrix. Work-from-home fatigue is growing. Two-thirds say they're working longer than pre-pandemic and struggle to stay as productive. Distractions at home from kids and pets were the main productivity killers among 41% of respondents, followed by 36% who feel out of touch with colleagues and 28% who lack sufficient technology.

CEDIA Expo returns in September in person, emailed Jason McGraw, group vice president of show owner Emerald. The 2020 Expo, planned for September in Denver, was canceled. The 2021 show is Sept. 1-3 in Indianapolis. “After months of COVID-19 pandemic meeting restrictions, vaccines are finally being distributed in mass and live events are beginning to come back safely,” McGraw said Thursday. Indianapolis hosted 58 live events with over 130,000 attendees since July, and the Indiana Convention Center invested over $7 million in health, he said. Emerald canceled 94 shows last year, leading to a 65% revenue drop (see report, Feb. 19 issue of this publication).

COVID-19 drove “unprecedented” government investment in education technology last year, reported Futuresource Wednesday. Demand, component shortages and supply chain issues stretched delivery times into 2021, straining the mobile PC supply chain "like never before," said analyst Michael Boreham. Global PC demand in the K-12 market swelled 69% vs. 2019 to reach 51 million units, while overall mobile PC demand in Q4 soared 209% to 16.5 million units, it said. Google’s Chrome operating system led the global mobile segment with 44% share, vs. 32% for Windows, said the researcher. Some schools are keeping older devices in use longer to ensure students have access to a device.

Consumer technology shipments showed some resiliency amid large-scale disruption to production lines and supply chains caused by the pandemic, said ABI Research Wednesday. Shipments will “gradually recover in 2021 as the impact of the pandemic starts to wane, consumer confidence returns, and device supply chains bounce back,” said analyst Khin Sandi Lynn. She highlighted ultra low-power machine learning chipsets and devices supporting ultra-wideband (UWB) networks as major consumer technologies expected to “take-off” in 2021. Consumer devices supporting UWB, including cellular devices, smart home appliances and automotive, will reach 286 million units globally, said the researcher. Demand for wireless connectivity propelled shipments of Wi-Fi routers, wireless hot spots, gateways and Wi-Fi customer premises equipment last year, as consumers looked for more robust Wi-Fi networks to support home-based work and learning, streaming video services and online gaming, noted the analyst. She also sees 5G growth (see 2103170055).

Walmart, which touts "aggressive" plans for expansion into health and wellness among near-term initiatives (see 2102180034), announced Wednesday it will make COVID-19 vaccination records available to customers digitally using the open, interoperable Smart Health Cards standard being developed under the Vaccination Credential Initiative, co-chaired by The Commons Project Foundation (TCP). Customers vaccinated at Walmart and Sam’s Club will be able to view their vaccination records through the free Health Pass by Clear app and TCP’s Android CommonHealth and CommonPass apps to verify their vaccine status for return to travel, work, school, sports events, entertainment and other venues “while protecting their health data privacy,” said Walmart. More than 50 organizations use Health Pass, Walmart said.

“Macro events” of the past year helped “shine a light on the many benefits of the secular shift to the cloud and digital transformation,” said Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader on a quarterly call Tuesday. The company bills itself as a leading cloud-based “dynamic work" platform. When lockdowns began last March, customers went through “an initial adjustment period,” focused mainly on “business continuity and employee safety,” said Mader. They soon seemed "to recognize that this new normal compelled them to think differently about how they operate and which tools they would need to navigate a new reality,” he said. The COVID-19 enterprise response “proved that organizations have the capacity to adapt rapidly to changing conditions, even using change as an opportunity to more deeply connect individuals to their work and their company's missions,” said Mader.