Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we have discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. This week, we take a light-hearted approach to chatbots and how they’re being integrated in business and in everyday activities.

We’ve all seen the headlines. It’s no secret companies are being forced to re-examine the employee experience and what the future of work will look like in a post-pandemic world. With the adaptation to remote work, the pandemic created a new normal—where office and home life are blended, and people became accustomed to more flexibility. Now that flexibility is a benefit people don’t want to lose.

Digital workplace solutions have played a huge role in streamlining the shift to remote work. It has improved the employee experience and organizational productivity and made work-from-home almost as smooth as in-office work. While it has certainly made work life easier for both employees and managers alike, from a cybersecurity standpoint, having a single integrated interface with all the data from the organization in one place leaves the company vulnerable.

There is a Cambrian explosion currently underway in the collaboration tools space. The exponential rise in remote working as a result of naturally evolving workplaces and aided by the recent pandemic has created an opportunity for lots of different collaboration tools to take center stage. As our collaboration tools improve, work that would have been nearly impossible to do remotely is becoming more and more common.

Mattermost v5.39 is generally available today and includes multiple bug fixes for increased stability (see changelog for more details).