We all live in a world dominated by networked devices — not just smartphones, but also smart coffee pots, thermostats, vacuum cleaners, running shoes, wrist bands, even smart Coke machines. That new world — the Internet of Things, as it’s been coined, or machine-to-machine (M2M) technology — will soon be permeating the workplace, and we’re not just talking about Google Glass. According to IDC, by 2015, 37 percent of the world’s labor force, or 1.3 billion workers, will identify as mobile workers. Another projection sees 1 trillion networked devices hooked up worldwide by 2025.

So how might the workplace “Internet of Things” take shape in the years to come? As some analysts suggest, it’s not just automating office temperature or turning on the office coffee pot. And it won’t just be about enabling M2M at wired factories, either. It’s about tapping into a higher plane of social interaction and productivity between colleagues. “Work is conducted on, and through, screens,” explains Jim Long, director at Herman Miller Creative Office, in Officing Today. “This will change the organization of work and our workspaces in substantive ways. A future with a different emphasis could be called the ‘era of assistants.’ In this future, algorithms embodied as robots or avatars provide solutions to problems, facilitate decision-making, measure performance, and in general, take care of most routine tasks.”

Empowering People, Not Things

The “Internet of Things” won’t just empower things — it will also empower people to better manage aspects of their work lives. As Mani Zarrehparvar, president of mobility technology firm Visage Mobile shared recently, this trend is already underway with the introduction of fingerprint scanning on the new iPhone, cars equipped to sync with devices, and other location-based mobile services. Eventually, writes Zarrehparvar, employees might have one device that intuitively knows them more deeply and “acts” accordingly. No need to tap buttons to get directions, for instance — the device will already know you’re driving to meet a job prospect at the nearest café and will have the fastest route ready for you when you start the engine. Zarrehparvar completes the scenario with more details:

“I’m imagining I walk out of my front door with my device. My device locks the door behind me. It starts my car. It pays for my coffee at Starbucks. It knows that when I get in my car and I say I’m going to Starbucks, it has my order waiting for me when I get there. It recognizes that I’m late for a meeting and changes my meeting because it knows — by my location — that I’m not going to be at the office in time to be there for my video conference meeting and it changes it to a voice call.”

Data entry is another way to boost productivity. M2M can help create efficiency around this task — and limit mistakes. As more devices become connected, manual entry will fall by the wayside, giving humans more time to focus on ways to be proactive with the data rather than spending time entering it. Waiting rooms are also ripe areas for M2M interaction: as clients wait, cell phones can communicate with in-office devices to give clients information about the upcoming appointment, allowing both parties to save time once they start the meeting.

New Applications for Telepresence and Wearable Technology

Employees may also turn to wearable technology to further increase collaboration and efficiency. According to the State of Workplace Productivity Report, three out of five respondents say they’d be willing to try wearable devices if it helped them do their job better. This is especially true for Millennials — 66 percent.

What’s more, M2M technology will likely transform the future of meetings — physically and virtually. A typical videoconference today, for instance, is still fairly limited. Attendees need to be fixed to a stationary camera: whether it’s on a laptop, phone, or monitor. But maybe not for long. Cisco and Roomba maker iRobot next year are introducing the Ava 500 “video collaboration robot.”

Ignore the clunky semantics and the fact that the Ava 500 looks like a parking meter. The scenarios for workplace applications here are pretty cool. Think of it as a new kind of specialized officemate. Cisco’s “chief futurist”, Dave Evans, sets the scene: “Imagine you are an executive responsible for selecting a new logistics partner to ship your goods globally,” Evans writes. “You could send regional managers to visit facilities in each major city to verify their capabilities — or you could go yourself, virtually. You would simply tap an iPad screen to awaken the robot from its charging station in the vendor’s facility, then tap where you want to go on a map. You would appear on the mobile TelePresence screen as the robot moves autonomously throughout the remote location — meeting with executives, talking with employees, and touring the facility. And you would do it all from your office, or home, or hotel room, or wherever you happen to be.”

Cool stuff, indeed. And it’s not just about things.

Jason Corsello is Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Marketing for Cornerstone OnDemand.