There have been decades of speculation about the future office. Are open-plan work environments here to stay? Will having your own desk be a thing of the past? Do we even need offices in the future?
These are valid questions in challenging economic times, together with the advances in technology and working practices, and changes in workforce demographics and attitudes.
Given these factors, it’s clear that now is the time to re-think, re-invent, even re-imagine, the workplace. But what will this mean for those creating, managing or simply working in an office?
Looking back
We’ve been here before. Computerisation in the 1970s, personal computing and mobile telephony in the 1980s and mainstream internet access in the 1990s, all introduced radical change at work. In reality, though, very little physically changed in the office, even if our lives beyond its walls were transformed forever.
Certainly the nature of work altered, as the age of the knowledge worker emerged and ‘new ways of working’ (a term already 20 years old) first came into vogue.
It is virtually impossible to compare a working day now with one 20 years ago. Four generations of worker are currently shaping the future office and each has differing needs, expectations and roles to play. It won’t be easy to get it right, but what is clear is that the time-bound office workplaces prevalent today have to change.
Despite all the advances in the way we work and live, organisations and their cultures cling to deep-rooted conventions and traditions. They are obsessed with (and strangled by) an inappropriate need for paper, desks, personal offices, meetings, formality, complex processes and a culture of physical presence. The real revolution has yet to materialise.
Destination of choice
But these are unprecedented times. The office workplace can no longer afford to be out of step with the real world and neither can those who have built careers, services and products around it.
In recent times seemingly imperishable organisations have faltered because of an inability to innovate, adapt and be relevant. There is no room for complacency. Survival of the fittest has never been more apt.
But there is opportunity here as well as threat. The value of a physical place, such as the office, will become increasingly important. Niche environments will emerge where people with common purpose and values can come together to balance and give meaning to their virtual and mobile existences.
It needs to be the right place, though — a distinctive, functional and rewarding destination of choice. It will need to compete with, as well as complement, alternative virtual and physical choices. And we need to look beyond the usual focus on cost cutting for the answer if real change is to be achieved.
Efficiency
Efficiency is, of course, still important. Decades of failure to address waste management led to a raft of efficiency drives in the 1990s, in particular, by technology and consultancy organisations. Walls were removed, space standards/allocations reduced and offices closed, as remote working was imposed to achieve huge savings.
Many of these early developments were crude and failed to tackle efficiency beyond the obvious easy wins. In fact, they gave the terms open-plan and hot-desking a bad name. Even today, efficiency-driven change has given rise to numerous examples of generic workspaces filled with unpopular linear rows of desks; in other words, the one-size-fits-all office. But there are new, more sophisticated ways of achieving efficiency, as an outcome rather than a driver of change.
Effectiveness
Over time, there has been a growing recognition of the need to balance efficiency with effectiveness. Better attention to office design and layout, linked to emerging workstyles, workspace utilisation and reviews of furniture styles and storage levels have led to more interesting and acceptable office environments.
These are often referred to as ‘landscaped offices’, characterised by a mix of new activity-based work settings and a balance of open and enclosed areas, as well as formal and informal spaces. Interestingly, the term actually originates from the Brolandschaft office planning evolved in Germany in the 1950s and 60s.
But getting this balance right is not always easy, especially if, despite the mobility of workstyles both within and outside the office, the traditional notion of a desk-per-person remains. Typically while new ‘informal’ work and meeting spaces are added to the working environment, there is a reluctance to reduce the provision of formal desks and meeting spaces, which can result in both an over-provision of places to work and meet and also a need to tighten workplace standards to ensure efficiencies are still achieved. This lack of innovation can result in an unpopular, wasteful and unbalanced modern work space.
E-work
Aligning the office with the true nature of work is still the biggest challenge, as workstyles, work patterns and career models become independent of the traditional office environment. The boundaries between work and personal lives, as well as between organisations, are blurring and there is a need to reassess our relationship with the office. And this inevitably means, for many, breaking the time-bound link with the desk, or at least the concept of a desk of our own. Many workers with process-driven, ‘anchor’ or specialist roles will still need a dedicated workstation, of course. But for many others, the ability to work anywhere within or beyond the office enables a workplace less dominated by desks to be created.
This, in turn, can improve utilisation and efficiency and increase scope for the desirable alternative work settings to support both private and collaborative working, adding value and appeal to the office. In this scenario, even enclosed offices are possible (on a shared, bookable basis, of course).
Beyond the office walls, armed with mobile technologies and ever-expanding broadband speed and access (as well as organisational ‘permission’), there are a range of private (home, other offices, customer sites), semi-public (business centres and clubs) and public places (cafe, hotels and shopping malls) where people can choose to work alone or virtually with our colleagues, keeping in touch through online ‘presence’.
Similarly, organisations may choose to reduce their office portfolio to optimise this wider workscape — by encouraging dispersed home and remote working, as well as sharing workspace with partners and compatible organisations. However, within these dynamics, it will be extremely important that the ‘office’ (whatever its nature, size or location) is a regular choice for the workforce, if they are to remain connected to an organisation’s values and purpose. So organisations need to get this right. And if they can, the office has a new important future role to play for them.
Expression
Increased thinking around office layout and its links to differing work style activities has provided a stronger role for interior design, which has brought further enhancement, stimulation and meaning to the office workplace in terms of colour, mood and imagery. It’s a welcome change from decades of grey and beige blandness.
Such developments have also helped to reinforce organisational identity and branding internally, borrowing ideas from the retail world and providing new symbolism and messages for occupants.
It’s not a new concept of course, although historically, office expression has only been used externally or in reception/client spaces to impress and portray a sense of power and stability to customers and clients. Security issues and trends towards multi-occupancy buildings have changed this emphasis more recently.
In its place, attention to branding and design of internal workspace is an important development that is key to making the changing workplace an attractive proposition to those who need and want to work within it.
Making physical changes is the easy part. Supporting the workforce to understand, accept and embrace this new thinking is more challenging, no matter how logical the solution is.
Engagement
An attractive workspace also has to be highly functional, effective and relevant. Changing mindsets in this context will not be easy; it never has been. People have a special relationship with their work surroundings, especially their own desks.
Yet we have all embraced huge changes in our lives. We often make difficult choices and balance pros and cons to make change work for us. The same principles apply in the office to support that same self-realisation, through skilful communication.
To support this process the end solutions also have to be attractive, comfortable, relevant and effective, adding new value so end users feel a sense of gain, not loss; even if it is very different to what they have been used to.
This means involving but also challenging. It means inspiring confidence through clear rationale, direction, leadership and support. The future office needs to change to survive, but above all it needs people in it to thrive, so the two need to be aligned in purpose.
Experience
The final piece of the jigsaw is the sum of all these parts — experience. Often overlooked, it is the subtle, subconscious element that steers our preferences and decisions. It is what guides our choices around holidays, hotels, restaurants and cars. It is what attracts us to a destination and makes us want to come back.
In a time when most products are capable of meeting our basic needs or specifications, experience is the one thing that can differentiate one situation or product from another. A visit to the future office needs to be a positive experience, functionally and emotionally, if it is to be the desired future destination of choice for many aspects of our work.
Key to that experience are people, systems and (almost hotel-style) service that allow effective access to information, knowledge and facilities that may not be available in other ‘places’. Attracting a critical mass of people is therefore important. The crowded football stadium on a cold, wet day (when the match could have been watched at home) is testament to the power of experience. The future office needs to become just as compelling. And this is the challenge for those designing and managing future offices.
The e-office
All of the elements explored here conveniently begin with ‘e’. Collectively they add up to the imagined ‘e-office’. The ‘e’ prefix has come to stand for ‘electronic’ as new words like email, e-commerce and eBay enter our language. However, in the context of the future office ‘e’ may well stand for ‘extraordinary’ might be the most relevant interpretation.
Like so many other products and services today, the office will fail if it only manages to be ordinary. That will no longer be good enough.
The six elements help define the future office as a distinctive, niche destination that will be a great place to be. A fantastic opportunity, but also a necessity and wake-up call for many of us. Take a look around you. How does your workplace or strategy measure up to this vision? Exploring the future disturbs the present but the divergence that has developed over time between the office workplace and the real world in which it operates no longer makes sense.
