Office of the future (Part 2 - ten years on)

When i posted to this blog back in July 2013 I commented on the changes I was starting to see in work spaces and some of the underpinning technologies which would accelerate and support the adoption of the use of flexible work spaces. Ten years on and many of the barriers have largely been eliminated and we have all road tested this new way of working forced upon us by the pandemic. 

Culturally, where they hadn't, business leaders and managers have now accepted this way of working as viable and organisations across the globe are redesigning spaces to suit a more nomadic workforce. 

Digital workplace technologies have become the norm and 4G and 5G connectivity and full fibre broadband is starting to become more widely available. Even in more rurual parts of Scotland (and the rest of the UK) the momentum continues to improve both mobile coverage, mobile broadband and fibre based broadband services.

The "Workspace on Demand" offerings we saw in some hotels have been further developed and a broad range of offerings can now be found in many cities.

Larger companies are not renewing leases on premises instead favouring hot desk environments which are bright, airy and meet with the social distancing requirements which have become the new norm.

A huge range of cloud based services now provide a rich online meeting experience - a far cry from the grainy and clunky services we all put up with in the past.  I'm also seeing a trend of moving away from studio based video conferencing services to multi-point desktop services with offerings providing cross platform interoperability now commonplace . Traditionally larger organisations have had dedicated video conference enabled meeting rooms complete with codecs however the availability of low cost solutions have equipped every meeting room with the capability of being part of a video conference albeit with some compromises.

Wireless networking has also significantly evolved since my last blog post in this area. The speeds and data throughput make it a viable candidate at home and even in the workplace for media rich flexible working.

In developing a strategy in this area ive been looking further at what the Office of the Future might look like and in looking around it looks like there is significant change in workplace design and indeed a move towards no fixed office space.

There is a growing trend towards more "touch down" spaces which are becoming more common in all business verticals.  Also there is a recognition that workplace design is crucial whether this be in a fixed, mobile or flexible approach - with high quality collaborative and serviced space (coffee!) providing a magnet to draw people into the office.

With regards to fixed office space there is also some major changes in the way some organisations are approaching this.  From my research I have found that office space is the second largest cost for most companies and its generally only used one third of the time.  Interestingly management consultants have predicted for a while the demise of office space however I think technology is only really caught up in the last few years or so making this approach more workable. Although there have been many successful home working programmes true mobility is only really become possible as faster and more broadband and WiFi have become more ubiquitous and more devices small and personalised.

With the rollout of 4G and 5G (and the retiral of 3G) and a move towards wireless network roaming the next 12 months will again provide more technological underpinning of mobile working placing very different demands on IT departments. The need for a changing model of service delivery has never been greater. Traditional service desk approaches need supplemented by other support models to cater for nomadic employees and changing expectations for rapid support.