By 2015, 1.3 billion people worldwide will be working remotely. That's almost 40% of the entire global workforce. While we can thank technology and increasingly flexible office policies for the shift away from the office, for many companies, mobility has simply been an unintended consequence of trying to keep pace with change, as well as a calculable means to rein in real estate costs. But while the movement toward less square footage and mobile workforces will likely continue, we shouldn't discount the importance of the office.
Having consulted with scores of companies over the last twenty years, I have seen the power of physical place. A good workplace bonds employees to one another in ways that virtual communication cannot replicate. It reconnects employees to the company and offers an organization the chance to showcase its culture. A good workplace can transform a business.
But today's offices need to be reimagined ? and redesigned ? to make them more effective for a mobile workforce. Perhaps we even need to rethink the term "office" itself. I like "mother ship" and "home base." These terms reveal a yearning for the office as a place associated with comfort, security, learning, and collegiality ? even family. The office needs to be a place that calls nomadic employees back home, because it has the potential to refresh and energize them ? not stress them out with distractions and unwanted interruptions.
In a mobile world, companies need to think about what their office space is actually achieving. Does your physical space reflect what makes your company unique? Does the office inspire employees, promote camaraderie, and enhance productivity? When planning your office, it's important to consider some general trends happening in today's workplaces:
? An evolving need for collaborative and private space. The open-plan office promised increased collaboration, economies of space, and cost savings. What it's delivered is a dilemma: visually exciting offices with lots of buzz on the one hand, and on the other, a lack of privacy and quiet. Research done by Gensler (the firm where I work, sometimes remotely) bears that out. Our findings show that the most significant factor in workplace effectiveness is focus work. Employees rate it as their most critical work activity, but our research shows it as the least-supported activity in today's offices. To function well, an office must provide a healthy mix of spaces ? quiet, collaborative, and social.
Take Microsoft's new office at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam: the colorful, inspiring environment gets the mix of group space and private space right. And it helps that the Microsoft team has blended this new working environment with an open, trust- and results-based management style, allowing staff to choose how and when they go to the office ? all supported by excellent virtual collaboration tools.
? The rise of the emotionally intelligent workplace. Much has been written about the power and impact of the emotionally intelligent leader. If one of the key roles of the new generation of modern executive is to create a more emotionally open, collaborative working environment, then we should be designing physical space that supports that mandate.
To that point, organizations such Telefonica in Germany are doing away with their standard, hierarchical office layout (enclosed team spaces) and are instead creating an open, vibrant space with a variety of settings for meetings and collaborations among teams. When leaders moved out of their enclosed cellular offices and into the team space, not only did they feel more connected to their teams, but their teams felt more connected to them as leaders ? and to the whole sense of Telefonica's community.
22squared, an advertising agency in Atlanta, Georgia, is likewise fostering greater emotional/working connections at the office among previously siloed teams to bolster productivity. Conceptualizing its new workplace as a city grid with avenues, boulevards, and intersections among desks, the agency literally designed interaction into its space and increased collaboration by 20%, according to pre- and post-occupancy research done by Gensler.
? Generation whY in the workplace. More than anyone else in the workplace today, Millennials question the status quo. Why email when IM is faster? Why not form instant teams around a project when and where it works best? In response to this young workforce, a new workplace model is evolving in social media companies and other start-ups ? one built on speed, transparency, democracy, and a melding of virtual and real office spaces. In addition to a high degree of mobile technologies and channels used externally and internally, these offices are forging new ground in what I call "un-designed" space and what researchers call "empowered" space: Ultra flexible working arrangements that allow staff to team up as they like, where they want, and even take control over the design of their personal workspace.
In London's Tech City, young digital media companies are embracing self-customized office space which employees can furnish as they like. At ustwo, for example, the CEO is often found working in his off-the-shelf children's wooden garden playhouse situated inside the 10,000-square-foot open office. He typically takes his Skype calls or videoconferences from his laptop in the playhouse. Not only does it provide some privacy, but according to ustwo, it encourages creativity and is a culture-defining symbol.
There is still plenty of room and purpose for the twenty-first century office. It's one of the few tangibles that binds the nomads together and interprets for them in a very real way, how we work today. And if we design them right, our offices can be a catalyst for better business and a happier, more productive, and more connected workforce.
Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/bring_nomadic_employees_back_t.html
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Rob Moore
