5 minute read
The workflow and working environment will change dramatically adapting to our needs and even moods in 2040. The diversity of nationalities and even robots in the workplace is something we should all be prepared.
“Wellness as a focus
of everyday life”
Johnson Control has lately released their vision of future workplace in the report Smart Workplace 2040: The Rise of the Workplace Consumer. The report explores various scenarios of how the workplace will look in the future. One of them is the switch of the understanding what the work is. The work will no longer be the separate part of the life. Conversely, a job will be a part of the daily activity you like to do. The private and working life will blend together with the choice of when, where and how the person wants to work. “Wellness as the focus in everyday life” – organising the day according to family life and working pattern. The working environment will be personalized to the need of the worker, in order to make the process as pleasurable as possible. That will provide the high efficiency and creativity level. Nowadays a large number of firms use the distanced home-office, and this trend will evolve to the fully virtual offices or high number of co-working spaces. Johnson Control predicts that the attitude to space will change. Instead of being geographically dependent, people will start consuming space and use it accordingly to their needs.
Implementing
the digital signs
It is time to get technology seriously. Digitalizing the business has to become the prerogative as we have described in our previous article, Surviving New Networked Economy. The housing is the second largest expense of HR in large companies, such as rent, electricity, heating, cleaning etc. Implementing smart workplace solution can reduce the spendings for 50-60% a year. There are ways to reduce the costs using smart technologies.
Insigh Box
The Smart Workplace will be an essential part of the society. The offices will be built in accordance with the[nbsp]need of the company and the workers. Many companies implement and experience the advantage of the smart solutions already today. The co-working spaces and virtual offices will be a common practice; the work and private life will blend together providing high efficiency and performence.
Smart workplace helps with internal communication and collaboration. Smart signs is an innovative Dutch company offering dynamic personalized information systems in buildings. The collaboration the large offices might be time-consuming, unless there is the technology to make the communication easier. Implementing interactive digital signs in the building, workers can easily find the workplace in the building that best fits their needs for a day, whether they need the meeting room, silent place or open-space for team projects. The same technology is being used for universities and hospitals. The status of the meeting rooms is immediately shown on the signs around the office, providing more efficient use of given space. Analysing the data of place usage, the costs are reduced by automated closing of the buildings whenever everyone left the office in order to save the resources. This technology helps to use the working time and office more efficiently. Small wireless sensors are placed in the doors, chairs and tables determining its usage and run with batteries that can work for years. In future sensors will be able to obtain energy from the environment. The lighting and heating systems are connected to the sensors enabling a high level of energy savings.
High level of
collaboration
The latest trend of lower dependence on the physical office will surely become the future working model. Workers no longer need to be in the office building to remain their high performance. Moreover, according to Statista, one-fourth of the US workers are being contacted by their colleagues with work related questions on their vacation. Which means that the line between private and working time is blurring. In addition, with the development of the technology, no longer people work using one device. Having and utilising two computers, tablet and work mobile on daily matters is a regular process nowadays. Many workplaces already have two monitors for a better observation of incoming information and performing multi-tasks. And not to forget globalisation impact of rising global networking and partnerships. Taking all of those into consideration the creation of the virtual office is essential for productiveness.
Cisco has quite a few solutions that can optimise the work to the fast-changing digital environment. For example, video collaboration that allows to organize the meeting reducing travel time and costs, as well as providing virtual face to face connection.[nbsp]Using video collaboration is a sustainable solution as it has a positive impact on transport usage. Instead of flying to the another country or driving to the another side of the city, the video meetings are saving time, having zero emissions, and do not have to be planned the long time before. Moreover, the devices are collaborated between each other, which makes it easy for workers to quickly switch from one device to another, from one task to the next one.
But the future stands not on implementing every feature of the smart workplace separately. WWF together with Cisco has built a new fully smart office in the UK. The whole building is connected and collaborated with the workers’ needs, ground heating and cooling technologies, lighting, and solar panels on the roof. WWF office demonstrates how technology can be a key part of the workplace for one of the world’s leading green charities.
