Search Results for: future of work

Seven reasons why this will not be the office of the future

Seven reasons why this will not be the office of the future

At this time of year, it seems like we don’t have to wait more than a few hours before some or other organisation is sharing its prognosis about how we will be working in the future. The thing these reports usually share in common, other than a standardised variant of a title and a common lexicon of agility, engagement and connectivity, is a narrow focus based on their key assumptions about what the office of the future will be like. While these are rarely false per se, and often offer valuable insights, they also frequently exhibit a desire to look at only one part of the great workplace elephant. While the more informed reports make excellent points and identify trends,  across most there are routine flaws in thinking that can lead them to make narrow and sometimes incorrect assumptions and so draw similarly flawed conclusions. Talk of the office of the future tells us rather a lot about how we view offices right now.

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Siemens new Swiss campus showcases workplace technology and use of BIM in construction

Siemens new Swiss campus showcases workplace technology and use of BIM in construction

Siemens AG has officially opened its new campus in Zug, Switzerland. The Siemens Zug campus features a new office building with 1,000 work spaces and a newly constructed production building. The investment volume for new buildings, renovations and related measures amounts to CHF 250 million. The campus is the international headquarters of the Siemens Building Technologies (BT) Division, which has 29,000 employees. Construction of the office and production buildings began in May 2016 and was completed in July 2018. The Siemens Zug campus is one of the first new projects to use Building Information Modeling (BIM) for design and construction. The digital twin – a 3D model of the building, enhanced with technical information relevant for later operations – is the foundation for efficient, cost-optimised and forward-looking building management. More →

New workplace trends will bring people back to the office, Gensler report suggests

New workplace trends will bring people back to the office, Gensler report suggests

The next generation of office buildings will draw employees back to the workplace, a new report from architect and design firm Gensler suggests. It suggest that an increased number of employees are set to be drawn back to the office, as the importance and power of face-to-face interaction grows, and office design increasingly caters towards this. This year’s 2018 Design Forecast report, Shaping the Future of Cities (registration required), created by the Gensler Research Institute explores over 200 of the latest trends that are changing cities across the world. The overarching prediction is that design will “put people back at the centre” and become the driving force behind resilient, liveable cities. Buildings that react and respond to the people within it will be critical to the workplace experience, harnessing data to interpret internal workplace data and make intelligent adaptations.

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Line up of speakers announced for Workplace Trends: Research Spring Summit

Line up of speakers announced for Workplace Trends: Research Spring Summit

The research-driven Workplace Trends Spring Summit returns for 2019. We have two sessions with invited guest speakers, our keynote and the after lunch debate. Following a recent Call for Abstracts and a blind peer review by our two moderators for the day, Nigel Oseland (Workplace Unlimited) and Mark Eltringham (Workplace Insight), the remaining sessions have now been filled with the highest ranked submissions.

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Three out of four UK SMEs failing to embrace digital workplace

Three out of four UK SMEs failing to embrace digital workplace

Three out of four UK SMEs failing to embrace digital tech innovationsIT analyst Gartner has forecasted that by 2022 cloud will make up almost a third of IT spending, but only a quarter of SMEs are properly prepared for it, claims a new study. The Missed Middle study, commissioned by Crown Workspace, found that three quarters of UK SMEs are failing to embrace workplace technologies such as cloud, mobile working and digital devices. This could impact their business agility, security and financial efficiency. Cost is the most common barrier preventing SMEs from creating the optimum workspace that features modern technology. For instance voice technology has seen huge adoption over the past few years, however less than one in five respondents are ready for it in the workplace. More →

Communities are the key factor to rapid growth of coworking

Communities are the key factor to rapid growth of coworking

London, New York, Los Angeles. These are top three cities in number of coworking centres globally. But as coworking map is evolving rapidly, you might as well read about Warsaw and Prague as new hotbeds for shared offices soon. And the surprising reason behind that is not flexibility, but the power of communities.

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Go Home On Time Day highlights one of the least discussed workplace issues

Go Home On Time Day highlights one of the least discussed workplace issues

Today is National Go Home on Time Day (in Australia at least) and the 10th annual report by The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work published to coincide with it estimates that Australian employees will work 3.2 billion hours of unpaid overtime for their employers this year, worth an estimated $106 billion in wages. It’s refreshing to see a figure  applied to this issue, because most of the stuff we get tends to highlight how much time employers are losing to the myriad of distractions, responsibilities, foibles, preferences, cock-ups and ailments that come with giving jobs to humans. An issue we satirise here. More →

UK on target to reach one million women working in STEM fields by 2020

UK on target to reach one million women working in STEM fields by 2020

According to new research by WISE, the campaign for gender balance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), the UK is on track to have one million women working in core STEM roles by 2020. The research shows that there are over 900,000 women working in STEM currently and an estimated 200,000 women with STEM qualifications will reach working age within the next 2 years. The news was announced at WISE 2018 Awards presented by the Patron of WISE, HRH, The Princess Royal.

 

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Facebook is the new smoking, orgasms at work, a ghost airport and some other stuff

Facebook is the new smoking, orgasms at work, a ghost airport and some other stuff

A slow news week here in the UK so the opportunity presents itself for quiet consideration of some important issues about the workplace. The big story has been the change of identity for the British Institute of Facilities Management, unveiled after weeks of debate and speculation. We’ll be running some commentary on what this all might mean in the next few days but for now, suffice it so say that any parallels with Brexit are entirely coincidental.

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Amazon dupes the world, the mystery of AI, a workplace zoo and some other things you may like

Amazon dupes the world, the mystery of AI, a workplace zoo and some other things you may like

Sometime over the past few years, the search for possible locations for the latest tech giant palace has become something of a media preoccupation. Typical of the stories this quest generates is this piece in the New York Times about Google’s search for new property in the city. But the apotheosis of all this has been Amazon’s quest for a new HQ in the US, leading to an unedifying scrabble between municipal authorities keen to attract the lair of OmniCorp to their turf.

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Will technology prove a threat or a godsend in the new workplace?

Will technology prove a threat or a godsend in the new workplace?

In the past decade, the business landscape has fundamentally shifted with the emergence of companies like Uber and Netflix, in addition to the rapid growth of large technology companies such as Apple and Amazon. Underlying this shift is the constant evolution and implementation of technology into the workplace. In a recent report, the World Economic Forum stated that digitisation could add a staggering $100 trillion to businesses by 2025.

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Employers need to prepare workers for the new era of artificial intelligence

Employers need to prepare workers for the new era of artificial intelligence

Employers need to prepare workers for the new era of artificial intelligencePeople and machines are entering a new era of learning in which artificial intelligence (AI) augments ordinary intelligence and helps people realise their full potential. But CIOs need to prepare workers for a future in which people do more creative and impactful work because they no longer have to perform many routine and repetitive tasks, according to analysts speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo.  Although AI will give employees the time to do more, organisations will need to train and retrain their employees in anticipation of AI investments, with CIOs also likely to be the leader or instigator of AI initiatives in their organisation.

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