The future of work - how those who design and manage workplaces will be essential in shaping this future.
23 August 2017
So far, the main impact of Brexit has been to make the future uncertain. You couldn’t ever argue this was a good thing but past experience tells us – or should tell us – that adversity and uncertainty in the economy often sparks both a renewed focus on property and workplaces and a great deal of innovation in response from the profession.
The development of workplace design and management thinking has largely been characterised by what evolutionary scientists would term punctuated equilibrium: ongoing steady development interspersed with periods of innovation in response to rapidly changing conditions.Uncertainty in the recent past has led to firms shedding jobs, scaling back recruitment and changing working conditions. But after people, the second highest expense for most organisations is property. Here too, we have seen dramatic changes in response to the changing economy with the greater use of shared and flexible space and better ways of designing and managing workplaces to keep costs down and improve productivity and wellbeing.
Cost savings are just one aspect of the potential of workplace design and management, whether that involves changing planning models to make more efficient use of floorspace through to reducing energy costs. And while cutting costs is important, essential even, there is also a great untapped potential for the main workplace professions such as FM, office management, IT and HR to add value to organisations.
The change to a a number of professions that sees themselves and are seen by others as strategic, progressive and value-added is not coming fast enough for some people, but it is coming and at an accelerated pace. There are a number of driving forces behind this change.
• Experience. We are increasingly surrounded by examples of best practice and these pioneers are well known. The trick now is to get executives to see where best value can be achieved and what better time than right now.
• Research. We can now pinpoint the many ways in which buildings affect business performance from the recruitment and retention of staff through to the display of corporate identity.
• Trade Associations. Trade associations worldwide have led the way in promoting a new image for the profession and making a business case for strategic workplace design and management.
• Brexit. The current uncertainty about the economy has focused the attention of organisations on their cost base, much of which is taken up by property costs.
• The public sector. The public sector has led the way in innovation with many models of strategic workplace design and property management emerging from changes in government investment.
• Better products. And in particular better office furniture, building systems, technological products and better reporting systems.
• New approaches to the workplace. The current national obsession with home design has been transferred to a large extent to our workplaces making people more aware of the business benefits of enhanced surroundings including business responsiveness, better communications and higher productivity.
• Better approach to partnerships. The idea of partnering may seem a little clichéd, but we shouldn’t let its overuse blind us to the ways in which it has transformed the ways in which we work.
Most of these themes are apparent in the ways in which facilities managers and their commercial partners talk about themselves. They are the ideas that you hear at conferences, awards dos, exhibitions, in articles, literature and many of the pieces you read in the media.
These are all important changes but the single common thread that binds them together is a quintessentially twenty-first century one – knowledge. It is information about the buildings we inhabit that has moved the facilities management discipline higher and higher up the decision making chain. The wider information revolution of the 1980s and 1990s meant that information could be transmitted directly from an operational to a strategic level with middle managers free to interpret rather than process the information generated at the sharp end of the organisation.
This revolution has found an echo in the use of information in the facilities management profession, which has moved from being based primarily on cost – and hence cost-saving – to become complex, data rich and value-added.
So, the question is this; how we get workplace professionals more directly involved in strategic decision making at an earlier stage, how we get our voices heard at board level, how we help people to understand the scope of what we can achieve and how we create the underlying hunger for best value and not just cutting costs?
There is still work to do answering these questions, but there is also good reason to believe this is already happening. It can only come about because these organisations are looking beyond short term cost savings towards the more value added aspects of sustainable development; corporate social responsibility, long term efficiencies, corporate identity and the ability to attract socially conscious employees.
There is also reason to believe that this same approach will not be limited to green issues. The workplace by definition touches on every aspect of the organisation, beyond the building itself, from human resources through to technology, culture to corporate ID. Many workplace professionals may not be on the board yet, but their voices are commonly and increasingly being heard at senior executive level. And the message that is going out is not about how we can cut costs, essential though that is, but also how we can help the organisation and the word get better. It’s a powerful message and one that can only stand the profession in good stead when the hangover from the current uncertainty has faded.
Other Press Releases By This Company
- 17/01/2018 - How organic design reflects the way people move around a building
- 06/10/2017 - Harnessing the power of electricity in the design and fit out of offices
- 09/08/2017 - Activity based and agile working are nothing new - they’re a return to an old order
- 27/07/2017 - Modern office inclusive design should address everybody’s needs.
- 13/07/2017 - Why personal space is a workplace essential
- 29/06/2017 - In the new world of work, Health and Safety is no longer enough
- 22/06/2017 - Intelligent office design and fit-out can help facilities managers harness change
- 22/06/2017 - A well designed office forms a firm foundation for a growing business
