Office trends BSA.org

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1 Office trends 2016 This e-book takes a look at the trends that will impact offices and office workers in The principles of the New World of Work, which are increasingly being applied by businesses, don t just involve an increase in personal responsibility (in the case of the individual employee) and a change in management style, they also imply changes regarding the physical workspace and the role of technology in the office.

2 BSA The Software Alliance The New World of Work Many companies apply the principles of the New World of Work. While employees were traditionally expected to be present at the office from 9 to 5 to carry out their work, that s no longer the norm. Working without a fixed working location is gaining traction. Increasingly, more companies allow a combination of teleworking and working at the office. This trend is a response to the changing needs of the modern employee. Employees increasingly strive for a better work-life balance. When workers are given the freedom and trust to decide the planning and execution of their work for themselves, the result is a better balance between their working and private lives. Giving employees greater autonomy also has a positive effect on the organization as well. Thanks to the newly acquired freedoms employees are granted, chances are that they ll be more involved in the organization and happier and healthier too which in turn will lead to productivity gains for the company. Office trends 2016

3 But the New World of Work consists of more than simply giving employees more autonomy. The increased freedom goes hand in hand with greater responsibility for employees. While the employee gets more freedom to determine how he/she works, the employee also has to ensure that all his/her tasks are delivered on time and correctly. It s obvious that this new way of working also requires a different style of management. Managers shouldn t act in a traditional manner and check whether every employee is diligently seated at his/her spot from 9 to 5. This new way of working requires a shift in thinking: managers should judge performance on deliverables instead of presence. The new reasoning should be: it doesn t matter when you do your work, as long as you get the results we want, when we want them. The leadership style of this new working practice has to be based on trusting your employees and employees acting responsibly in return. Instead of transactional leadership, managers need to adopt a transformational style of leadership if they want this new working practice to be a success.

4 Leadership needs to have a motivational effect on employees. Transformational leadership does exactly this: it heightens the motivation of employees, because the leader is successful at transferring his and by extension the organisation s values and convictions to the employees. The result is that the needs of the employees are transformed into those of the organization. With this new way of working employees don t always work from their office, so that offices often aren t fully occupied which obviously isn t an optimal situation. To deal with this, the principle of flexible workplaces is increasingly being applied. The idea of the hoteling is closely linked to this. This practice requires employees to make a reservation when they need a desk; instead of having their own. This principle often goes hand in hand with a clean desk policy, where employees must clear their desks at the end of each work day. All in all, the decreased need for office space resulting from these changes in working has a potential advantage for businesses: it can lead to a reduction in costs. Office trends 2016

5 The move to open working environments is often a part of the New World of Work. It also means that employees may need to be less solitary when they work. This is a result of employees having to work in a more open way that requires greater collaboration between employees. In addition, working in these kinds of open spaces increases employee visibility, making slacking off more difficult. These days, creating open spaces is the ultimate trend when it comes to workplace design. However, there is an important drawback when it comes to this kind of office design: potential noise pollution. Not every employee is good at working in a noisy environment. As a result, acoustics will play a pivotal role in the offices of the future. One solution to possible noise pollution in modern, industrial buildings, is using carpeted or wooden floors. Additionally, the use of (movable) acoustic walls seems set to become an increasingly popular measure to counter the problem of overpowering noise at the office. Just like conference pods, these walls offer the possibility to achieve a certain level of privacy when a more secluded meeting needs to be held in an open working environment. Because employees don t always work at the same desk (and because each desk can be used by a multitude of employees), there s an additional factor that needs to be paid attention to in the modern office environment. To implement the use of flexible workspaces successfully, ergonomics is important. Desks and chairs with adjustable heights to cater to the needs of individual users are just two examples of good ergonomics in the office. Paying attention to the wellbeing of employees can be an important factor in distinguishing yourself from other organisations as you acquire and retain (young) talent. It s also very important to take into account the health-related aspects of modern work due to an increasingly aging work population. Furthermore, looking after the wellbeing of employees also generates a significant advantage for businesses: when employees don t have (physical) complaints, there can be a reduction in absenteeism from illness.

6 The essential role of technology The New World of Work would not be possible without technology. An essential step, if you want to adopt this new way of working, is to digitize the workplace. Working in a paperless office makes it possible to access all necessary information, independent of place and time. Mobile devices and cloud services offer the support that is required for this method of working. Moreover, the attachment of people to their own mobile devices has led to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon, which is being adopted by an increasing number of businesses. Even though there were some variations of Bring Your Own Device in 2015, the expansion and intensification of the BYO phenomenon should be expected in A movement towards an all-embracing Bring Your Own Everything (BYOE) seems to be unavoidable. We can expect that employees will eventually even go as far as bringing their own applications (Bring Your Own App) with them to complete their work. This trend can be largely understood from the perspective of the ever-growing number of Millennials in the workplace: these digital natives have grown up with digital technology and as a result, are usually very fond of their devices, customising them to suit their needs. There are a couple of other technological trends which can be expected to have a sizable impact on the way people will work in Office trends 2016

7 Because employees are increasingly less likely to be in the same place at the same time (given the trend of more flexible working arrangements and/or the globalization of businesses), this will result in difficulties when it comes to holding meetings. Video will play a central role in solving this problem. In 2016 we can expect videoconferencing to increasingly replace in-person staff meetings, brainstorming sessions and the like. Technological innovation will also mean that videoconferencing will become smoother and more affordable. All of this will contribute to the rise of room-based video conferencing systems. These systems are considerably more practical when it comes to holding group meetings compared to the more traditional videoconferencing software (the latter only being effective when it comes to one-on-one communication) will furthermore be characterized by a higher level of Cloud connectivity between collaboration software, videoconferencing systems and different types of devices. Continuously increasing integration will allow teleworkers to not only be capable of participating in videoconferences with their laptop, but with their smartphone or tablet computer too. Such comprehensive integration is pretty much indispensable given the popularity of teleworking and the Bring Your Own phenomenon. It s clear to see that we ve entered the era of supermobility ; an era in which mobile devices are fully equipped with everything that is needed so that the modern employee can be productive anywhere, anytime while being connected to the head office.

8 Another potential tech trend in 2016 could be a decline in s role as the primary means of in-house communication. Collaboration tools will drive the change in this evolution. Collaboration tools offer the immediacy of live-chats which can be a more practical way to communicate than . The odds are high that employees will increasingly view the traditional as being less efficient might even be the year in which we witness the breakthrough of web real-time communication (or WebRTC). Businesses in need of an easy way to communicate could adopt WebRTC. WebRTC offers its users voice- and video calling directly embedded in the browser. Office trends 2016

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