The seven forces that are transforming your office

Work in the future will no longer be a place you go, but a thing you do. With new ways of working evolving, modern office environments need to be flexible and responsive to change to attract talented staff and boost productivity.

However, property is traditionally an inflexible resource, with buildings lasting longer than many companies. While the average office lease in Australia is around six years, larger firms typically take out 10 or 15 year terms with extension options. In a good quality, well maintained office fit out, many of the fittings and furnishings can wear well for nearly 15 years.  In comparison, product life cycles for many industries are now less than two years and technology is changing our lives in ways we could have barely imagined even seven years ago when the iPhone first debuted.

When considering renewing or relocating your office, you need to think long-term about whether your workplace actually supports the way people work and how your business will react to change.

For starters, many of the key decisions, like building selection and the amount of space need to be made several years prior to occupation.

This presents a real challenge for project teams as they gaze into their crystal balls and predict the future. Both in terms of internal questions, like what markets their organisation will be operating in and its consequent labour force composition, plus external questions like the direction technology is heading and what sort of workplace prospective staff will expect. Colliers International's research team has had a crack at identifying what might be on the horizon that could affect the way we design and use office space. We don't claim to be futurists and aren't in the business of predicting disruptive technologies so our point of departure is what we are starting to see today.  

Here are the seven forces transforming your office:

1. The new world economic order

Prevailing weak economic conditions leading to a focus on cost reduction and in many cases making employees more accommodating of changing and constrained working conditions. At the same time, organisations are becoming hyper competitive in order to survive, meaning the facilitation of product and process innovation has become paramount.  

2. Demographic change

The need to balance differing generational expectations at work and deliver work life balance. Ageing populations in many economies, combined with other factors such as weaker economic growth, are challenging traditional notions of apprenticeship, skill mastery and graceful retirement.  

3. Technology

Having enabled and created the expectation of a mobile and connected distributed workforce, we now need to think differently about the role and functional requirements of office buildings.  

4. Health and well-being

Healthy workers are more productive and effective workplace Arrangements can facilitate this in many ways.  

5. The regulatory environment

Restrictions and obligations on business activity are becoming tougher in many parts of the world. Sometimes this goes counter to what we hope to achieve through our workplace strategy.  

6. Sustainability

We have a duty to the planet and future generations to limit our environmental footprint at individual, business and community levels. We also need to make our organisations more resilient in the face of increasing severe weather and other events related to the impacts of climate change. Workplace strategy can play a significant part in this goal.  

7. Urban planning

Given the foregoing trends, how must our cities, buildings and workplace expectations adapt? I'll be examining each of these forces over a series of posts in the coming weeks. 

David McEwen is a management consultant working at the intersection of workplace strategy, sustainability and technology with Colliers International.

This article first appeared on Colliers International News.