The New Face of the Office

by Beth Leibson

The role of the physical workplace is changing, says Dr. Marie Puybaraud, Director of Global WorkPlace Innovation at Johnson Controls. By 2020, the primary purpose of the office will be to support collaboration, both in terms of its physical space and through information technology (IT).

It isn’t exactly news to say that collaboration helps people accomplish more together than they would on their own. But it’s a little more complicated than that.  Johnson Controls’ study, “Collaboration 2020,” notes that more than two-thirds of respondents see collaboration as critical to improving employee effectiveness (68.2%), efficiency (66.7%); creativity and innovation (66.9%) and operational performance (67%).

“Collaboration isn’t just hype,” says Puybaraud. “People collaborate to increase customer satisfaction.” And we’re talking about collaboration on both strategic and operational levels.

There are subtle distinctions, though, in the way collaboration happens across different business sectors, the study found. In the life science sector, for instance, collaboration takes place both within individual companies and across them. Survey respondents noted that the boundaries between companies are becoming fuzzier as value networks become more integrated. The technology sector, though, has found that the shift to working on PCs and smart phones has made work too anonymous and companies are now looking to bring collaboration back out into the open, physically in a workspace as well as virtually.

The researchers found that white collar workers feel there are several ways to achieve collaboration—and that it varies by level within the organization.

Executive and senior management see the following as critical:

• Management and leadership issues (18.7%)
• IT systems (22.0%)
• HR practices and policies (13.5%)
• web 2.0 applications (10.9%)
• workplace design (13.5%), and
• space management solutions (14.2%)

Middle management are strong believers in:

• FM systems and services (33.9% agree, 5.9% strongly agree),
• Workplace design (48.5% agree, 11.5% disagree), and
• Space management solutions (45.4% agree, 12.0% strongly agree).

Middle managers are also advocates of training and knowledge sharing tools.

The study also found a clear correlation between how knowledge intensive the job is, and how much time the worker spends on collaborative activities. In short, interpersonal knowledge workers, subject matter experts, executives, managers, and supervisors – who are typically a company’s highest paid workers – often spend 70% to 80% of their time collaborating. The more knowledge workers at a company, the higher consideration the company should give to supporting collaboration through both workspace and technology, notes Puybaraud.

Workspace dimension

One-size-fits-all environments, the Johnson Controls study shows, are less effective than environments that are built for a particular purpose. The research indicates that several major considerations for designing a workspace that functions well for the workers involved.

There must be sufficient common space to collaborate. In this context, sufficient means both the functionalities (IT and other tools) as well as capacity (easy access whenever needed).

Interestingly, unassigned desks, which were seen as the wave of the future as recently as five or six years ago, are proving to be ‘one more thing to think about,’ according to the Johnson Controls’ study. Puybaraud has found that moving from assigned to unassigned desks has sometimes been successful – but has sometimes led to user dissatisfaction. She recommends end user involvement in managing the shift to improve its effectiveness and acceptance.

In the end, though, cost is still the only real driver of the vast majority of workplace-related change initiatives.  Sectors with more flexibility to invest upfront – such as the financial, technological, and life sciences fields – are more likely to do so than, say, government and educational sectors.  “This singular perspective in many cases implies lost opportunities for improvements related to knowledge worker productivity and innovation,” notes the report.

Workstyle and lifestyle

Another important consideration in preparing for collaboration is the way work styles are changing, especially among younger workers. Knowledge professionals, particularly Generation Yers, are often comfortable living “borderless lives where work is a state of mind rather than a location. This increased flexibility gives them a work-life balance not available to earlier generations. They expect to be able to fit their workstyle and schedule to their personal needs and desires, not the other way around. Companies often find that this means workers spend a greater proportion of their time working at peak performance, but it also means that workers expect the types of collaboration and communications tools they have become accustomed to – and they don’t take well to restrictions.

Independence will increase, if survey respondents are correct. Fully 51.6% of respondents are comfortable with working alone, with only 12.7% saying they don’t like it. Most interestingly, 32.7% of survey respondents report a high occurrence of working alone in 2010—yet, 48.2% anticipate solo efforts in 2020. Bear in mind, though, that people define “alone” in different ways. Some focus on whether they are physically alone, while others consider the nature of the task at hand; are they actually working with others, whether nearby or not.

White collar workers anticipate a higher-performance workspace in 2020, the survey shows. A majority of respondents anticipate high use of conferencing solutions in the future and more than 40% feel that they will rely heavily on 3D telepresence, a workplace solution that doesn’t currently exist. The study also predicts that collaboration will be supported by artificial intelligence, such as robotics and bionics. The Cloud will be the foremost virtual secure data center.

Other dimensions

The Johnson Controls study found that several dimensions of workplace functioning improve the collaborative environment:  leadership, training, and facilities management (FM) services.

Collaborative leadership, say the researchers, is process oriented and motivation focused. It emphasizes a collaboration-friendly environment. “Collaboration leadership can be described as the attitude, mindset, values and behavior key personnel possesses that enable them to engage themselves and others in productive interactions and make collaboration work,” notes the report.

The Johnson Controls study found that training must emphasize the efficiency and effectiveness of collaborative efforts. Companies, researchers predict, will find that they must fill in some educational gaps in employee training.

FM services must support companies in the physical and IT environments, notes Puybaraud. Workplaces will become high performance spaces that facilitate video communication and real-time collaboration. While email is still a favorite (a whopping 95.2% report liking it), most respondents are less than thrilled with blogging (59.4% dislike it) and micro-blogging (66.8%).  Being able to see the rest of the team builds trust and confidence and breaks down communication and collaboration barriers.

And that, after all, is the key to working together.