Accommodating Collaborative Workspace Technologies in the Built Environment
Prepare for Pervasive Technology Change
Research organizations and consulting firms are talking about workforce transformation and workplace experience. They talk about hybrid work environments, power shifts in employer-employee relationships, and technology disruption. Most suggest that employers must offer flexibility in when, where, and how employees’ work. If they don’t, they run the risk of either losing talent or productivity.
The so-called experience economy has come to the office. Gartner found that 65% of employees are reassessing their work experience, and over half want more purpose-driven employment. Most people are willing to forego financial compensation for a better work experience.
To be successful, organizations must look beyond a mere transformation. They need to view the experiential focus as a paradigm shift that will impact every aspect of their enterprise, including the physical space they occupy.
What is a Paradigm Shift?
Thomas Kuhn created the concept of the paradigm shift to explain the emergence of new scientific theory or discovery. He argued that science did not evolve in a straightforward and controlled manner. Instead, science progressed through a process he called a paradigm shift.
A paradigm shift happens when current theories or principles no longer explain or define a phenomenon. The shift occurs when someone proposes a new theory or principle that better aligns with reality.
The difference between a transformation and a paradigm shift is the degree of change. Transformation only changes the form or appearance of how work is done. A paradigm shift changes the fundamental approaches and assumptions about work.
For example, what happens when the office is no longer the center of the work world? How does the outcome change if the focus is on how work gets done instead of where or when? Much like when Copernicus stated that the Earth was not the center of the universe, how will that shift change how we design, develop, and maintain commercial real estate.
Where Work Gets Done
Before 2020, 20% of the US workforce worked from home at least once a week. By the start of 2021, 71% were primarily working from home. Yet, corporations continued to plan for a time when the workforce would return to the office.
According to a 2021 survey, 76% of knowledge workers do not want to return to the office full-time, and 93% want flexible work hours. In contrast, executives are three times more likely to want a return to the office, with 83% of companies finalizing plans for a hybrid work environment.
On average, employees want to work remotely at least three days a week. Employers, however, see employees working a minimum of three days per week in the office. Why? Companies are operating under the old paradigm where work happens in the office.
Community and Connection
McKinsey reports that almost 30% of employees will change jobs if forced back into the office full-time. Although some businesses plan on a full-time return to the office, most organizations are looking at a hybrid environment, with most opting for two days remote and three days in the office.
Companies still risk losing talent unless they can demonstrate the value of working in a shared space. Researchers suggest promoting the following:
- Connection. People receive health benefits from face-to-face interaction.
- Collaboration. Collaborative endeavors build a sense of community.
- Creativity. Exchanging ideas can build synergies that lead to innovation.
- Culture. Shared experiences are what make a corporate culture.
If organizations point to the four Cs as reasons for returning to the office, then the workplace experience needs to mirror that feeling of community and connection.
According to Clive Wilkinson, architect of Googleplex, corporations ask for offices with huge open spaces peppered with couches and standing tables. These modern offices have the feel of a boutique hotel lounge, which upgrades the work environment by incorporating outdoor spaces and other amenities into the standard office experience.
Conflicting Opinions Over Optimal Work Experience
Recent studies have shown that employees are more productive when working remotely. There are fewer interruptions, no commute time, and less water-cooler talk. When asked, 86% of employees said they were most productive when working alone. Bringing the benefits of focus while promoting connectedness presents a challenge. Employers want to create an office community through connection and collaboration. They want an office space that reflects that casual openness. Employees want an environment that lets them be as productive as possible. For many of them, that requires areas that limit interruptions and distractions. For architects, the question becomes how to design office space that addresses the conflicting wants of employers and employees. How do they create positive workplace experiences that are productive and open? How can designers ensure that the workspace will be relevant as the paradigm shifts?
Understanding the Power Shift
Most analysts agree that the employer-employee relationship has undergone a power shift. Although many reasons exist for this shift, two factors are at the forefront:
- Labor and skill shortages
- Work reassessment
Labor and skill shortages are not new. Technology workers are in short supply, and finding qualified candidates to fill the growing number of positions only gets more challenging. Manufacturing and construction are another two industries experiencing labor shortages because fewer people are entering the talent pool. That means employers must consider what will make them more attractive to potential candidates.
The Great Resignation further reduced an already shrinking labor pool. People have reassessed their work-life balance using different priorities. Employees realized how much of their time they lost going into the office. They learned that an eight-hour workday was more like ten when factoring in commutes and lunch hours. By working closer to home, people can accomplish more personal tasks without sacrificing productivity.
Workers also looked at the value of work. Were they happy in their current job? Were they burning out? What did they need to do to improve their physical and mental health? Should they make a career change? Suddenly, a paycheck was not enough motivation.
How Quickly People Accept Change
Not everyone accepts change at the same rate. For corporate executives, the ramifications of this landmark power shift have not been recognized. They are still finalizing plans for a full return to the office without realizing changing worker preferences.
Organizations may be planning for large open spaces where employees can work. Still, this effort contradicts the employees’ clear preference for separate workspaces that let them work alone without interruption. If the in-office experience is not what is wanted, employees will move to employers who have embraced the change.
For commercial properties, these contradictions create a dilemma. If property owners want full occupancy, they will need to meet the current demand for the open space concept; however, they can’t ignore the developing move of work out of the office and replicate some of the benefits that remote work provides.
Preparing for Technology Upgrades
Many companies struggled as more employees moved to remote work. They discovered they did not have the technology to deliver a positive workplace experience to their workforce. They had latency issues that made video conferencing frustrating, if not impossible. They had to rely on employees’ personal technology for connectivity. Businesses learned that their traditional IT infrastructure was not configured to protect a distributed workforce from cyberattacks.
IT departments worked overtime to move applications to the cloud for improved access as employees joked about the time it took to download a file. Collaborative tools were non-existent for many companies; for others, technology did not exist to help with visual collaboration or working with massive files. Integrating remote with in-house staff was problematic with varying degrees of success.
Office-centric solutions may have worked well when the architecture only needed to support employees in a centralized space. However, many companies found their centralized architecture failed when employees needed solutions that provided the same workplace experience even if they were thousands of miles away.
Distributed Technology
Web3, an emerging technology, finds its basis for design in distributed architecture. This trend uses edge computing and blockchain to deliver enhanced user experiences by reducing signal latency. Latency is the time between when a signal is sent and when it is received. A faster internet experience is achieved, in part, by storing data closer to the point of use.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will also play a more significant role in corporate life, providing personalized experiences. AI is a bandwidth intensive technology as it relies on massive amounts of data. The inclusion of distributed technologies in networks will allow AI to become a greater part of the corporate mainstream without negatively affecting responsiveness of a network as a whole.
Distributed architecture, along with vendor as-a-service platforms, will help keep employees and enterprise systems unimpaired by keeping digital resources localized, and prioritizing what will be delivered to remote areas and what will stay at the edge of a corporate network.
With these enhanced capabilities, remote staff will eventually experience the same digital immediacy as those in the office. All it takes is more bandwidth and faster hardware, plus the vision to make it happen.
Although the metaverse and mainstream cryptocurrency payments are years in the future, the idea of distribution across networks will help reduce latency. As the internet becomes more immersive, the demand for technical resources will grow. As gamers attest, immersive, virtual experiences require faster computers and internet speeds. But does that mean the office is dead?
Evolving Models
Some employees find it challenging to work at home. Noisy children or neighborhoods make focus a chore. The solution lies in reconfiguring existing offices to provide pop-up meeting spaces and quiet areas for these people. Having the ability to swiftly and easily adapt to these areas will enable businesses to adjust power and cabling layouts with minimal disruption. In the case of Gridd, the companion Augmented Reality (AR) application Gridd® Mobile helps IT professionals and facilities teams to pinpoint where changes are needed, reducing the amount of work required to reconfigure power and cable infrastructure.
Additionally, not everyone has access to the same technical resources. Fiber optic cables are not available in every market. High-speed broadband may be expensive, and virtual reality hardware is cost-prohibitive. Instead of one office, businesses may need to create multiple satellite offices to offer the technical resources unavailable to some employees.
For architects and developers, navigating the technology requirements of the paradigm shift becomes an immediate priority. They need to project cabling infrastructure requirements for three or five years out. They must envision how a space can be reconfigured to address these evolving requirements of where and how work happens. If they don’t plan for the changing workplace experience, they may lack the agility to survive.
Navigating The Evolving Hybrid Normal
As the power struggle plays out, commercial properties must have the flexibility to move from a space where all employees are present at least part of the time to a hybrid of both in-person and virtual workspace.
In this model, sophisticated multidimensional collaboration will happen among avatars in all locations. The change is already in motion. Architects are reconfiguring walls and redesigning interior spaces to improve the workplace experience. Commercial properties are already successfully implementing this immersive experience by maneuvering their spaces to address the shifting needs with minimal impact on the bottom line.
With so much digitization in play, however, failing to protect the power and cabling needs of an evolving onsite business operation will limit the potential for the workplace experience to be competitive. This is undoubtedly the time to plan for technology expansion. Whether the workforce engages in person or from a distance, these advanced technology requirements will put unprecedented demands on commercial infrastructure.
