Work is no longer somewhere you go, but something you do

The housing crisis and lack of spending on roads and railways is leading to longer commutes for workers, according to research by the TUC.   The number of people spending more than two hours travelling to and from work every day has jumped by 72% to more than 3 million over the past decade.  Their analysis also showed the number of commuters travelling for three or more hours a day had risen by 75%, from 500,000 to 880,000 over the past decade.

“Employers need to address the problem that many of their staff are spending an ever-increasing number of hours getting to and from work.”  -- TUC General Secretary, Frances O’Grady

In the UK, more than four million Britons already work from home, many of whom work via fully-connected virtual offices.  Now in the age of cloud collaboration, workers are contactable and able to access corporate services from locations that individually suit them.  Working from home means fewer distractions and no time wasted commuting between locations; coffee shops become temporary base camps with free wi-fi access.  For employers, it means they can avoid costly overheads such as rent and energy.

Workers have starting creating their own productivity ecosystems to take advantage of nomadic possibilities.

• Google and Microsoft Office cloud-based tools
• Dropbox to share large documents
• Video conferencing to collaborate with colleagues and customers
• WhatsApp to keep in touch for free around the world

Communication vendors see that orchestrating individual productivity tools into a single collaborative experience brings employers agility. https://www.avaya.com/usa/product/avaya-snap-ins/#video-modal

Avaya identified the practical everyday challenges faced by its workers dialling into conference calls whilst on the move; selecting which meeting to attend, finding the dial-in number, looking up the PIN code.  Now, when a meeting reminder pops up, workers are connected to their own virtual personal assistant who will automatically connect them to the voice or video conference service and enter their PIN.

In just a matter of days, a group of workers collaborated together on this project, using Avaya Breeze, created Engagement Assistant, an app that orchestrates the workers Microsoft Outlook calendar, telephone and video conference facilities.

The world is a digital nomad’s office

Technology such as instant messaging and video conferencing has given workers the freedom to work from just about anywhere at any time.

Taking this concept further, The Surf Office is one of a growing number of companies that are aiming to meet the needs of digital nomads who use this freedom to combine work and lifestyle.  Surf Office provides workspace and accommodation in Lisbon and Gran Canaria - and afternoon surf trips and lessons.  Similarly, Hacker Paradise is a travelling community of “digital nomads” who spend a month at a time working together in exotic locations doing their own day-jobs.

An increasing number are ditching the traditional office entirely, opting to combine travel with remote work, developing a start-up or freelancing instead.  Alexey Komissarouk, 26, is the brainchild behind one nomadic community.  Komissarouk considers a few different factors when deciding on locations but the primary factors are interest, affordability and infrastructure – especially when it comes to reliable 4G and wi-fi.  “Aside from those things, it’s actually very simple.  We decide where to go, and we go there,” Komissarouk explains.  “The most important question is always, ‘Where would you like to spend a month?’”

After the success of the 2015 program, Hacker Paradise is now halfway through a tour of three countries: Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. 

 "Mini travel solar panels are proving popular” -- Jamie Burns at Running Repairs, an IT networking company based in the French Alps

Offices are becoming as much about fun as work

Technological advances mean that workers can avoid the drudgery of commuting and work from home, coffee shops, or an exotic location of their choice.  Research by Cirtix indicates that by 2020, 70% of people would work away from the office as often as they worked at a desk.  That doesn't mean that the office will die though.

"Offices are expensive and office space will decline" -- Citrix Vice President, Jacqueline de Rojas.

Many companies are working to make their offices more attractive places to be.  Google's headquarters in Zurich has a massage room, aquarium and a slide to deliver engineers smoothly and quickly to the canteen.  Avaya and Citrix have installed benches at their London headquarters - essentially higher and longer shared desks. 

Creating the greenest, most intelligent building in the world

Offices will become places of collaboration and connection because culturally we are social animals who still need touch points, they are also getting smarter.  Gartner says commercial buildings are already at the forefront of the "internet of things" revolution.  Smart lighting, heating, and even sensors that measure how many people are in an office, are becoming commonplace. 

 Deloitte’s office ‘The Edge’ in Amsterdam boasts ‘smart’ ceilings embedded with 28,000 sensors which measure temperature, light, motion and humidity. Workers can control the temperature, lighting and blinds via a series of apps on their smartphones. 

"We want to predict how things will happen in the building, that will be the really smart thing" -- Wybe Van der Mey, Facilities Manager, The Edge

Workers can select the temperature they want from a sliding gauge on their phone, and with the very same app, book meeting rooms, open lockers and log in to their hot desks.  Via smartphone-enabled QR Codes, workers are able connect to a host of features within meeting rooms, including powering up the screens for presentations, controlling the lighting and heating, even lowering the blinds to all their individual preferred settings.

The building is heated and cooled via an aquifer thermal energy storage system. Hot water is stored in underground wells during summer to help heat the building in winter; conversely, during the winter months, cooled water is stored, ready to cool the building during the summer months. 

With all of this additional data comes the challenge of understanding it.  Much of the analysis today relies upon dashboards which both the facilities teams and workers can access.  These dashboards display a variety of real-time data points including the number of workers in the building at any given time, the quantity of visitors, energy consumption and temperature.

It also has some more fun data-sets, such as a pie-chart showing the type and quantity of coffee that is being consumed in the building at any given time.