The Future Office: How the World of Work May Change in the Next 20 Years

 

 

 

 

Perhaps influenced by proximity to the EU referendum, a quarter of those interviewed mentioned social, demographic or political changes. Several business owners echoed the concerns of the remain campaign, as to what effect the UK leaving the EU may have on the economy. There were also a number of comments predicting a shift towards more ethical business practices becoming the norm.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, 1 in 5 interviewees emphasised the move towards more flexible working arrangements, including virtual and remote working. This trend is already being observed in many businesses, with 8% of respondents citing remote working as having had the biggest impact on the way they work currently.

 

New and more widely available mobile technology is likely to be the driving force behind this change. When asked to rank the most essential pieces of technology for work in both 1996 and 2016 [see Notes to Editors], respondents ranked WiFi, smartphones, broadband and laptops as priorities for the contemporary office, ahead of the desktop computer, which was by far the most essential device 20 years ago.

 

Dr Petros Chamakiotis is a Lecturer in Information Systems at the University of Sussex, and researches the impact of technology on how we interact with each other, in particular in modern, technology-mediated environments. He takes a particular interest in the development of virtual teams - an increasingly common way of working in global organizations. 

 

“It is not an easy job to work collaboratively together with ‘online strangers’ whom you may never meet face-to-face, and yet be expected to be productive and creative,” he says. “Especially in industries in which creativity and innovation matter, it is important that leaders and managers have the necessary skills to unleash their virtual teams’ creativity, whilst mitigating the negative effects of virtuality.” 

 

Dr Chamakiotis’ research also looks at the wider impact of these technologies outside organizations. As he puts it, “the connectivity afforded by smartphones and mobile technology enables people to work from anywhere, anytime. As a result, rather than separating ‘work’ from ‘life’, people tend to draw new boundaries between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ or between their private and public lives online.” He discusses some of the challenges associated with these wider impacts of technology on work-life boundaries in a recent video with colleagues from a multidisciplinary research project3 he has participated in.

 

The ultimate caveat for all of these findings, as mentioned in many of the responses, was that the rate of technological advancement makes it difficult to predict any future trend with complete certainty. Even the most advanced technologies can easily become obsolete in the space of twenty years, as illustrated by some of the decisions made when the Sussex Innovation Centre opened in 1996.

 

“Our specifications for the building were initially based on the requirement for one computer between every two people in the building, which was cutting-edge for the time,” says Mike Herd, Executive Director of Sussex Innovation. “In fact, the corridors in the first phase of the building were built to be wide enough to drive a Landrover through, in order to more easily bring in the bulky computing equipment that several of our tenants needed for their work.”

 

“As well as practical improvements, the cost of technology has rapidly declined. In the early years, several people tried to break into the building in order to steal graphics processor chips from our workstations, which were the very latest tech and could fetch a hefty price. The average person’s phone now comes with more RAM than those chips had. It goes to show how quickly things can change – the best advice I can give to any business is to keep on top of where things are going, and to continuously evaluate and adapt.”

 

Sussex Innovation Centre will host an all-day innovation showcase event on Wednesday 12th October.