New Ways of Working - the workplace of the future

"Facility Management can align workplaces with the organizations’ increasing pace of change. To do so, the future role of FM will need to include new innovative service concepts that go beyond solely looking at the workspace as an opportunity for reducing operating cost.

The ISS 2020 Vision report: New Ways of Working – the workplace of the future analyzes the strategic themes shaping the future workplace strategies. It also provides a framework for identifying the role of Facility Management in helping develop an organization’s workplace strategy given the competitive context, strategy, brand, culture, and existing workplaces.

(...) Increasingly, global competition, the war for talents, the introduction of new technologies, and the greater focus on sustainability – among other factors – are changing how companies plan for and develop their workplace strategies and how our industry develops services to support them.

The boundaries that define traditional workspaces and organizations have long been changing: Employees work from the office, home and third workspaces; they work in private offices and open offices as well as from hot desks and touchdown points. Meanwhile, mobile devices are overtaking the laptop and the PC as our primary interfaces to the digital world.

By definition, people are essential to workplaces. Without people, workplaces are simply places. The primary purpose of a workplace is to support the people in it. Designing smart and cost effective workplaces, which will accommodate more collaboration and increase efficiency, is a major opportunity for most organizations. Many organizations are already well into this process, and there is no doubt that the workplace as we know it is undergoing dramatic change as it will increasingly become a place where people meet, socialize, builds relations and have fun. The future workplace will play a decisive role in building a strong corporate culture."