Agility @ Work: adopting the corporate six pack by Regus

UNWIRED RESEARCH

AGILITY @ Work

adopting the corporate six pack

by Mark Dixon and Philip Ross

AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

THE CHANGING NATURE OF WORK NEW WAYS OF WORKING SPACE TO WORK THIRD SPACE NEW WAYS OF WORKING CASE STUDIES

5 6 7 8 9

6 FORCES RE-SHAPING WORK REAL ESTATE CULTURE and WORKSTYLE PEOPLE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) TRANSPORT SUSTAINABILITY SIX PACK – FIT FOR BUSINESS?

13 13 14 15 17 21 22 23

CONCLUSIONS ACTIVITY BASED WORKING (ABW) INNOVATION AT WORK FLEXING SPACE

24 24 25 25

WHERE NEXT?

APPENDICES Our Research About the Authors Philip Ross Mark Dixon About Unwired About Regus

27 27 27 27 27 28 28

UNWIRED Research

AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report sets out to predict the future of work. It presents six trends or forces that are reshaping work, and in turn allowing companies to change the way they organise work. These external forces are: demography, culture, technology, sustainability, transport and property. Together they not only comprise the key overheads of a business, but also the drivers of change that no company can ignore if it is to get into shape as the world emerges from recession.

What is clear is that work is rapidly becoming something we do, and not a place we go to. Mantras such as work ‘on the pause’, or ‘management by results’ show that supervision and presenteeism are giving way to trust and empowerment. People will in the future be increasingly free to choose their work/place. This has a big impact on sustainability. Two of the key contributors of carbon emissions are commercial buildings and commuting to those buildings. Both can be challenged by changing patterns and places of work.

That shape is a corporate ‘six pack’ - a new way of structuring work, based on a new set of assumptions and an understanding of new opportunities. This can be achieved through the adoption of new approaches to workplace provision such as activity based working and a new view of a polycentric city.

But there is still a gap in the provision of places to work ‘on the pause’. This report will look at early examples of ‘third spaces’ and discuss the growth needed to accommodate an increasingly agile workforce. We predict a new network (both virtual and physical) that in effect becomes the ‘office’. This hub and spoke approach will be crucial, as multiple locations in a city give rise to consolidation, and continued transport congestion make movement around a city a continuing issue – immobility in the city will lead to a growth in the demand for multi-centric working.

We believe that these six drivers will reshape organisations in the ‘tennies’ to be fitter, and leaner – the ‘six pack’ for the corporation that provides a much lower cost base for work. We have looked at the ‘cost of work’ – a measure of the overhead required today to allow a person to be productive. For a leading, blue chip organisation this is anywhere between $19,000 and $22,000, at the moment per person per annum in a capital city. The target for some companies is now under $7,000, achieved through innovation, mobility and the adoption of new workstyles.

Work will no longer be about a building, a dumb container, to which people commute and which ‘houses’ the corporation’s infrastructure, data, technology and files. Work is now permeable – the boundaries are blurring and there are better, more efficient places to house technology and data. The future is being redefined.

New technology will have a dramatic affect on how and where work is done. We present the key drivers and enablers of change, for both small and medium sized businesses as well as multi-national enterprises. Trends such as accelerating the adoption of mobility, virtual workplace portals and the migration to ‘cloud computing’ will see a gradual transition to ‘empty’ or thin office buildings, devoid of all technology.

This future will result in corporations leasing less real estate. As they emerge from recession, fit corporations that have adopted ‘six-pack’ thinking will be able to achieve growth in headcount without taking on additional square feet.

This research not only looks at evidence based on case studies from early adopters of radical workstyles across the globe. It also discusses issues with leading heads of real estate from global companies to understand their thinking, concerns and aspirations for the new world of work.

Time Magazine

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

Actions for achieving a corporate â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;six packâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;:

Real Estate

Review workplace strategy and introduce activity based working and mobility. Gather data on utilisation rates and real cost of occupancy as well as churn costs. Create an aspirational vision for new workstyles.

Culture

Introduce change management to prepare people for new workstyles. Move from management by supervision to a results based approach. Identify champions for innovation and change.

People

Understand demographics and profile the workforce to identify the needs of different groups by age, job function and psychometric analysis. Engage with the workforce to develop opportunities for change.

Technology

Identify key drivers and enablers of change. Then align technology to the real estate strategy and introduce the appropriate tools for new workstyles.

Transport

Realisation that continued stress in transport corridors will require a new approach to commuting and mobility, and the adoption of polycentric thinking.

Sustainability

Reduced quantity of commercial real estate leased, together with better management of property assets, reduced commuting and greener technology will allow targets to be met.

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

THE CHANGING NATURE OF WORK For over one hundred and twenty years our workplace - the office - has been dominated by fixed technology. From the Remington Typewriter and Bell’s telephone in the 1880s to IBM’s PC in the 1980s, there has always been heavy equipment on desks that has tethered down the office worker. The growth of the networked computer has resulted in an ‘intelligent office building’, engineered to house, power and cool the servers and switches that create the network, process and store corporate data. And a complex industry has grown up to house this connected real estate, from raised access flooring to cable managed systems furniture.

corporate hierarchy. The office has reflected status and power, not role and function. But it has also represented stability and certainty, and for the company inflexibility and sloth. Change was difficult, expensive and slow. But this approach to workplace is increasingly redundant. Most people no longer sit behind desks all day carrying out repetitive tasks. In fact research shows that the majority of desks, typically 55%+, in an average office are empty at any one point in time. More and more work is collaborative, and people spend more time working with others. Having a telephone extension number that represents a piece of furniture or a room is archaic in an age of fast communications.

But you can look back into the mid-1800s at a pre-IT era when the workplace had no technology at all. Clerks with pens at simple desks or benches were the predominant model. And we believe that we are heading ‘back’ to an under-engineered, technologically sparse workplace environment, at least in the eyes of the user or occupant. As the Financial Times stated: “Fifty years ago computers were absent from office life… In 50 years time things will be much the same. There will be no machines on our desktops.”1

And while desks are usually empty, research shows2 that you can never find a meeting room. Space for teams, projects, M&As, pitches or war rooms are needed but not available. The types of spaces that people will demand for the types of work undertaken in buildings are changing. When people do find a room for a team session, the barriers to collaboration and connectivity are extreme. Complexity to get people onto a network, sharing resources such as a printer or projector are substantial in most workplaces today. And for non-employees with so-called ‘alien devices’ it can be difficult or impossible to connect and use peripherals such as printers.

As well as heavy, personal desktop technology, paper and personal files have tied the worker to his or her desk. People store many linear meters of paper and filing each, at or near their desk. In many workplaces, between 15 and 17 % of floor space is given over to storage, and the paperless office has yet to materialise. Yes much is about to change and challenge not the use of paper but the need to file and store it. ‘Digital flow’, new display technology, tablets and ebooks will all reduce the ‘half life’ of paper.

Now, with the introduction of mobile, portable technology and the ability to communicate across distance at little or no cost, many of the fundamental rules of office life will be challenged. There is something significant happening to the nature of work, and the places created to house it in the 21st Century.

Allocating one person to one desk or office has been the predominant approach to organising work, clustering people by department in a building that represents the static

“Fifty years ago computers were absent from office life… In 50 years time things will be much the same. There will be no machines on our desktops.” Financial Times 1

1 Financial Times, The Office is future-proof, Special Report on the Future of Work, Monday September 27 2004 2 UNWIRED research report 2008

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

With the rise of mobility, work has become more fragmented and staccato – people dip in and out of work, and increasingly ‘work on the pause’. The office has become one of a number of locations in which work can take place. But the other spaces in which people try to work are often challenging. A coffee shop, where there may be WiFi connectivity but no power or ability to print. A transport hub where there is no place to get away from noise, or an hotel where there are no private work spaces.

example, that 5 people share say 4 desks. Sharing ratios are often the limit of current thinking, and represent a first step on the journey to a new workstyle. The terms ‘Hot Desking’, alternative officing and ‘Hoteling’ were born, alongside the corporate initiatives such as SMART, Free Address, iWork, my work and so on. They describe the early examples of introducing new workstyles. But all too often they were attempts to shave cost and share desks. There was little gain for the individual and the spaces created were often poor and unappealing. Now a new approach is evolving.

We predict the rise of new destinations and locations for work; places in between the home and corporate centre.

Many of the current examples of new workstyles owe their origins to a few pioneers. Apart from the obvious candidates in accountancy, companies such as SOL (a cleaning company), Chiat Day (an advertising business), Digital Equipment Corporation (a computer company) and British Airways (the airline) began to make radical advances in the way they used work space.

NEW WAYS OF WORKING Mindful of these trends, and with a desire to cut costs, companies have started to experiment with flexible working and introduced the idea of hot desking or desk sharing, with moderate ambition of occupancy efficiency to the extent, for

“Whereas the new mode of working was once an exception, now the office will be seen as a last resort.”

“Mobile people need somewhere to touch down.”

Chris Hood, Hewlett Packard

Mark Tamburro, Nokia

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

SPACE TO WORK In the book, Space to Work (co-authored by Philip Ross and Jeremy Myerson) four key trends were identified for the knowledge company, based on research with over 200 businesses worldwide. These are represented by the diagram and show the tensions at work, between permeable and contained work, and between high and low corporate visibility.

first commercial buildings in the world, where people clustered by profession, skill or trade. Now we see a re-emergence of the Guild, as employment by the corporate entity is joined by freelance and independent careers – the portfolio workers that now form a major part of many organisations. The BBC is perhaps the first to experience the re-emergence of the Guild as workplace. Its workforce is a mix of employees and independents – production companies and freelancers that work on programmes and use BBC workspaces. As Chris Kane (BBC) explains, “people want to work with us. Freelancers are a big proportion of our population.”

The corporate office becomes an Academy – a place for people that provides choice and empowerment, enabled by technology and an accepting leadership culture. This balances with the Agora – the increasing ability to be effective ‘in the field’, in front of customers or working from new, third spaces. It means that people have to come back to the corporate office on a less frequent basis and so challenges the need to give them a desk.

In the diagram below, people find their own balance or equilibrium, based on their profile. But what is clear is that the ‘academy’ corporate centre will contract, while work in the agora and lodge will increase. As Chris Hood from Hewlett Packard states, “Mobile people need somewhere to touch down.” And so new destinations are needed.

The other trends are about new space. Working near the home, in the community, was called Lodge to evoke the period in history when piece work from home, or community based working, commerce and trade were the norm. A regrouping by people from the same profession was also recognised – the 21st Century Guild. Guild buildings were the

As Chris Kane (BBC) explains,

“People want to work with us. Freelancers are a big proportion of our population.”

“I never work at home; I only work remotely.” John Killey, Citigroup

Space to Work

Four key trends in the Knowledge Economy

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

THIRD SPACE Space ‘in between’ the corporate office and home environment has been referred to as third space. And a range of innovative ideas have emerged, from clubs and hubs to serviced offices and public buildings. PRIVATE

PRIVILEGED

PUBLIC

SoHo House The Hospital

The Hub Regus

Starbucks British Library

Another innovator in third space is The British Library next to London’s new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras. The Library initially provided WiFi connectivity for the 4000 people that came in each day, but demand for space to work was so great that a free wireless workzone was created in front of the King’s library. The space provides good ergonomic furniture, with free power (delivered to the arm of sofas) and task lighting. It has proven to be so popular that now 5000 people use the building each day, with 1000 people a day just using the space for work and meetings before heading on, for example, to St Pancras or Kings Cross stations.

Using Frank Duffy’s3 well known workplace descriptors, the idea of third space can equally be categorised as public, private and privileged. From the free space available in public buildings that is being created for mobile workers, to the private members club where you have to be nominated and recommended to join, a host of options for third space exist and more are set to emerge.

At Regus’ Berkeley Square centre, a club workspace has been created to allow people a drop in destination that is flexible, shared and informal. Private work pods are interspersed with soft seating and meeting spaces that people use as if they were in an airline lounge. More formal space can be booked, but for many of Regus’ Platinum and Gold card holders, the lounge is exactly what is needed for ‘work on the pause’. A professional space to drop into, connect and work.

One of the most interesting third spaces is The Hospital, a club for media executives that was set up and funded by Paul Allen (a founder of Microsoft). Members pay an annual subscription, and have use of a building in London’s Covent Garden where they cannot only work, meet and eat, but also screen a film, use a recording studio or make a television programme in a full, state-of-the-art studio.

But the range of current options available to agile workers is limited and often not fit for purpose. A café that does not provide power, a public space that has no acoustic privacy or a private club that offers poor wifi connectivity and no facility to print. Third space needs to become as sophisticated as a modern workplace, with a range of facilities that provides effective destinations to work ‘on the pause’.

A space that can be shared, that allows high cost capital intensive spaces to be utilised well and that gives people access to resources that they otherwise could not justify, provides a new model.

The Hospital Regus, Berkley Square

British Library

“Our wireless workzone has increased visitors to the British Library significantly” John de Lucy, British Library

“We are deploying home based working for all global locations... and we are looking very carefully at in between places” Daniel Johnson, Accenture

3 Frank Duffy, DEGW

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

NEW WAYS OF WORKING CASE STUDIES What is clear is that many organisations have now adopted what can be broadly defined as ‘new ways of working’. That is they have broken the ‘one-desk-one-person’ model and introduced something different. Solutions, definitions and concepts vary from one business to another, but the trend is clear. People are becoming mobile, enabled by new technology and given the trust and empowerment needed to work in a different way.

There are hundreds of examples of new ways of working programmes. Some are more adventurous than others, but all challenge the premise of the traditional office. The trends can be seen in every part of the globe, in companies big and small and in every industry and sector, public and private.

As they experience, and are equipped for mobility, inside their workplace, they will also be able to work from a range of new destinations and use their experience to work in a different way.

Nokia, Beijing, China Situated on one of the ring roads in Beijing, the new Nokia campus has created a state-of-the-art building that provides a unique campus for R&D in China, attracting the best talent in a competitive market. With the congestion problems in Beijing, mobile workers such as sales people and engineers spend much of the time on the road and when they are in the office share workspace, using the mobile units below. Business Benefit

Transport

Centralised ‘academy’ with enabled mobile workforce

Central location on an outer ring road in one of the world’s most ‘immobile’ cities. Flexible working enabled for the mobile workforce.

“In China we have given our sales force Regus gold cards as part of a pilot study providing unlimited walk-in access to Regus Beijing network.” Colin King, Nokia

Nokia, Beijing

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

Interpolis, Tilburg, The Netherlands Insurance company Interpolis has broken the mould and created a very different office based on teams and tasks, enabled by mobile technology. Over 3000 people based in their purpose-designed building work in activity based worksettings that range from weavers huts to stone houses – all designed by some of the top Dutch artists. The workplace has made a substantial impact on the recruitment and retention of staff. And in the process they saved €90m on capex and over €8m per annum on opex as churn costs have been reduced to zero. Business Benefit

Real Estate

Capex and Opex reduction

Reduction of real estate leased by 30% has been achieved in new ways of working programmes. Churn costs have been reduced to near zero.

Macquarie Group, Sydney, Australia Macquarie Group’s new building on Shelley Street in Sydney has adopted activity based working, with over 2500 people sharing a range of spaces that they choose based on a particular activity. The spaces are rich and varied, with a dynamic central street as well as a plaza area on each floor. Everyone carries a laptop and uses wireless technology to connect, so people can work from anywhere. Macquarie has reduced paper by 73% and one of the surprising findings from post-occupancy is that use of lifts (elevators) has reduced by 50% as people choose to walk up the central stairs between floors.

Business Benefit

Sustainability

Paper and storage reduction

Maquarie Group, Sydney

Interpolis, Tilburg

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Macquarie has reduced paper used by 73%, with a 78% reduction in storage space required (from 5km to 1km of files) and a reduction in printing of 52% due to Follow Me Printing – equivalent to 42 tonnes of paper p.a.

AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

Vodafone, Auckland, New Zealand A desire to attract and retain young, talented people was one of the key drivers of this innovative workplace that presents an informal, colleigate atmosphere. 1300 people have no desk, and all are equipped with the latest mobile technology. People choose to work either at a shared workstation, or in one of the more social, café style environments. Business Benefit

People

Attracting and retaining talent

A more vibrant work environment has been shown to be a positive factor in attracting talent.

Googleplex, Mountain View, USA With over 16,000 people on their Mountain View campus, Googleplex is a remarkable mini city of people and places. As you would expect in California, the campus has a rich variety of outdoor spaces from restaurants to basketball courts. As well as fairly traditional workstations, much of the internal space is given over to common, shared spaces from cafes for grazing to lounges, seminar rooms and social space. Google make much of their 20% time philosophy, and Googlers have plenty of opportunity to find ‘20% space’ to be inspired. Business Benefit

Culture

Innovation

The focus on 20% time has resulted in many of Google’s innovations – Gmail, Google maps and so on. People have the ability to use shared space for innovation and inspiration

Google, Mountain View Vodaphone, Aukland

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The impact of six forces on the way we work

Microsoft, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Microsoft’s new campus at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport changes the rules. Nobody has a desk, and the workstyle is activity based working. A range of spaces have been created, from small private cocoons for concentrated work and for on screen working and review by one or two people, to open team tables and private, individual carrels. Everyone uses a laptop, and the space has no fixed phones at all, with Vodafone and Microsoft’s Enterprise Voice solution providing converged telephony and messaging that is delivered to a person, not a desk. The workplace is almost paperless, with people printing on average only one page each per day.

Business Benefit

Technology

Death of the desk phone

A move away from fixed telephony to true ‘fixed-mobile’ convergence, with one software interface providing unified comminications – connecting people and not desks

Microsoft, Amsterdam

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

6 FORCES RE-SHAPING WORK With the early indicators above that work and the workplace is changing, we now predict an acceleration of these trends based on six key forces: Real estate • Culture and workstyle • People • Information and communication technology • Transport • Sustainability

REAL ESTATE Real estate overhead and cost reduction has become one of the key drivers of work style innovation. As well as reducing the amount of real estate needed, companies are also driving out opex and downtime by focusing on operational efficiency. Real estate costs today represent for most organisations the second biggest overhead after salaries, and this is now under scrutiny as companies state that they will grow in headcount without taking on more square feet. In capital cities such as central London, the cost of a desk per person per annum is somewhere between $19,000 and $22,000. This figure includes rent, rates and services charges but often excludes technology.

To get a picture for the future, a leading global technology company with over 100,000 people has introduced new ways of working and mobility and in doing so has reduced occupancy costs to $4,000, per head per annum (rent, rates, utilities, services etc) – less than half the previous costs per capita. Even the public sector and government estate is undergoing change. In the UK, the Office for Government Commerce (OGC) states that central government occupies over 100 million square feet of space. The average cost of providing office space in London is £7700 per person per annum, and across the UK it averages at £4178 per person per year. And this amount is falling year on year.

To provide a measure of the scale of overhead that offices contributes as a % of turnover is important. For example, Philips, the electronics giant, has 118,000 people worldwide based in 877 buildings on 730 sites in 69 countries. This totals 6million square metres and costs the business annually €636m (for real estate and facilities). Interestingly this represents 2.4% of turnover.

And so cost reduction can now be achieved through new ways of working that require less space. But operational costs can also be removed, notably churn costs – the moves and changes which for some companies are at 80%+ - that is 8 out of every 10 people are moved around the building each year. The cost of churn can vary, but anything from £400 to £1000 per person per move has been stated. One investment bank found that they spent $8m in churn in London in one year alone.

But companies are now pushing back against these costs. Nortel, the telecommunications company, has 9000 people in 186 locations worldwide. They have taken occupancy costs from $12,000 to under $3,000, per person per annum. 126 sites have been closed and $129m taken out of the portfolio over a period of only 3 quarters. Now over 2500 people carry Regus Businessworld cards, so they can make use of a network of workspaces, and in turn Nortel is moving towards managing only five corporate hubs.

So corporate spaces we believe will be smaller, based on an Academy model, with flexible, churn free space, and companies will begin to rely on other destinations for work to complement these smaller centres. “The optimal real estate solution may now involve only one (corporate) site in any major city but this may be inconvenient for some customers and employees who are on the wrong side of the city”, Chris Hood, HP. And so to minimise travel and down time, we see a demand for a polycentric approach.

“We need spaces on the fringes of the CBDs (central business districts) if we are going to help people work in a dispersed manor; they need to pop up whenever.”

“The high value-add is the ability to assemble team space at the drop of a hat. We win a contract, a twenty person team needs to be assembled and we need to hire a project room for six months.”

Head of Workplace, Global Technology Company

Chris Hood, HP

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

CULTURE and WORKSTYLE One of the most dramatic changes that is underway is an acceptance of management by results rather than supervision. The outdated notion of being paid for the number of hours spent in the office is no longer valid in an age of distributed working. But for many middle managers, letting go of ‘watching the back of peoples heads’ is a difficult transition. For people at all levels, distributed work has its issues. And while management report challenges in managing without ‘presenteeism’, in the current climate, people have also reacted with a need to be present, for job security and being recognised and remembered. This is partly due to ineffective solutions to ‘virtual presence’ - the technology that can fill the void left when people no longer sit together by department in fixed places. A ‘circle of trust’ is an approach used successfully to allow a different paradigm. A company trusts its people to represent its values to clients, and so the same trust needs to be vested in people and the choices they make over where and when they work. This gets more interesting as more and more work is distributed on a global scale. For example, over half of London’s top law firms now outsource typing to South Africa – a country within the same time zone, English speaking with qualified people at a fraction of the cost of London. Adapting to a new workstyle is also a challenge for many people. Years of sitting behind the same desk, day in day out, create a pattern of behaviour. The overflowing ‘to do’ pile, the ‘to read’ pile, post-it notes with phone messages and reminders, pictures of the kids and trophies and collected mementoes represent our nesting instinct.

“Much of our work continues to happen at client sites, and we certainly consider “travel” a work location - we have as many people in hotels each night as we do in our consulting offices each day!”

But these are just artefacts of yesterday’s order. People can still feel belonging – just not to one small desk. Done correctly, people feel ownership of a community space – rather like a private members club. What is clear is that status has been correlated to space for over a century and for many, a career climbing the corporate ladder has been manifested by the journey to the corner office. The SVP label has a physical incarnation in today’s world of corporate hierarchy. But in a matrix, team orientated organisation these tokens become vestiges of yesterday’s approach. People find new ways to demonstrate position. The office no longer represents the hierarchy. One of the positive outcomes from flexible working is worklife balance. An overworked term that for many has little resonance given that mobile email has extended working hours and blurred the boundaries between work and ‘private life’. But people spend on average 54 minutes a day commuting to their workplace. In major cities this can easily double. And in many developing economies, cities are becoming immobile – it can take hours to move around Beijing or Dehli. We have witnessed a dramatic growth of flexible working. For example, 14% of British Telecom’s workforce are now home based. People have the tools to work anywhere. Now culture and management style is catching up to create new ways of managing without physical presence.

“It’s not about having a physical place – its what you contribute to a company.” Mark Tamburro, Nokia

Daniel Johnson, Accenture

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

PEOPLE For the first time ever, there are now four generations at work. This creates a unique challenge, as each has its own characteristics, aspirations and preferred workstyles. The newest entrants to the workplace, the Millennial Generation (also called Generation Y), promise to exert even more influence than their Baby Boomer parents. This group, born between 1980 and 2000, is more numerous than the boomers. It is also a generation celebrated for its confidence, its dedication to equality in the workplace, and its global perspective. But most important, the Millennial Generation takes information delivered by digital technology for granted. For them it is intuitive, invisible and essential and the infrastructure that delivers it, ubiquitous. They are used to living on line and being synchronous does not present a problem. They have a disregard for privacy, adapting to the transparency of social networks and openness of location aware services. As a social impact, for probably the first time in history, these young people are considered authorities on something that the older generations haven’t mastered in the same way. What are the characteristics of the other three generations?

Baby-boomers This group is so large; it is divided into early boomers, born from 1946 to 1954, and late boomers, with dates from 1955 to 1965. Both share a strong emphasis on individuality, youth, and adventure. They are confident in their prosperity because they were raised amidst economic growth. Boomers have humanised the workplace, making it comfortable and encouraging innovation at all levels. They are exploring retirement in interesting ways – they are expecting an extended active and vital work life by working part time, telecommuting or consulting. Generation X These born between 1966 and 1977 are typically identified as slackers, winners and cynics. There is tension between them and the boomers. If these children of divorce and day-care had a slogan, it might be a sarcastic, “thank you for the world you’re leaving me.” But Gen X is also very entrepreneurial. They were raised in times of idealism and equality, so they lack the social and cultural limitations of their predecessors. Getting ready for the digital natives – the ‘net’ gen

Traditional generation Born between 1928 and 1945, these are the oldest members of the workforce. They tend to exemplify faith in the Institutions, loyalty, willingness to conform, and the importance of hard work. They respect their employing organisations and expect ‘paternalism’. Many of this generation are retired. But a growing percentage is staying in the workforce, offering outstanding knowledge and experience.

What is clear is that the next generation (still at school) will be even more radical in their attitudes and approach. The ‘net gen’ or digital natives have grown up with the internet and use technology in a very different way to other generations. They are learning with the internet, use SMART interactive white boards in their class rooms and carry with them more computing power than their predecessors had in their workplace. They will be the generation that moves the goal posts – the first to be able to live on line, to read on screen and to be happy with less privacy on ubiquitous connectivity that still leaves the digital immigrants out in the cold.

The ‘net’ gen classrom

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Characteristics of the generations

Born

Age

Issue

Solution

Traditionals

1928 to 1945

63+

Will not retire but will work part-time.

Bespoke areas for shared space with treatment such as higher lux/lighting levels, areas to relax/have a nap, different furniture.

Baby Boomers

1946 to 1965

43 - 62

Mixed comfort with technology, mostly digital immigrants, now leading the enterprise.

May still need allocated space as they have climbed the ladder and are often resistant to change.

Generation X

1966 to 1977

31 - 42

Too late to be natives but savvy with technology. Prime contenders for flexible working.

Open to change and used to working flexibly. Best group to introduce new workstyles.

Millennial Generation or Generation Y

1980 to 2000

11 - 30

Experienced PCs in the home and at college. Some learning with technology. First digitally literate group to arrive in the workplace.

Open to and indeed expect radical workplace solutions. Very suited to activity based working and advanced technology.

Net Gen

Since 2000

Under 10

Will be net savvy – born with the internet – true digital natives.

Will not need paper and probably be the first group to embrace virtual workplaces.

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) New digital technology is emerging that will change the nature of how, why and where work is done. The rise of a new breed of technology is challenging not just the world we live in, but is beginning to redefine the very construct of the organisation. Becoming digital will change that equilibrium, resulting in a new relationship between ‘man and machine’, between the city and suburb, and between employer and employee. Being analogue wasn’t much fun. For the past 120 years office workers have been tied to desks, tethered by the heavy, cabled technology that enabled their usually repetitive work to take place. Taylor’s time and motion was the predominant view of efficiency, and ever since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in the 1870s, people have been tied to furniture for work and communication. The desk and private office became synonymous with status, territory and belonging in the organisation. But slowly things have started to change. In the 1990s, email, the laptop and the cell phone became the tools for a new mobile elite. This was followed by the growth of the internet, with its redefinition of telephony, networks and collaboration. Then we witnessed wireless networks, mobility and ubiquity. Now we have digital flow, data centres and the cloud. Digital technology is re-writing the rules. So far these rules have applied to the edges of corporate life. Better ways to communicate, mobile email and the Blackberry revolution, multimedia and multifunctional devices. Faster connections and speed of communication have changed how we work to some extent. But now, the opportunity exists to look at ‘digital’ as the enabler for a different way of working;

one where people do not have to commute in to a ‘dumb container for work’. The digital office is being defined. The digital world assumes that you can connect from anywhere. Today from a laptop and ‘smart’ phone; tomorrow from any device through a browser. The combination of wireless network connectivity, high performance mobile devices, high speed networks and new, software-led connectivity and ‘unified’ messaging tools have in effect sounded the death knell of the ‘desk phone’ and the desktop personal computer. The biggest technological barrier had been paper, but even here its half life is diminishing and while people will still always use paper, it need not be stored and certainly not kept at the desk. But paper is also threatened as we become digital. The previous IT revolution was basically to take paper and turn it digital. And this meant that what you viewed on screen could then be re-output to paper. No longer. What is displayed is now a mix of media, with flat, two dimensional text juxtaposed with video and Uniform Resource Locators – the url links that help us navigate the internet as well as hover or hidden information. What you print no longer represents what is on the screen. Now digital technology will take that data, and soon applications, out of the office altogether. The rise of the corporate data centre will now be superseded by cloud computing, as applications, processing and data are managed via the internet in anonymous grid or utility computing farms managed by the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and HP. The efficiency of these spaces with their ‘blades’ and shared resources through ‘virtualisation’techniques, will challenge any corporate solution on cost, efficiency and green credentials.

“As technology has improved, so has people’s understanding that they don’t need to be in a fixed place to perform.” Mark Tamburro, Nokia

Picture Credit: Intel

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

And so the digital revolution will take almost everything out of the corporate office. We will in effect occupy from a digital perspective an empty building in the future, devoid of the computing power that keeps the corporate pulse. And with the migration to the cloud will come the realisation that work, increasingly will be done from anywhere, at anytime. The necessity to co-locate in a down town office building, sitting adjacent to departmental colleagues to carry out a task will be seen as yesterdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approach to work in the analogue era.

What you view on screen is now a mix of media, with flat, two dimensional text juxtaposed with video and hover or hidden information. What you print no longer represents what is on the screen.

So with mobility and new devices, digital flow and the cloud, what is left for the office? The rise of digital does not mean the decline of bricks and mortar. People will still need to work, and will need a place for work that is not the home. Collaboration will require people to co-habit. And there will always be the need to create a branded environment that represents the corporation and acts as an extension to the corporate brand. The digital revolution will not slow down. New devices, city wide WiMax networks and a host of other innovations will continue to allow innovation and change. The next step change will see location aware systems and services that will combine with knowledge management software and real time buildings to actually bring people together when they are in the same space and have something to talk about. Engineering the chance encounters in tomorrows digital organisation will not only remove downtime but become the catalyst for an acceleration of the speed of corporate activity and human interaction.

Picture Credit: Plantronics

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

The rise of video and the death of distance Video conferencing is about to come of age. A technology that has been around for many years is reaching critical mass, thanks to the spread of broadband and miniature webcams embedded into devices. The credit crunch-led travel bans has also had a remarkable impact on the acceptance of high quality video conferencing as a replacement to physical meetings, and the market is expanding, realising the notion of the ‘death of distance’. When people can effectively meet and ‘eyeball’ each other rather than jumping on airplanes, distributed work really works. At the desk, there will be a dramatic expansion in the use of high definition (HD) video for ad hoc conversations and collaboration sessions. HD video will become required as a core communications tool, and with this growth will be a new realisation of the importance of workspace design as the backdrop becomes important as well as acoustics and technology.

There will be an increasing demand for video conferencing ‘on the pause’, especially in shared spaces such as work hubs and third spaces. With the capital investment and operational costs remaining high, these rooms need high utilisation to be cost effective, and so more and more companies will accept them as a shared resource. For many organisations with specialist spaces, from recording and television studios, to immersive spaces and collaboration rooms, sharing capital intensive spaces provide an attractive solution. “Moving away from specialised space, so that it was provided (by a third party) would be attractive. It needs to be multi-purpose, multi-functional,” suggests Chris Kane at BBC Workplace.

“Between 10 an 15 hours of telepresence in an average week – if we are an example of what is coming that is what its about.” Head of Workplace, Global Technology Company

“Moving away from specialised space, so that it was provided (by a third party) would be attractive. It needs to be multipurpose, multi-functional.” Chris Kane, BBC Workplace

Polycom’s roundtable video conferencing unit in Microsoft’s office of the future

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

Some Key Technologies and their potential impact

Description

Impact on work and the workplace

IP Telephony and Softphones

Using data networks and the internet to carry voice

Cost savings and changing economics of location. The ‘death of distance’. Enabler of new work styles.

Fixed-Mobile Convergence

Mobile phones as ubiquitous devices – always on with internet access and IP Telephony

New ways of communication. Consumers able to price compare with always on internet.

Telepresence and Halo

High quality video conferencing and new ‘av’ technologies for collaboration.

Death of distance, allowing reduced travel and increased collaboration. New types of collaborative project space in buildings.

Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), slates and tablets

New format devices

Always on portable internet tablets offering synchronous access to social networks, messaging and applications.

Ultrawide Band and RFID

Active location tags

Used for sustainability in offices, to track people and measure real time occupancy.

WiFi

Wireless Ethernet

Meru networks provide new single cell coverage in buildings with RF barriers on the facade.

Near Field Communication

Secure Payment System for Mobile Phones

Ability for operators to begin to offer micro payment systems. Emergence of the keyless building.

WiMAX

Metropolitan wireless internet coverage

Changing nature of the high street and urban plan.

Smart surfaces

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

TRANSPORT Commuting is one of the most challenging social behaviours associated with work. Affecting worklife balance, productivity (downtime) and urban planning and infrastructure, it consumes an average of 80 minutes a day worldwide according to figures from the Universities of Sheffield and Michigan. In Thailand, the country with the longest commuting times in the world, a total of 37 million hours is spent travelling to work everyday. And in Bangkok, the average travel speed during the peak rush hour is now just 7 miles per hour. But current transport planning in most major cities still correlates transport growth to economic growth. Massive investment plans at best aim to keep corridors at their current stress levels. For example, in the current London plan, population is forecast to increase to 9.1m by 2031, with employment increasing from 4.7m to 5.3m jobs. A predicted 475,000 new jobs in business and financial services will be created.

These numbers and forecasts point to a transport infrastructure at breaking point, at capacity, with only expensive options available to it for expansion and growth. And this situation is repeated in most other developed urban areas around the world. Our motorways (freeways) are not much better. Road delays from traffic jams or accidents have a huge and often unquantified economic impact. For example, it has been shown that a 13 minute holdup on the M25 motorway (freeway) in the UK following an accident equates to 18 driver days lost. But what if distributed working changed patterns of commuting and so use of transport infrastructure? Can commuting patterns be changed? Could the 1/3 of inhabitants of ‘outer London’ that commute into the centre each day instead, work locally in their community – at least for a part of the working day?

According to Michele Dix, Managing Director of Transport for London, an expansion of transport capacity by 20-30% into central London is required. For example, Crossrail will move 1.5m more people. But even with all the proposed investment, she predicts, “most corridors are stressed and will continue to be.” Taking a capital city such as London, 24 million trips are made every day, 3 million people use the tube each day, there are 11 million car and motorcycle trips a day and 9.5 million people walk or cycle. A staggering 2 billion bus journeys are made each year.

AVERAGE GLOBAL COMMUTE TIMES (ONE WAY)

Source: SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

SUSTAINABILITY While not all companies are taking climate change seriously, financial necessity is increasingly driving action in today’s corporations, backed by changes in government legislation. Companies and organisations are increasingly being obliged to measure and publicly disclose and report their energy use and related emissions. In time, there will be penalties for not doing so. The UK government is already taking action. Under the latest Climate Change Act, the UK has targets to cut emissions by 34% and to increase the amount of renewable electricity on the grid to 15%, both by 2020 – a tall order when one considers that renewable energy currently accounts for just under 5% of energy production in this country. But a raft of legislation is being implemented to help the country achieve its goal. Emissions from buildings are responsible for 40% of all global emissions according to research from McKinsey and up to 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions in our cities and towns. In the UK, it’s accepted that 50% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions are associated with buildings, which means that it’s becoming critical that buildings, facilities management operations and workstyles begin to address the issue. Obviously one of the key carbon/energy solutions for buildings, especially in the commercial sector, lies in lighting and temperature controls, as well as the technology that enables companies to track what’s happening in their buildings. Concepts such as advanced integrated wireless lighting control systems mean that lights switch off when a room is empty, temperature controls respond to real-time weather conditions, positioning blinds where they’re needed to provide optimum light and shade – these help ensure energy is only used when and where needed and won’t compromise the comfort of the building’s inhabitants. These building management systems (BMS), when working together with a network of sensors, can manage lights, heat, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, fire safety and security

“The most sustainable office is the one you don’t have”

equipment and even communication networks. According to McKinsey research, in the US alone using such tools could cut the commercial-building sector’s energy bill, and associated emissions, by nearly 30% a year. Globally, smart buildings could cut emissions by 1.68 metric gigatonnes a year. There is a raft of government legislation being put in place to encourage efficiency in real estate. One of the most important of these in the UK is the Carbon Reduction Commitment, due to come into effect in April 2010. It will initially target around 5,000 UK businesses which each consume over 6,000MWh of electricity every year. Under the terms of the proposals each affected firm will be expected to reduce their energy consumption – and therefore their emissions – against a set baseline. The government has already said it is likely to increase the reach of the proposals to cover around 20,000 companies in the not too distant future. While a requirement to cut energy use will help drive change, it is also evident that new workstyles can also generate significant savings. Laptop use reduced carbon at Macquarie Group by an estimated 8,000 tonnes. And many new ways of working programmes can result in a dramatic reduction of real estate leased or occupied. A 30% reduction of floor space creates a 30% reduction in carbon emissions. Innovation in workstyles can also have further impacts. A move to mobility requires new technology platforms, and many organisations take the opportunity to migrate to web based systems, data centres or cloud computing. This takes technology infrastructure out of buildings, into purpose built data centres that cool servers more efficiently. Without technology infrastructure in buildings, the power and cooling requirements can be dramatically reduced, creating a greener building.

“More and more companies and employees want to be good corporate citizens and this may result in less car commuting for individuals. Therefore, I can envisage that you’ll go to a local drop down for corporate services and connect to the company network from there”

Barry Varcoe, Royal Bank of Scotland

Mark Tamburro, Nokia

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

SIX PACK – FIT FOR BUSINESS? The six forces identified that are reshaping business can be applied to make an organisation more efficient, lean and fit. They can become catalysts that accelerate a change process that develops the corporate ‘six pack’ – an organisation that occupies perhaps 30% less property, with corresponding reductions in capex. An organisation where ‘churn costs’ are close to zero and where technology infrastructure migrates to the cloud. And the most striking realisation that fit organisations are stating is that they believe that they can grow out of recession without taking on more real estate. For the first time economic growth and expansion in head count may not result in expansion in floor space.

“fit organisations are stating that they believe that they can grow out of recession without taking on more real estate”

Actions for achieving a corporate ‘six pack’: 1

Real Estate

Culture

Introduce change management to prepare people for new workstyles. Move from management by supervision to a results based approach. Identify champions for innovation and change.

People

Technology

Identify key drivers and enablers of change. Then align technology to the real estate strategy and introduce the appropriate tools for new workstyles.

Transport

Realisation that continued stress in transport corridors will require a new approach to commuting and mobility, and the adoption of polycentric thinking.

Sustainability

Reduced quantity of commercial real estate leased, together with better management of property assets, reduced commuting and greener technology will allow targets to be met.

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

CONCLUSIONS ACTIVITY BASED WORKING (ABW) The logical conclusion of the trends presented in this report is the wide scale adoption of activity based working, both inside and outside the corporate building. Enabled by the technology that has been described, people will increasingly be able to choose where to work.

Colin King from Nokia goes on to say that: “A Corporate Real Estate head needs to create a Real Estate plan that:

Heating, cooling and lighting half empty buildings will become a redundant concept as property is utilised efficiently, minimising emissions but also improving performance, not just of buildings but for people. An energised, dynamic workplace is a busy, utilised space – and not one where half the desks and offices lie empty. ABW will create the experience inside buildings of using specialist spaces for specific tasks and providing people with the tools as well as the cultural and behavioural norms to adopt distributed working. This will create a new mix of space in an increasingly permeable city that people will be familiar with; a combination of ‘third space’, home working and other mobile solutions such as working from clients’ premises. Multiple locations, some leased or owned by a company, but most shared or public will begin to remove risk for businesses. Workspace will increasingly be just another ‘on-demand’ service, adopting many of the characteristics of software as it also becomes another utility. Software as a Service (SaaS) is set to change the face of computing as people use what they need, when and pay by the minute. Workplace as a Service (WaaS) should follow the same model.

•

Is organisationally change proof –based on key activities and capabilities not current organisational structures

•

Supports the business strategy in optimal way

•

Optimises the cost of location portfolio

•

Fosters company culture, spirit and engagement – aligned with ways of working/co-location/presence in the office

•

Offers flexibility and scalability

•

Ensures best talent supply and attraction for key capabilities

•

Creates a competitive advantage over competitors - Innovation factor - Cost factor

There will be range of product and services that a MNC will need to consider in arriving at the right value offering for their people.”

These solutions and approaches de risk real estate and provide ‘flex’ for businesses that need to be as ‘nimble’ as possible. And this polycentric approach to work is set to grow.

“You have to have a spread across multiple locations to de risk the business model.” Colin King, Nokia

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

INNOVATION AT WORK

FLEXING SPACE

With the forecast adoption of activity based working, mobility and distributed working, there are far too few places to work from outside the corporate office or the home. The experience of working in a café or coffee shop is challenging – no where to plug in for power, poor acoustics and no way to print. And so we predict a huge growth in third space, especially in new destinations and the peripheries of cities, transport hubs and neighbourhoods.

One of the clear trends is that there are never enough meeting rooms in today’s corporate office. Research has found that corporate decision making is being slowed down by a lack of available spaces for executives to meet. And as well as meeting rooms being at a premium, project space is normally all but non-existent.

“In the future I see a ring of peripheral drop in spaces. But do they need to be 5*?” explains Simon Ward at Barclays. And the current range of ‘serviced offices’ on offer may not yet be the correct match for an increasingly mobile workforce. As Chris Hood from Hewlett Packard observes about ‘serviced office space’ today, “design can make a difference; it does not need to be expensive, but creative. Make it a place I really want to go.” Someone needs to bring into the market an environment that is lighter and cooler – not invest so much. So the next generation of third space will need innovation to get the positioning right for a large mobile workforce and not just transient executives. A third space model also needs to move away from the idea that companies want to either hire desks or meeting rooms only. “The idea of hiring a desk in a private office for a day does not ring right. I prefer to sit in a coffee shop and work. People need a technology capability that they can’t get anywhere else - for example Halo (advanced video conferencing)”, says Chris Hood at Hewlett Packard.

One vision for the future is the co-location of a corporate office with a serviced office or ‘meeting hotel’. The ability for an outside operator to offer flex for a company, with the benefits of co-location are obvious. “There is value in Regus becoming a permanent feature in every development,” says a Head of Real Estate at a FTSE 100 company. This would allow the corporate to focus on its core workspace, and all specialist and shared services could then be provided by an external partner, from meeting and project spaces to video conferencing and high end collaboration space. As one Global Head of Real Estate reinforces, “If we were able to use specialised environments which demand intensive capital investment ‘on demand’, provided by a specialist operator and shared with other organizations, this would be very interesting.”

What began as a solution for small and start-up businesses and a provision of temporary and overflow space solutions is now maturing to become a part of real estate strategy for major corporate and a central part of a distributed working model.

“In the future I see a ring of peripheral drop in spaces. But do they need to be 5*?” Simon Ward, Barclays

“There is value in Regus becoming a permanent feature in every development.” Head of Workplace, Global Technology Company

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“Make sure spaces have video – that’s what its all about. We don’t do any conference calls webinars with a camera.” Head of Workplace, Global Technology Company

AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

WHERE NEXT? The 6 forces represent the ability for a point of inflexion for work and the workplace. A change so fundamental that the very basis for how and where people work will be challenged.

compasses and accelerometers. The next wave of technology will introduce ‘geo-presence’ – knowing where people are in real time, inside and outside buildings, and what their current status is…“we should use technology to tell you where you can work.” says Colin King at Nokia. And the combination of geo-presence, augmented reality (AR) and a host of other new applications will begin to remove some of the boundaries and challenges of place-independent working – finding a nearby place to work, feeling belonging, connecting with colleagues, knowing where people are – and trusting that they are actually working when they are not being ‘watched’.

The imperative for such radical change will surely come from sustainability – our current model of work is clearly unsustainable. But it will also be driven by demographics, as the millennials and the ‘net generation’ yet to graduate shift expectations and employers react to attract and retain talent. Transport in cities will drive people to find alternatives as urban environments become increasing immobile, and legislation will also drive change, from working hours to taxes on business inefficiency (for example in CO2 emissions).

Development of new concepts to accommodate an increasingly footloose workforce will be essential, especially as these behaviours are adopted by new job functions, not used to flexibility. “The model needs to continue to be fine tuned and tested,” says Chris Hood at Hewlett Packard.

Technology will have its part to play, as catalyst and driver of change, but also as enabler of forces and trends in mobile working, collaboration and teaming that are already emerging. Management culture and change will be, as always, two of the biggest hurdles to overcome. But reducing the cost of real estate or ‘occupancy’ will be seen to be a clear win-win, as new work styles change the cost base for doing business.

“It can only get better – more and more people will move to distributed working,” predicts Chris Kane (BBC Workplace) and this vision we believe will set the agenda for work and patterns of use of the city and its myriad of workspaces over the next decade.

Innovation will be everywhere. Mobile devices not only have global positioning systems (GPS) built in but, now, also digital

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

APPENDICES Our Research Thanks

John de Lucy Chris Hood Daniel Johnson Ronen Journo Chris Kane John Killey Colin King Richard Paver Mark Tamburro Barry Varcoe Simon Ward

The British Library HP Accenture Cisco BBC Citigroup Nokia BP Nokia Royal Bank of Scotland Barclays

Head of Estates Head of Workplace Global Director, CRE Workplace Head of Workplace EMEA Head of Workplace Managing Director Citi Realty Services Global Head Real Estate Global Head of Real Estate Global Head Real Estate Head of Workplace Global Head Real Estate

About the Authors Philip Ross

Mark Dixon

Philip is CEO of the Cordless Group, specialists in the impact of emerging technology on people and their behaviour in the built environment.

Chief executive and founder, Mark Dixon is one of Europe’s bestknown entrepreneurs. Since founding Regus in Brussels, Belgium in 1989, he has achieved a formidable reputation for leadership and innovation. Prior to Regus he established businesses in the retail and wholesale food industry. Recipient of several awards for enterprise, Dixon has revolutionised the way business approaches its property needs with his vision of the future of work.

He has worked with organisations such as Ernst & Young, Allen & Overy, GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco, McKinsey & Co, Nottingham City Council, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Royal Bank of Scotland, Jones Lang LaSalle and Ericsson on future concepts based on emerging technologies. Philip has spoken at conferences around the world including the Wall Street Journal Europe CEO Forum on Converging Technologies, alt. office in the USA and Corenet’s Global Summits in Beijing, Auckland, Orlando, San Diego and Melbourne. In 1994 he wrote and published The Cordless Office Report and founded Cordless Group. He has written three books on the future of cities, work and workplace: The Creative Office, The 21st Century Office and Space to Work (all co-authored with Jeremy Myerson). He has also contributed to a number of other books including the Corporate Fool and the Responsible Workplace.

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AGILITY @ Work

The impact of six forces on the way we work

About Unwired

About Regus

work • workplace • technology • innovation

The Regus Group (LSE:RGU) is the world’s leading global provider of innovative workspace solutions, with products and services ranging from fully equipped offices to professional meeting rooms, business lounges and the world’s largest network of video communication studios. Regus delivers a new way to work, whether it’s from home, on the road or from an office. Clients such as Google, GlaxoSmithKline, and Nokia join thousands of growing small and medium businesses that benefit from outsourcing their office and workplace needs to Regus, allowing them to focus on their core business.

Unwired is a specialist in the future of work. Through research, forecasting, publishing and events it predicts the way that our a patterns of work will change as a result of political, socioeconomic and technological trends. Unwired was founded in 1996, and has published over 50 research reports, including Creative Places for the BBC, the New Millennials for Nokia and Rio Tinto and Workplace Sustainability.

Over 500,000 clients a day benefit from Regus facilities spread across a global footprint of 1,000 locations in 450 cities and 78 countries, which allow individuals and companies to work wherever, however and whenever they want to.

Its events include the WorkTech conferences held in London, New York, Shanghai and Amsterdam. For further information visit: www.unwired.eu.com

For more information please visit: www.regus.co.uk

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