The Leader - September/October 2008 - (Page 30) th e fu tu r e o f the W o rkp lace : W hat’ s Ne xt I s he re n Regional meeting places will be developed to enable social interaction n The house will become both the home and the workplace; improving quality of life n New and improved street-scape office designs will incorporate cafes, shops, offices, lounges and the availability of live information n Metaphorically, the workplace will be located on a Caribbean beach as remote working becomes widely accepted n There will be fewer large and more distributed facilities that will have less reliance on active systems n People will be able to choose when, where and how they want to work n The workspace will be shaped by its users with management, facilities management and real estate n Workspaces will be adapted to suit a wide range of threats and opportunities n Increasing cultural references, further branding and information content will be placed within the workplace n Every person will be treated equally when it comes to getting a job, advancing in their career, and being treated fairly in the workplace n Responsibilities relating to IT or telecom servicing will increase as the remote worker becomes increasingly popular and the traditional office becomes a thing of the past n Workplaces will depend on renewable energies However, the challenges facing the facilities management industry today, that would make it difficult to achieve this workplace prospective, are most obviously: n Positioning and response of the workers to behavioral change n n n n n n n n n n n n n n Adapting to the global variation of workplace locations Supporting a globally fragmented client and user base with greater individuality of needs and services Initiating cultural change within a profession to expand the remit of the facilities management (FM) discipline in order to become community inclusive Promoting dialogue across corporate departments Aligning FM and strategic visions Defining the nature of facilities management for the future Balancing the dynamics between command and control vs. individualism Integrating education, research and best practice into the FM sector Incorporating innovation and development within service activities Facilities managers actively listening and entering into dialogue with users instead of blindly obeying the corporate machine Aligning migration patterns, the changing market and the work force Imposing legislative restrictions on extensive commuting and business travel Expanding thinking, for example, to network environments Exploring how the extended workplace promotes and supports creativity The scenario logics are based around four parameters: n A high economic growth n A low economic growth n A focus on collaboration n A focus on Competition – a competitive advantage Jazz will occur in a very dynamic market controlled by a large number of entrepreneurs – a high competitive environment, made of entrepreneurs, and a high economic growth, where the market is buoyant. Jazz is driven by the power of the network society we currently see emerging with the exponential rise of the cyber world. Wise Counsels is more where the workplace supports teams of knowledge workers creating communities. The workplace is a community. Wise Counsels is focused towards a knowledge economy and is one of the most likely scenarios. It will appear in an environment where employees still rely on the concept of corporation to support their work. Dantesque is much more conservative in its framework and in a low economic growth environment, where the increasing threats of terrorism, healthcare problems and corporate attacks drove corporation in ghettos and isolation. We are destined to work in different working environment as we know them today. We have been talking about the death of the office for more than a decade, but it is still there and very much in the form and shape we have known it since the post war. But what we see emerging are opportunities to create different working environments, mainly driven by our new ways of working. A mixture of Jazz, Dantesque and Wise Counsels is probably the most movING forWarD In order to accomplish goals and objectives of the organization, challenges and threats must be overcome. In doing so, organizations must mobilize joint actions towards their specific prospective. Consequently, policy fields and action agendas are considered briefly here (see Figure 1). 2 0 0 8 th e le aDe r 30 septemBer / octoBer
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