We spend more and more time working. For thousands of people, the office is a place where they spend more time than in their own homes. At the same time, it has ceased to be a space limited by four walls and has come to exist wherever company employees are: in their homes, at clients’ premises, in cars, and in hundreds of other places around the world. How will we work in 10 years? Will we be connected by the internet, and will we know the faces of our colleagues only from photos and video conferences?
The Institute of Directors (ID), an organization bringing together about 55,000 managing directors of enterprises around the world, is trying to answer these and other questions. Together with OKI Printing Solutions (a company providing products and solutions in the field of business printing), the ID
has prepared a report on the office of the future. The authors of the report invited European experts in communication and organizational behavior, new technologies, and interior architecture to participate in the discussion. As they say, by combining knowledge from the fields of psychosociology and ergonomics with new
technologies, it is possible to increase work efficiency in offices. A friendly office = a mobile office. Organizations have a geographically dispersed structure because they work for clients located in different places. Wireless LANs are becoming increasingly common, allowing them to maintain connectivity outside the company headquarters. Wireless Wi-Fi, UMTS, or GPRS networks, enabling access to office applications at home and on the highway, support the development of telework. Many organizations are introducing so-called teleworking days for their employees.
During this day, they can perform their tasks at home. According to data from the German Empiria Institute in Bonn, at the end of 2002, 20 million people were teleworking
the end of 1999. Increasingly sophisticated security systems have made companies less afraid of providing mobile employees with access to corporate networks, although the lack of security is one of the most frequently cited barriers to the development of mobile technologies. Despite enormous technological progress, offices will not disappear from the face of the
Earth in the coming decades. For one simple reason.
However, by 2015, the centralized, inefficient, and expensive office culture will disappear.