Subscribing to the future of work
By Te Ari Prendergast. This article was first published in The Press on the 30th of September.
Te Ari is an Architectural Graduate at Chow:Hill specialised in Indigenous Health and Education Design. Te Ari is of Ngāi Tahu descent and worked on the Christchurch rebuild on behalf of his iwi.
As Cantabrians, we have proven ourselves to be resilient in the face of catastrophic change. Much of our city is being rebuilt with greater structural resilience, allowing businesses to return to the central city. However, there is a new wave of change coming that is set to disrupt the future of business and places of work.
These changes are being driven by a new workforce, immersed in new technologies and looking for new ways of working and connecting. The millennial workforce exists in an environment where old jobs are being replaced by technology and new fields of industry are emerging, thus creating an atmosphere of constant change.
This emerging workforce opt for flexibility in how and where they work and search for fulfilling work consistent with their core values. Being globally connected, they want their work to have a positive impact on the world.
This new way of working is set to revolutionise professions such as the manufacturing and agricultural industries. Smart technologies can perform much of the mundane and repetitive tasks to a greater efficiency and accuracy and free up time for more creative and thought provoking activities.
However these basic duties are also where young professionals ‘cut their teeth’ early in their careers.
New pedagogies in education are also driving changes for the future workforce and office structure. Universities are now providing flexible learning environments focused around collaborative spaces and developing innovation around problem solving. Students currently choose when, where and how they study and may be disheartened when they enter into structured and inflexible offices. Likewise, entry-level positions that are replaced by smart technologies will no longer exist so many graduates may opt to take an entrepreneurial route.
The revolution will not only change daily practice but also affect the core traditions of longstanding professions.
Shared workspaces provide a platform for entrepreneurs looking for flexibility but with the convenience of a larger office and the opportunity to work with like minds. Often the designers of shared workspaces are also users themselves and their designs and inspiration are drawn from their own experiences. Sensors obtain raw data and analyse and compare it with user experience to understand the dynamics of office performance. This data is increasingly being used to not only influence future designs of workspaces but also allow existing offices to evolve spatially. The shared office format is predicated on the ability to adapt to its users’ needs.
In an environment of constant change these types of workspaces could dominate; we are already seeing larger companies opting to for a shared workspace format rather than leasing new offices.
Increasingly work is an intensive collaborative session involving small teams focused on idea generation. Smart machines take a supporting role, to develop ideas further into products for the market. In buildings that are integrated with smart devices, the need for individual workstations is removed, allowing for flexible modules to accommodate any work activity. Offices increasingly operate 24/7 to allow for collaboration across time zones and with a globally mobile workforce ‘the office’ now travels with the employee wherever they go.
In Christchurch following the earthquakes, many businesses worked from makeshift offices in homes and cafes out of necessity. Through this experience some businesses adapted to this lifestyle and have opted not go back to a conventional office.
Pre-quakes office space availability was scarce and office space is now being filled by companies working on the rebuild. So what happens when the rebuild work slowly dries up, technology takes the place of employees, and the companies that used to operate from the city have now chosen a new model of work?
The future workspace will need to offer something that people cannot get elsewhere; an opportunity to increase their productivity, quality of work and improve their networks within an environment that promotes peak performance.
Research into brain-degenerative diseases has identified ways to increase cognitive function and these findings could form the basis of the new office by incorporating intensive exercise, tailored supplements, meditation, intermittent fasting, daylight and social interaction, into the daily work regime. The future office then becomes a facility providing an environment that promotes these elements that result in high cognitive performance, rather than just a place to put your desk.
The conventional office, that is focused on efficiency through specialisation and repetition, is set to be surpassed by a workplace that promotes a transferable efficiency and robustness to thrive in an environment of constant and rapid change.
An analogy of this evolution can be seen in the disruption of the conventional gym that is focused on repetitive exercises being surpassed by CrossFit, which focuses on constantly varied functional movements to build a robust and broad form of fitness to excel at any given physical task.
This robustness and ability to change as traditional industries shift and new ones are created will be critical for commercial survival. The spaces we create today need to allow for this evolution, not only important for commercial success but also for the betterment of society. As the exponential growth and abundance of limitless technology in the near future will be paralleled by the breadth and scale of the challenges we will face.
By partnering with technology we will hopefully have the necessary time and resources to focus on the real issues facing our planet.
