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This report identifies the three Vs: Virtual, adVantage and Value that will define the benefits of agile working as it emerges over the next decade. As the concept of ‘virtuality’ gains ground, monetizing agility and creating a robust business case for changing the way we work will become essential. Winning strategies at work is all about success. And this success is for both employer and employee as the concept of VWork delivers dividends in a number of areas. Find out more about Regus: http://www.regus.com/?utm_campaign=slideshare View the VWork launch presentation: http://slidesha.re/jOqU9r It was given at WorkTech New York on May 18, 2011 by Bob Gaudreau, Executive Vice-President Sales & Marketing at Regus.
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A Research Study by Mark Dixon and Philip Ross May 2011 Measuring the benefits of agility at work Virtual adVantage Value
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Page 1: VWork: Measuring the benefits of agility at work - Full Report

A Research Studyby Mark Dixon and Philip Ross

May 2011

Measuring the benefits of agility at work

Virt

ual

adVa

ntag

e

Valu

e

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© Unwired Ventures Ltd, 2011 All Rights Reserved 1VWork: Measuring the benefits of agility at work

CONTENTS

V1.1 Executive Summary

V1.2 Introduction

V1.3 V is for Virtual

V1.4 Collaboration

V1.5 adVantage: the business Drivers that will change the way your organisation works

V1.6 Value: Monetising Agility

Case Studies

Conclusions

Appendix

2

3

4

9

12

14

18

19

20

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V1.1 Executive Summary

This report identifies the three Vs: Virtual, adVantage and Value that will define the benefits of agile working as it emerges over the next decade. As the concept of ‘virtuality’ gains ground, monetising agility and creating a robust business case for changing the way we work will become essential. Winning strategies at work is all about success. And this success is for both employer and employee as the concept of VWork delivers dividends in a number of areas.

‘New ways of working’ are already being put in place. In our survey only 8.5% of respondents from large organisations reported that no programme was in place. Of large enterprises surveyed, 62.5% have already rolled out new ways of working.

Much has been written about virtual working over the last few decades. The traditional definition of telecommuting or home working and its predicted rise has not materialised. Our survey found that only 1.6% of people who work for large employers work from home – most (63.5%) still commute to an office four or five days each week. But interestingly, only 9.7% of people in these organisations would like to work from home. The preference is for local work, within a 10-minute commute from home.

As cities become increasingly immobile, we predict a rise in a ‘permeable’ city where people will work from a variety of locations. Our survey found that people were ready for nomadic work, with 59% saying they now had the right technology tools to work anywhere.

Virtual work is a response to these pressures. It challenges the traditional fixed workplace as the container for work, and instead paints a more eclectic picture of ‘Martini’ work: anytime, anyplace, anywhere; a fragmentation of the rules of office and corporate life that will be mirrored by a growth in distributed work, both through outsourcing and collaborative work-styles.

What is clear is that there is an expectation that the younger workers, the millennial generation and those still at school, will embrace virtual working and reject the traditional office. Of our respondents in large employers, 74% expected this to be the case, and so it is no surprise that 71.9% of them predicted a decrease in the amount of office space that will be required. They see the office as a place for occasional use (51.2%) and would prefer a much shorter commute to an office – under 20 minutes compared with over 40 today.

Business benefits that can provide competitive, cost or other adVantage show that the primary driver for change is people’s productivity. AdVantages vary by size of company, but a clear focus on reducing the cost of real estate for the organisation and improving work/life balance for the employee were evident in our survey results.

Placing a value on agility is one of the objectives of this research. With a move towards virtuality, the traditional approach of measuring workplace performance in £ or $ per square foot or the ratio of desks to people becomes irrelevant. Instead, we adopt a people-centric approach that also mirrors the idea of internet-centric computing in a ‘buy your own’ world. Providing real time, on demand services for work, and a cost per capita per month for work ‘provision’, gives us a new way of understanding the costs of doing business as well as demonstrating and monetising the benefits.

Case studies from early adopters of more virtual approaches to work, from Yell to Boeing and Cisco all paint a picture of significant cost savings and clear business benefits. We see three key stages to becoming virtual, starting with a convergence of the ‘real’, followed by a move to an augmented reality and finally a shift to virtual reality.

Virtual work, VWork, will be a fact of life for most people as social networking collides with the physical workplace to blur the boundaries. As inter-company collaboration becomes more prevalent, as work gets distributed to lower cost centres and as our towns and cities become more and more immobile, people will begin to look for and adopt new approaches.

Organisations need a plan to embrace winning strategies at work.

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© Unwired Ventures Ltd, 2011 All Rights Reserved 3VWork: Measuring the benefits of agility at work

V1.2 Introduction

In our previous report, Agility @ Work (published March 2010), we identified the six forces that were shaping the future of work and presented some ideas for how companies could adopt the ‘corporate six pack’ to get fit for business.

Now we take the ideas forward in VWork: Measuring the benefits of agility at work by presenting the idea of the 3Vs that help establish a measure for monetising agility at work.

These ideas have not been developed in a vacuum. We have worked with some of the world’s leading companies to understand their issues, objectives and business drivers. We have also analysed some of the key trends that will shape virtual work. Rather than the previous debate about homeworking or telecommuting, our view of virtual work looks at mobility and the changing nature of where and when work is done.

The core business advantages of this approach to agile work are defined, and as a result we have monetised agility and presented the idea of an Agility Dividend that lets an organisation measure and quantify the impact that agile work can have on the bottom line.

Agility has become mainstream as a way of working. But people have struggled to define a value for corporate agility. This report sets out to guide people on that journey.

1 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.

2 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.

3 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.

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

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

6 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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V1.3 V is for Virtual

The History of Virtual Work

In 1964 when Stephanie ‘Steve’ Shirley founded F International (FI) she could not have predicted that it would become one of the first major virtual businesses. By 1985 FI had over 1,000 workers and was winning accolades and awards. Twenty-five years later in 1987, Francis Kinsman’s book The Telecommutersi described the growth of FI and other innovative companies such as ICI and Rank Xerox.

As Kinsman said at the time: “ICI is now making dramatically increasing use of bleepers and cellular radio throughout its operations.” It is hard to remember, but in 1987, the UK had only 160,000 mobile phone subscribers and was seen as a leader in Europe against 13,000 users in France and 25,000 in Germany. Now in the UK, 33 million people have a mobile phone.

So, almost 25 years on from the publication of that book, in 2011 how much has changed? Why has the forecast revolution at work, where ‘20% of the workforce would work from home’, not materialised? The technology enablers back then were seen by Kinsman to be “the continuing miniaturisation of electronic equipment, especially fax; the encyclopedic memory of compact disks…”

But it is interesting that the other technology that ICI had in those early pioneering days is about to ‘arrive’. In 1987 Ken Edwards, part of ICI’s strategic IT department, commented that 100 sales managers and 700 of their 900 sales staff had electronic mail facilities. “The sales managers have dumb terminals accessed directly into the mainframe… the sales reps have videotext viewdata equipment which transmits information to and from the local centre.”

A possible explanation for the slow realisation of ‘telecommuting’ is that it is not about home working. While the home features in people’s ‘workspheres’, it is only one of a number of places where people want to work. A more persuasive explanation was that 25 years ago technology was just not ready.

In effect, ICI was using cloud-based technologies. Information was delivered to users from remote data centres. It has taken 25 years for the complex, office based, networked personal computer era to come to the end of its natural life. Now, in the age of Web 2.0, we are heading back to the future.

Becoming Virtual

In their book, Becoming Virtualii, Jane Klobas and Paul Jackson describe a “growing diversity of organisational form as organisations use new technologies to reconfigure work, distributing it more than ever across distant locations, different time zones and even diverse organisations.” They go on to identify that: “the world is said to be increasingly ‘virtual’, a condition in which organisational solidity is only apparent: the reality is one of high performing, dynamic networks which connect staff, enterprises, processes and expertise, where the drive to produce or compete has displaced the need for permanency and structure.”

“That long standing symbol of the business world, the Corporate HQ, will soon be no more. The days of an all-powerful, single location, world headquarters are numbered,” says Anil Gupta, professor of strategy & organisation at the Smith School of Business at The University of Maryland. “The concept of a corporate HQ will change from a physical location to a virtual network.”

So the ultimate symbol of solidity, the corporate office, is therefore under attack. The economics of the office are being redefined. As we have seen, the early experiments of telework have evolved into new formats for the firm. They include virtual teams that use new ways to connect, communicate and collaborate; mobile workers that no longer need a fixed desk and a growing virtual supply chain of outsourced functions that are provided by specialists to allow the corporation to focus on its core business.

As Gupta notes: “The next generation of global enterprise will operate as a network of global hubs with distributed intelligence and direct peer-to-peer collaboration. Key executives will sit close to where the action is, rather than in an ivory tower 10,000 miles away.”

The next obvious iteration will be an increasingly virtual organisation, following the trend of social networks, to weave together a ‘networked enterprise’.

“Technology, and how technology can support the workforce is key to

the successful implementation of agile working.”

Patrick Foord, Standard Chartered

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Virtual Work

There is no doubt that joined-up thinking between Human Resources (HR), Information Technology (IT) and Corporate Real Estate (CRE) functions within the organisation will drive cultural change.

But it is not just the collision between the traditional corporate silos to create central business services functions, but the innovation that can come through changing the way we work that will result in a new approach. And it is where the realms overlap that the key for innovation lies, as companies understand they can change infrastructure, behaviours and core business and work processes.

Companies moving towards virtuality display certain characteristics and have developed new skills and put in place enablers to succeed. These are both physical and emotional.

Enablers of Virtual Work

Technology The Right Tools User-centric technology provision

Going Thin All technology needs to migrate to the cloud – no infrastructure in the office

People Vision and leadership Commitment from the top and leading by example

Behaviour Change management to introduce new capabilities and skills, as well as performance measurement and mentoring

Process Non-linear, with tasks and responsibilities defined

Real Estate Location Work sphere identification, with ‘day in the life’ (DILO) modelling to match work with activities and personal profiles

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The virtual office: from noun to verb

Work is no longer a place you go. It is something you do. It has moved from being a noun to become a verb. And with this change has come a realisation that ‘Martini’ work is now a reality: anytime, anyplace, anywhere…

The changes that are reshaping work were identified in our previous report, Agility @ Work: adopting the corporate six pack. This demonstrated that the combined forces of culture, people, technology, transport, sustainability and real estate were converging to allow companies and their people to fundamentally re-evaluate the proposition of work and in turn challenge the nature of work and the workplace.

According to the United Nations, the world’s population will increase from around 6.5 billion people today to 9 billion people by 2050. And while today 3 billion people live in urban areas, by 2050 a staggering 6.5 billion people are forecast to become urban dwellers or two-thirds of the global population.

This will double the population of cities in the next 40 years. While we demonstrated in Agility @ Work that most cities were congested today, the growth predicted by the UN will not just exacerbate the congestion but make many cities immobile as transport growth cannot keep up with population growth.

What happens when a city becomes immobile? When it takes two hours to cross a central business district, physical meetings and commuting to a physical workplace are no longer sustainable modes for work.

But people are increasingly able to work from anywhere. In our survey, 59% of respondents said they no longer struggle to work effectively outside the workplace. Technology for remote connectivity and mobile working have at long last caught up – people are now enabled to be nomadic workers, and so the city will become more permeable, punctuated by a series of places to work.

And with emerging technology, this will only get better. New devices from tablets to smart phones will allow enhanced computing power, and connectivity is set to improve with new ‘4G’ networks that will deliver cloud-based applications and services to people regardless of their location.

Cultureworkstyle and flexible working

Peopledemographics, expectations and behaviour

TOTAL POPULATIONRURAL POPULATIONURBAN POPULATION

9 bn

01950

Source: United Nations20302010

Cultureworkstyle and flexible working

Peopledemographics, expectations and behaviour

Transport

CARBUSMETRONATIONAL RAILOTHER

Hour of departure

1.8m

1.0m

0

Num

ber

of jo

uney

sta

ges

Cultureworkstyle and flexible working

Peopledemographics, expectations and behaviour

Sustainability

ICTinformation,communication, webTransport

Real estate buildings, cities and work space

59% of people now feel that they have the right technology to be able to work from anywhere.

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Going Local

Commuting is not seen to be optimal today. Out of the respondents that worked for large organisations, 32.1% spent 41 minutes to an hour commuting every day and for 27.4% their daily commute was over an hour. And 47% still commute to the office five days a week – only 1.4% work from home.

These figures were more pronounced for medium sized companies where 67.3% of people still commute to an office five days a week, showing that ‘presenteeism’ was still the dominant management model for a smaller business.

But the reality of life today does not match people’s ideal. When asked what the ideal commuting time would look like, 25.2% would like to have a 10-minute commute and 38.4% would like it to be between 11 and 20 minutes. So 63.5% of people don’t want to commute for more than 20 minutes; a far cry from the average of 40 minutes today.

Interestingly, only 12.3% of people would like to work from home.

The future of work points to the community and a move away from central business districts as the place to try and commute to every day. A new set of ‘workspheres’ will include a range of new destinations for work that are close to where people live.

Localism will be a growing trend globally, as people seek to inject life into their communities and address in the impersonal through new networks in Web 2.0 big society. Intergenerational experiences in both work and home will change the nature of nurture.

A portfolio career will see human capital moving from the corporation to a focus on the individual. Atomisation will be countered in the ‘free agent nation’ by new ways of connecting and housing the ‘contingent workers’ that are forecast to comprise of 40% of the US workforce by 2020iii. A more fragmented, localised society will require new ways to connect.

HOME

TRANSPORT

OFFICE

The ideal commute to work is under 20 minutes (63.5%) with 25.2% of people wanting less than a 10 minute journey to work

REGUS

TRAINCAFE

PLANE

OFFICE

CAR

BUS LIBRARY

HOTEL

HOME

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Virtual Working

“One third of our UK staff has a boss overseas,” said Tim Caiger at Oracle, “everything is online”. And this trend towards remote management is no longer confined to the global multinationals. Offshoring and outsourcing has led many people to change their organisational models to reduce costs and improve effectiveness, from call centres in India to typing bureaus in South Africa, co-locating all functions inside the physical office is no longer the only way to provide support services and functions. The death of distance means that lower-cost centres of production are as connected as a department two floors below, and as interaction costs have vanished, the firm itself is being redefined.

The recent announcement by law firm CMS Cameron McKenna that it is outsourcing all of its support functions to Integreon, including finance and IT, is a sign of the changes that will undoubtedly affect all firms based in high cost central business districts. The argument for employing and housing hundreds or thousands of support staff in offices no longer has any economic rationale.

So the ‘Core’ and ‘Periphery’ or Shamrock organisation long predicted by Charles Handy in The Age of Unreasoniv and his identification of ‘portfolio workers’, are becoming reality on a huge scale in advanced, global companies.

What is clear is that to work virtually, people need new tools to collaborate. Sitting across the floor or popping up to HR on the third floor has to be replaced by new ways to connect people together.

Bricks and clicks

In our survey, 78.7% of people feel they now have the right technology to be productive in their workplace. Increasingly they are being given the technology enablers to be able to work from any-where. Of those working for large organisations, 50.8% are enabled with everything they need, while 42.6% have a few tools but ‘it could be better’. The barriers to agile working are now being removed.

Some of the earliest job functions to move virtual are service and knowledge

focused roles which place people ‘close’ to customers.

As Vito Chiodo at Telstra said, “We have to understand that all departments have different modes of operating. We need to

understand customers’ needs. We view each employee as a customer.”

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V1.4 Collaboration

As Patrick Foord said, we want to create an environment that supports “pathological collaboration”. And this is a recurrent theme as work becomes more distributed. Today we typically deal with single source information that is usually asynchronous. It is viewed and used ‘off line’, and typically it is ‘flat’ – what you see on screen can be output to paper. Tomorrow, people will use information in new ways; it will come from multiple sources that are typically synchronous, real time or ‘live’, streamed or delivered to new, always-on devices operating with multiple, simultaneous applications. ‘Digital flow’ will change the nature of the information presented as depth though urls, embedded multimedia and hover information means that what you see on screen can no longer be output to paper.

Today most collaboration takes place between people inside the organisation. Cisco estimates that 80% of collaboration is intra company. This will now change dramatically, with Cisco predicting this figure will reverse to where 80% of collaboration is inter company as people increasingly need to connect dispersed teams.

It’s clear there is a range of emerging technology that is set to change the landscape for how we work together both in the same place and across distance. These can all be seen as transformational technologies, because they have the potential to alter the nature of how, why and where we work.

Video

Video conferencing peaked too early. The adopters of the first systems complained of judder – making participants look and sound robotic. Creating the call was fraught with challenges, and the equipment occupied large, engineered, specialist rooms.

Now much has changed. The rise of high definition video-conferencing from the likes of Polycom, together with the high end fixed solutions such as Telepresence from Cisco and Halo from HP has resulted in a new era for video as the experience and quality of collaboration across distance becomes close to being in the same room at the same time.

Driven by travel savings, there has been a wide-scale adoption of video conferencing as companies realise they can connect to customers, the supply chain and colleagues across the globe and experience productive meetings and other sessions.

But the rise of video is not just about high-end video conferencing. The penetration of lower quality ‘web cams’ into portable devices such as laptops and mobile phones, as well as fixed PCs, has led to a

huge rise in the use of video for communication and collaboration. From systems such as Skype and FaceTime to corporate tools such as WebEx, people are now getting increasingly accustomed to seeing the person they are speaking to.

Cisco reports that 60% of the IP packets on their network are now video, and they predict that by 2012 video will account for most traffic on the public internet. This also represents the huge rise of video as a medium for communication. From the use of YouTube to video casts, people are increasingly familiar with its format and power.

“Beyond mobility, this issue of virtuality needs to be addressed..”

Ronen Journo, Cisco

Case study : Tesco

Tesco, for example, now has an 80 – 90% utilisation of their Telepresence systems and have embraced WebEx collaborative software. They have found that they are saving two hours per WebEx user per week and travel costs have been cut by 45%.

Polycom’s Roundtable video conferencing system provides people with effective tools to combat virtuality. The automated video image of participants in the conference, together with their jellybeans and collaborative workspace means that people can feel connected across distance.

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Mobility

There are a number of facets to mobility. The key is the combination of a portable device and high-speed connectivity. But the mobility roadmap becomes more overcast as cloud computing allows a new dimension to be realised. The delivery of software as a service (SaaS) from remote data centres is ideal for portable devices that have limitations in processing power, storage capacity and battery life. Processing that is done in the cloud leads to the concept of a thin client that can be used by anyone through a ‘virtualised desktop environment’. Indeed the concept of ‘virtualisation’ will apply across fixed and mobile devices, as more of the software needed for work is hosted remotely.

With these tools, and data hosted remotely, a new paradigm will emerge – when people come into a space or building they will do so because they need or want to be there. They will no longer have to ‘commute to a container for work’ because it houses the corporate computing infrastructure.

From Obese to Thin

As on-demand resources are delivered to people wherever they are and buildings no longer need to house the fixed server infrastructure and its associated power, cooling, raised floor and fire suppression systems, buildings will move from being highly engineered, expensive and complex containers for technology to simple, connected places to work. They will be ‘thin’, devoid of most of the paper and equipment that they contain today. Places for people and no longer repositories of files and servers.

Virtual presence, Web 2.0, Unified Communications… and the rise of the jelly bean

The web has moved from being about ‘find and use’ to a platform that also allows ‘share and expand’. This extension is a natural migration into the world of collaboration, and so much of the so-called semantic web is about shared experiences. As people realise the benefits and added value that comes from sharing, tagging and revealing location information, a new era of collaboration experiences will emerge.

One of the most profound changes that people will experience will be ubiquitous presence indicators – the so-called ‘jelly bean’ that will start appearing in almost all applications and on all devices. Corporate presence indicators such as ‘in a meeting’ or ‘out of the office’ appear today alongside names in address and buddy lists. Tomorrow they will appear within all applications alongside people’s details to allow a constant view of colleagues, clients and others in distributed networks.

And the intelligence will extend to a point where the jelly bean is automatically fed by calendars and, in the future, location aware sensors, accelerometers, digital compasses and GPS data from mobile devices.

Contextually aware, geographically located and state driven, these systems will begin to break down the barriers between time and place and also allow in the future the ‘engineering’ of serendipitous encounters based on people’s profile, contextual information and real time location.

We will see huge rises in collaboration across organisations as the barriers to secure inter company collaboration are lifted. Collaboration will increasingly use both voice and video, alongside intelligent surfaces and devices that allow people the tools to manipulate data and communicate ideas.

When NASA introduced the idea of ‘Clickworkers’ they extended their workforce to a network of volunteers that help identify craters on Mars. The growth of LinkedIn, Facebook and the other social networks extend the power of the physical into the megapower of the virtual, with its limitless boundaries to connect and collaborate. Clicks, and not bricks, will define the boundaries of commerce tomorrow.

Real time collaboration or co-authoring will begin to become commonplace, letting people work together across distance and connect in real time, with their ‘jelly bean’ visible at all times.

Source: Microsoft

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© Unwired Ventures Ltd, 2011 All Rights Reserved 11VWork: Measuring the benefits of agility at work

Geopresence will allow not just the state of a person to be displayed but their real time whereabouts as well. It will become even more sophisticated with context aware presence – an idea where only the people that it would be useful to see are displayed based on a project, knowledge or communications flow or time zone.

Today’s often disparate systems will converge and we predict that a unified communications and collaboration (UCC) suite will become the norm. The advance of corporate presence to include geopresence and context specific presence will usher in a new era of real time communities working on collective solutions – ‘collaboration without leaving the document.’

A Virtual Office?

“What is the purpose of property?” asked Ronen Journo. This is becoming a fundamental question as digital technology and the rise of cloud computing empty office buildings of everything except people. When the servers, software and data reside in the cloud, and computing is delivered as just another utility to people through a browser wherever they are, what is the purpose of the workplace?

Most retort that it is about bringing people together, but here there is a dilemma. One large multinational has found that by using web discussion forums rather than email to ask questions within a 100,000+ global workforce, half the respondents to a question posed came from people unknown to the person asking the question. And of all the answers back, the most useful came from those unknown respondents. So do we have the right people in the room to solve problems? Their findings would suggest not.

Social networks were unknown five years ago. Now they dominate the net, with Facebook boasting 500 million active users, half of which are using the social network every day. And with 700 billion minutes per month spent on Facebook, what happens when virtual networks collide with the real networks that are housed in the ‘workplace’?

The network map (above) may show a glimpse of the future. Here people are mapped by their email flow through an email exchange server to show who is connecting to who within a company – it models the ‘real’ organisational network, people at work, and not the hypothetical, static structure of departments and divisions. Perhaps this should be the model for understanding the ‘virtual office’, rather than translating an organisational chart into a ‘physical office’.

But while these thoughts point to the rise of virtual networks to replace the physical ones in the office, a new book by Stephen Johnson called Where Good Ideas Come Fromv contradicts this message. He traces innovation back for 200 years and finds that most of the significant inventions of the last two centuries have NOT come from flashes of inspiration but from communal, multilayered endeavour. “Innovation springs out of the ‘adjacent possible’ – the most inventive places are hives of activity where people get together and share ideas,” says Johnson. And so do people need to be together to innovate?

The mix between virtual and real ‘workspace’ will be one of the defining trends over the next decade as companies explore the future of work. Getting people to work effectively together will be the key critical success factor. Productivity of people will drive change.

Email tracking software can map a social network inside a business, showing the ‘real time’ organisation, modelling teams and ‘go to’ people.

Source: Trampoline Systems

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V1.5 adVantage: the business Drivers that will change the way your organisation works

A new measure for agility will come from quantifying the benefits that will be derived by the organisation from new workstyles and the business drivers of these were ranked in our global survey. “Agile working is not just about agile workers but agile business,” expressed a global real estate leader. The idea that agility at work

is much more than just a spatial response to changing workstyles is reflected in the results from the question: what do you think will drive changes in the way your organisation works?

Other measures suggested by respondents included:

Profitability Business requirements. You need clever office space

Physical and information security issues Proximity to our clients

Need for physical interaction Company culture

Regulation and security Need for interaction and exchange of ideas

Non-linear, with tasks and responsibilities defined Client expectations. Customer needs

Collaboration Cost of fuel

Managing by deliverables not ‘presenteeism’ Global nature of business

Attracting and retaining the right staff Top down requirement

What people want Collaboration and creativity

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One of the most important business drivers is clearly productivity of people and this was reinforced by some of the comments at the Berne Summit. As Patrick Foord expressed, “we need to extract maximum benefit from agility.”

But how can this be done?

“We are moving away from fixed location with an emphasis on measuring productivity. By this I mean managing teams with a focus on output, with work being carried out where, when and how people choose to work, as opposed to having staff in a fixed location at any given time,” explained Michael Ansah, and this focus on effectiveness is key.

The performance of people is still one of the most challenging concepts for measurement. But it is clear from surveys that most people are disengaged at work. Gallup’s employee engagement surveys suggest that only 20% of the workforce is engaged in the job they do.

It is becoming evident that the expectations of the next generation will change the status quo more dramatically than a current workforce, which is dominated by the digital immigrants who grew up in the analogue era.

Of the people we surveyed, a staggering 70.9% thought that younger workers, the millennial generation and the generation still at school, will be more accepting of virtual working and reject the traditional office. Of those working in large organisations, only 8.9% felt the next generation would carry on working in the workplace of today.

The key reasons stated for working virtually in other studies are:

1. Travel time and cost reduction

2. Concentrated work with fewer distractions

3. Wellbeing and stress

4. Work-Life balance and work anywhere.

Other reasons that are stated include child and elderly care, special needs and disabilities, sustainability and quality of life. The business benefits are clear.

End of the line for the traditional office?

Not surprisingly, 58.2% of people working in large organisations predict a decrease in the need for office space as a result of future workstyles, with only 7% predicting an increase in space required. So the office will become a place for occasional use according to 51.2% of respondents in large enterprise. This compares to smaller enterprises where people still see the need to commute to their workplace most days (41.6%).

We have also found that most large organisations have now adopted new ways of working. Only 38% still allocate one person to one desk, and 15.4% of companies represented by the survey report that their organisation’s new ways of working programme is now adopted, advanced and part of our culture, while 25.1% reported a companywide policy, ‘but we could be doing more’. Only 8.5% of large organisations have no new ways of working programme.

“Agility will explode when the next generation come into the workplace and we need to be

ready to ensure that these new members of the workforce can be truly creative and

productive”

Chris Kane, BBC

Only 8.5% of large organisations have not implemented a new ways of working programme.

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V1.6 Value: Monetising Agility

Putting a value on agile work is the next challenge for corporates. We need to find a new measure for the cost of ‘provisioning work’ that leaves behind the traditional approaches of rent and rates in a ‘per square foot’ fixed world.

As we move away from the historic one-person-one desk approach to work provision, new ways of measuring effectiveness of a property portfolio need to be developed. This becomes more apparent as people need new tools, technologies and locations for agile work patterns.

“At a very simple level, a clear case around monetising agility within the workspace can be made by taking into account the agility within the overall portfolio and at a site level in terms of how agile and effective is the workplace in meeting the needs of our employees,” said Colin King. “This will mean we have less space and our property commitments are flexible and fully aligned to the business objectives.”

But the reduction in space rented is only one way of monetising the value that can be delivered by agile working. To get a broader picture, we have identified a series of value dividends that shape a vision of ‘provisioning work’ in a ‘buy your own’ world…

Measuring Agility: Company ABC

Company ABC employs 1500 people and has an office in the City of London. It took out a 15 year lease on 150,000 square feet and the total cost of the building per annum is £12m or $20m (rent, rates, utilities, operations) and so the total cost per square foot per annum is £80 or $133. This has been the predominant model for measuring efficiency. Over the 15 years, the lease represents a £180m ($300m) liability or £120,000 ($200,000) per head.

But how is the office building used today?

Company ABC allocates space as follows:

The majority of floorspace is given over to allocated or shared workstations, with some private offices and associated facilities. What is striking about the current typical allocation of space is the lack of meeting and project rooms today – where almost all corporates report a dearth of this kind of resource in a world where collaboration is driving teams to need to work together.

But utilisation of an office today is typically only 45%; that is at any one point in time 55% of the allocated desks and offices lie empty. For Company ABC this would result in 825 desks sitting empty at any point in time.

“At a very simple level, a clear case around monetising agility within the workspace can be made by taking into account the agility within the overall portfolio.”

Colin King, GlaxoSmithKline

EMPTY

UNOCCUPIED

PAUSING

PAPERWORK

READNG

WRITING

TALKING

TELEPHONE

COMPUTER

MEETING

Time of day

100%

75%

50%

25%

0%

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But ABC is an advanced company and it has already introduced hot desking/desk sharing at a ratio of 1.2 people per desk (1.2:1). The building houses 1,150 desks, and so the cost per desk per annum is £10,500 ($17,500). At 45% utilisation, 632 desks lie empty and the cost of unused space is £6.6m ($10.8m) pa. Even if utilisation can be improved to an ambitious 70%, the cost of unused space on any one day is £3.6m pa ($6m) with an average of 345 empty desks or offices at any point in time.

Empty desks no longer make sense in a world where people will accept mobility and agility as the most effective and sustainable way of working.

But measurement of the benefits of agility is not just about footprint reduction and cost reduction through real estate.

Company ABC – Monetising Agility in an advanced organisation that already has adopted some space sharing

If we take a typical London office building of 150,000 square feet it would house 1,500 people today on a moderate sharing ratio of 1.2 people per desk (1.2:1). The total cost of the building per annum is £12m or $20m (rent, rates, utilities, operations) and so the cost per square foot per annum is £80 ($130).

The building houses 1,150 desks, and so the cost per desk per annum is £10,500 ($17,200)At 45% utilisation the cost of unused space is £6.6m ($11m)At 70% utilisation, the cost of unused space is £3.6m ($6m)The number of empty desks on any one day @ 45% utilisation is 632The number of empty desks on any one day @ 70% utilisation is 345

At a ration of 1.2:1 (people:desks) we find that space is allocated at 130 sq ft per desk (90 – 140 is the industry average) or 110 sq ft per person (70 - 120 sq ft per person is typical)

Adopting activity based working, where the building becomes a real time resource and operates either at 95% occupancy (to accommodate growth) or in 30% less space would save Company ABC between £3m ($5m) and £6m ($10m) pa.

Corporate Driver Agility Benefits and Cost Savings

Carbon footprint An obvious area for monetising agility – heating or cooling, lighting and cleaning empty office space can no longer be justified where commercial buildings are identified as one of the largest emitters of carbon.

Churn and down time The cost of churn is usually measured through the facilities cost of moves and changes but this masks the opportunity cost of inefficiency when people can’t be located together who need to work collaboratively.

Less paper – speed (collaboration), carbon, space (print/paper/toners/filing/recycling/waste), cost (print/support/maintenance)

Manufacturing paper, distributing paper, printing, storing and recycling – the total cost of ownership is significant. Agile work drives out paper, by adopting ‘digital flow’.

A retail bank in London prints over 1 billion sheets of paper a year. The average financial business outputs 70 pages per person per day. And storing paper files in Company ABC takes 4% of the floorspace and costs £0.5m pa.

M&A Mergers and Acquisitions bring immense integration problems, especially with diverse property portfolios. Agile working, with non-specific, unallocated ‘property resources’ allows much more flexibility in planning and speed in allocation of people and place.

Onboarding One of the biggest barriers to corporate agility remains onboarding, both of new people and new partners (eg outsourcing). Agility streamlines the process, removing ‘barriers to entry’ for new joiners and partners.

Project development time and delivery Speed will increasingly be seen as a core attribute of an agile business. ‘Fast Company’ behaviours are about being hybrid, nimble and able to innovate. Speed of decision-making, time to market and development cycles can all be accelerated through agile work.

Management complexity Another focus that has been raised is reducing complexity, especially in business services functions.

Other measures include:

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Evidently the ability to ‘free up space’ will still be the predominant driver to introduce agility into organisations. Disposals or sub-letting can generate cash receipts, remove leases from the balance sheet and also drive down opex. While property remains the second largest overhead for most organisations after salaries, this will be the most immediate focus for monetising agility.

A ‘buy your own’ world

In 2009, Citrix gave its staff the option to ‘buy your own computer’ or BYOC. A budget of $2,100 (£1,260) was made available for people to buy the computer of their choice. Mick Hollinson, vice-president of marketing, says not only has it cut costs, but also staff like the control. “Employees love having the freedom to choose whatever they like,” he says. “The reality is that there are a number of consumer devices that provide services that you just don’t see in a corporate laptop, and employees just enjoy their computing experience more.” (Staff taking advantage of the scheme must buy a three-year service contract.)

Kraft Foods is another early adopter of the concept. It announced its innovative BYOC program in 2010, which allows employees to purchase and use their computer of choice at work. The program benefits both the company — lower costs — and employees — more flexibility. ”Our Information Systems team is focused on providing the best work experience to all employees,” said Mark Dajani, senior vice president and chief information officer. “We want employees to be productive and comfortable with the tools they use every day to get their job done. So, if they prefer one laptop over the other, why not give them the freedom to customize their work experience?”

BYOC is a very agile approach and is becoming more accepted as the future for corporate technology provision in an internet-centric, cloud driven world. As Mick Hollinson says: “The device is their responsibility, and not that of the company. We don’t asset manage it in any way.” And he states that: “It’s shown on average savings of 15-20% versus a traditional desktop deployment.”

Could the same ‘buy your own’ approach apply to the workplace? Do corporates need their own office space in the future? Can people be provided with an annual budget to ‘provision work’ that includes technology, space and support as suits their job and objectives?

At Company ABC, the cost per person of providing workspace on the current model is £8,000 ($13,300) per person per year. If we take the annual cost of workspace provision per person as a measure of monetising agility at work, this aligns with the technology-led vision of BYOC. And so 1,875 people on current patterns of work can see the building as ‘home’ or 2,000 people with new enablers, activity based working and third space provision, which would give a cost of £6,000 ($10,000) per person per year for the provision of ‘workspheres’ in a ‘buy your own’ self-service world –a 25% bottom line saving. For companies less advanced, with a more traditional starting point, property-led cost savings of over 40% are achievable.

Monetising agility is about measuring the BYO cost per person. Just as the cloud will deliver communications software as a service for say £5 ($8) per user per month, so workplace could become an on-demand resource.

The monetisation of agility will go through a number of discrete phases for medium and larger enterprises, although smaller and start-up business will be able to leapfrog ahead. As a first stage, the traditional office today will be slimmed; fixed costs will be reduced through the adoption of activity-based working as a prelude to full agility, and so footprint reduction will reduce property overhead by up to 30%. Operation costs reduce, through

“Our Information Systems team is focused on providing the best work experience to all employees”

Mark Dajani, Kraft Foods

Monetising Agility moves the measure of costs per person from fixed bricks and mortar to the individual, and their overall work tools. It is ‘open source working’ where the user chooses.

For Company ABC, the cost per person of providing workspace on the current model is £8,000 ($13,300) per person per year. And so the annual cost of workspace provision per person will be the measure of monetising agility at work. It aligns with the technology-led vision of ‘buy your own computer’ or BYOC – a vision that has increasing buy-in from CIOs that are moving towards an internet-centric vision for computing.

So 1,875 people on current patterns of work can see the building as ‘home’ or 2,000 people with new enablers, activity based working and third space provision, which would give a cost of £6,000 ($10,000) per person per year for the provision of ‘workspheres’ in a ‘buy your own’ self-service world – a 25% bottom line saving. For companies less advanced, with a more traditional starting point, property-led cost savings of over 40% are achievable.

Monetising agility is about measuring the BYO cost per person. Just as the cloud will deliver communications software as a service for say £5 ($8) per user per month, so workplace could become an on-demand resource.

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less space (lower utilities/facilities costs), less churn and outsourcing of key business services.

The future of agile work will see workspaces provided on demand, and consumed on an ‘as needed’ basis. This will mirror the rise of the cloud that moves technology from capex to opex, delivered as another utility to people as and when they need it. Add place to this, and a true ‘buy your own’ model for ‘provisioning work’ emerges.

As Colin King points out: “The real benefit… comes when we create environments that handle virtually everything people need both within the physical and virtual workplace. We have seen that kind of business-focused innovation reduces cost, business risk and enables our business to drive revenue growth.”

BYO work will provide an annual budget or stipend to individuals to choose the tools, spaces and services needed to produce the desired outcomes.

The Agility Dividend

As well as the efficiency dividend from less or more efficient use of space, we have identified two other key dividends that can be derived through agile work - a happiness dividend and productivity dividend.

From our survey and other research, there is no doubt that people would choose to change the way they commute. This is a factor of both time and cost, skewed by the ‘rush hour’ commute that correlates congestion and price to the non-agile, traditional working day. Choice allows an individual the ability to rebalance patterns of work and delivers a ‘happiness dividend’ that is part of a broader move towards recognising health and wellbeing at work.

We also see the productivity benefits that result from reduced downtime as ‘always on’ cloud technologies and portable devices allow agile work to be adopted.

Efficiency dividend property (p) fixed (f) and operational (o) cost savings

Happiness dividend commuting (c) time (t) and cost (c) savings

Productivity dividend downtime (d) employee/salary costs (s)

These three elements can be weighted and given a coefficient based on the importance of each factor to the company. They can create an equation for calculating the Agility Dividend as follows:

Agility Dividend = p (f+0) + c (t+c) + d (s)

Fixed Costs (CapEx)

Variable Costs (OpEx)

Fixed Costs (CapEx)

Variable Costs (OpEx)

Variable Costs (OpEx / BYO)£

£££

TODAY

Traditional Office OutsourcingActivity Based Working

Virtual OfficeAgile WorkingCloud Computing

TOMORROW FUTURE

The Road to Virtuality : Value model

“It adds between 5 to 10% to the bottom line as a consequence of the increased productivity you achieve”

Chris Kane, BBC

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Case studies

Early pioneers

In the 80s, there were plenty of early pioneers of virtual working. As Lisa Lion Wolfe at Hewlett-Packard observed: “Managers have to be able to define and measure performance. They really have to analyse the results, not just the tasks or processes” vi. They used the technology available at the time. Some of the early examples were:

Company Solution Business Benefit

Hewlett-Packard Salesforce mobility Increase revenue person

Andersen Consulting Virtual working Reduce cost of office overhead

Lotus Development Virtual work Put people closer to customers and improve work-life balance

IBM SMART More face time with customers and reduced real estate costs of 40-60%

Now we are seeing new ways of working enter the mainstream as our survey shows, but for most the approach so far has not resulted in a move to the virtual. Now, as people are equipped for ‘work anywhere’, we predict a growing implementation of ‘virtual work’ principles.

Yell

Yell’s sales team of over 700 worked from 35 nationwide sales offices. But with sales people on the road, the offices were expensive and underused. An initial reduction from 35 to 20 locations was accompanied by enabling the sales team to be mobile with both portable technology and also Businessworld Gold cards so that Yell’s people could use a variety of Regus locations as part of their distributed workplace strategy.

Simon Taylor, head of property at Yell in the UK, said: “Our field sales teams’ use of and reliance upon a physical place of work has significantly changed in the last year due to developing technology and we no longer require our network of sales offices.”

Now, a mobile team that is equipped with laptops and remote connectivity solutions is able to work in new locations, reducing Yell’s property overhead by £1.5m ($2.5m) a year and at the same time driving efficiency through reduced downtime.

Cisco

Cisco has used Media Net to create and run virtual company meetings. Not only does this create an event at between 1/3 and 1/10 of the cost of a physical event, but it extends the reach of the event by a factor of between 5 and 10 times. Cisco’s annual GSX sales conference was traditionally held in Las Vegas for 13,000 people at a cost of $4,307 per person. Last year the event was held virtually at a cost of only $437 per head, and an additional 3,000 people were able to ‘attend’. Interestingly, participants gave a higher rating for the content than the previous physical event.

As an early adopter, Cisco is an interesting case study in the future for collaboration. For example, in Q2 2009, 100 million minutes of WebEx conferencing were used. And with 700 Telepresence rooms around the world, Cisco has saved a staggering $250m in avoided travel costs.

In 2009, Cisco realised over $1.1bn (£0.6bn) of cost savings, comprising as follows:

Telecommuting $299m (£180m)

Connected Workplace $12m (£7m)

Virtual Expert $125m (£75m)

Remote Collaboration $601m (£360m)

Sales & Marketing $15m (£9m)

In its Bedfont Lakes workplace in the UK, it has increased capacity by 60%, through new ways of working as well as increased work from home. All the tools are now in place to make advanced collaboration a reality.

Boeing

At Boeing, for example, over 27,000 external suppliers collaborated with Boeing’s development teams on the Dreamliner project. The company held over 1 million collaboration sessions in 12 months with this ‘extended community’ using tools such as WebEx and, as a result, has reduced time to market.

A US government study showed that if 20,000 federal workers could telecommute just one day a week, they would save over 2,000,000 commuting miles and 81,600lbs of CO2 emissions each week.

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Conclusions

Monetising Agility will become one of the most important areas for companies to understand as they strive for competitive advantage and a reduction in the barriers that impede growth and agile business.

One of the key conclusions of the Berne Summit was a need to productise agility and to open a more productive dialogue between the corporate functions of HR, IT and CRE. A Bring Your Own world and the dividend defined is a combination of the three core corporate services functions, so joined-up thinking will be needed to achieve agility at work.

We have no doubt that virtual working will become a reality as new technology emerges and other forces drive companies to adopt ‘VWork’ in pursuit of clear business benefits. We predict three stages for ‘VWork’, from ‘real’ through ‘augmented’ to ‘virtual’.

Stage 1 Convergence of business services

Central or core business services functions formed in the organisation to bring together the previously siloed functions of human resources, technology, real estate, facilities, finance and procurement. KPIs and the Agility Dividend are defined.

Stage 2 Augmented work

Outsourcing of key functions and services, introduction of activity-based working with a reduction in real estate overhead. Mobile technology enablers.

Stage 3 Virtual reality

Migration to the cloud, with full technology enablers, changed business processes, new ways of working and management by output. Internet, user centric provision for work. BYO approach and associated change programme.

Organisations must now identify their journey from our current reality to an augmented state where the benefits of agility can begin to be realised and measured. Monetising agility results in a budget per person per year for provisioning work. It treats buildings as shared resources, is user centric and views work as a distributed activity.

On-demand business space will be seen as a key future requirement – aligning property with the ebbs and flows of business cycles. “Let’s go back to what the business needs,” argued Ronen Journo. “Can we avoid property?” In the end, as one head of property suggested, do we need our own spaces? As ‘on demand’ takes off and people accept the notion of ‘self-provisioning’ we will change the way we work and the spaces we choose for work - the office of the future will be very different place.

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Appendix

1. The UnWork.com Survey

UnWork.com surveyed over 600 senior business leaders from around the globe to understand attitudes to and ideas about the future of work.

The respondents can be categorised as follows:

Size of Organisation Surveyed

Small companies (under 100 employees)

Medium sized companies (100 – 1,000 employees)

Large companies (over 1,000 employees)

Geography

Most of the survey respondents were responsible for regions outside the UK with all geographies represented.

Job Function

We looked at the three core business services functions of property, human resources and technology to see if perspectives differed.

The results of this survey are used throughout the report.

Geography

Size of Organisation

Job Function

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2. The Berne Summit

In October 2010, 16 heads of real estate from around the world attended the Berne Summit. The intent was to debate the future of work, to look at the collision between the functions of property, human resources and technology as well as understand how the trends described in our previous report, Agility @ Work, were developing and becoming more and more mainstream. The debate and discussion at Berne has directed some of the research presented here.

Date Wednesday 20 October – Friday 22 October 2010

Venue Chateau de Berne, Lorgues, France

Attendees

Simon Ward, Managing Director, Head of Barclays Property, Barclays

Chris Kane, Head of Workplace, BBC

Ulrich Kerber, Head of Corporate Real Estate, Beiersdorf, now at Vodafone

Kathryn Bell, Global Real Estate Director, Accenture, now at Boston Consulting Group,

Steve Probert, Head of Real Estate & Facilities Management, BSKYB

Ronen Journo, Director, WPR Corporate Real Estate Europe & Emerging markets, Cisco

Tony Wong, CoreNet Global Board Director, now at JP Morgan

Michael Ansah, Director of Real Estate & Facilities EMEA Dell,

Michelle Marwood, Firmwide Director of Real Estate, Kirkland Ellis

Colin King, Global Real Estate Director at Nokia, now Vice President, Worldwide Real Estate & Workplace, GlaxoSmithKline

Tim Caiger, VP Real Estate & Facilities Oracle, now retired

David Medlock, Shire Pharmaceuticals

Patrick Foord, Group Head of Projects, Standard Chartered

Vito Chiodo, Director Telstra Property, Telstra

Christopher Staal, Global Head of Real Estate, Thomson Reuters

Simon Taylor, Head of UK Property, Yell.com

Together they represented interest in over 243,000,000 square feet of real estate

Facilitators Hosts

Philip Ross, CEO, UnWork.com Mark Dixon, Founder and CEO, Regus

Monica Parker, Associate Director, UnWork.com Andrew Brown, Regus

Barry Varcoe, ReResonance, now at Zurich Financial Ally Charles, Regus

Bob Gaudreau, Regus

Scott Hartman, Regus

Kurt Mroncz, Regus

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Key findings from the Berne Summit

The ‘consumer of workspace’

From To

2 to 3 generations 4 Generations

Digital migrants + Digital natives

Portfolio careers at 50+ Portfolio careers at 20+

Work-aholic/loyalty to the firm Life-aholic/loyalty to oneself

Business need + Human need

People migration to the work Work migration to the people

Synchronous work + Asynchronous work

The corporate machine (survival through efficiency) The corporate organism(survival through adaptability)

Individuals and teams + Community(s)

The value chain

From To

Cost cutter + Value enhancer

Friction/constraint remover Work and change enablers

Spatial resource managers

Decision support based on folklore and anecdote Decision support based on toolkits and facts

Innovation rhetoric Innovation culture and delivery

Sustainability programmes Sustainability culture

Technically superior leaders Leadership superior leaders

Fragmented components that are co-ordinated Integrated ‘end-to-end’ processes and business models

Client-centric +Platform/competency centric

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The future of the ‘product’

From To

Desk provision Work-life creator

Physical connections + Digital connections

1% -10% communications experience 80% -100% communications experience

Visual reality + Context (= augmented reality)

Homogenous human resources Individually understood people (work psychology)

Our place; our time Any place; any time

Corporate convenience Worker convenience

Service levels ‘Manufactured’ mass customised experiences

4th Dimension (time management) 5th Dimension (change in time management)

No menu or table d’hote A la carte

‘Office’ is where you park the body ‘Office’ is where you connect the head

3. Sources

i The Telecommuters, Francis Kinsman, John Wiley & Sons, 1987ii Becoming Virtual, Jane Klobas and Paul Jackson, Physica-Verlag, 2008iii Intuit 2020 Reportiv The Age of Unreason, Business Books, 1989v Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson, Allen Lane, 2010vi HR Magazine, March 1996

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Philip Ross

Philip is CEO of the Cordless Group and UnWork.com, a management consultancy that looks at the future of work and develops the business case for agile working. He specialises in the impact of emerging technology on people, performance and the work process and develops strategies for new ways of working and workplace innovation.

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.

Mark Dixon

Chief executive and founder, Mark Dixon is one of Europe’s best-known entrepreneurs. Since founding Regus in Brussels, Belgium in 1989, he has achieved a formidable reputation for leader-ship 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.

4. About the Authors

For further information please contact: [email protected]

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About Unwired

work • workplace • technology • innovation

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.

Its events include the WorkTech conferences held in London, New York, Shanghai and Amsterdam.

For further information visit:www.unwired.eu.com

About Regus Regus is the world’s largest provider of flexible workspaces, 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 enables people to work their way, whether it’s from home, on the road or from an office. Customers such as Google, GlaxoSmithKline, and Nokia join hundreds of 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 activities.

Over 800,000 customers a day benefit from Regus facilities spread across a global footprint of 1,100 locations in 500 cities and 88 countries, which allow individuals and companies to work wherever, however and whenever they want to. Regus was founded in Brussels, Belgium in 1989, is headquartered in Luxembourg and listed on the London Stock Exchange.

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

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Unwired Ventures Ltd, its employees, the advisory board and the sponsors of Unwired are not to be held responsible for any losses, expenses or any claims arising out of any reliance on the information contained in this publication. Since most of the information in this publication has been provided by third parties it requires further verification. In every instance an application is made it must be independently verified and applied to those individual circumstances by a suitably qualified individual.

The very nature of the information contained in this publication ensures that at the time of publication it may be outdated or superseded. No copyright or intellectual property is transferred or should be assumed and all images, photographs and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners. UNWIRED is a registered trademark of Unwired Ventures Ltd. No rights exist to reproduce this publication in any form or media in part or whole.

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