Coinciding with this week’s International Facility Management Association’s (IFMA) World Workplace Conference and Expo opening in Philadelphia (US), ISS has released a white book on the workplace of the future.
The white book, ‘New Ways of Working – the workplace of the future’, was developed in close cooperation with Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, and is based on in-depth research and a global survey among more than 600 facility management experts.
‘Increasingly, global competition, the war for talents, the introduction of new technologies, and the greater focus on sustainability – among other factors – are changing how companies plan for and develop their workplace strategies and how the facility management industry develops services to support them. The white book focuses on these challenges and how they will influence the role of facility management,’ noted ISS.
“By definition, people are essential to workplaces. Without people, workplaces are simply places. The primary purpose of a workplace is to benefit the people in it, and benefitting the processes between them. Designing smart and cost effective workplaces, which will accommodate more collaboration and increase efficiency, is a major opportunity for most organisations,” said Jeff Gravenhorst, Group CEO, ISS A/S, speaking at the opening session of IFMA’s World Workplace Conference and Expo.
“There is no doubt that the workplace as we know it is undergoing dramatic change as it will increasingly become a place where people meet, socialise, build relations and have fun. ISS is committed to remain a market leader in developing tools, technologies and solutions for these challenges in collaboration with our customers and partners,” he added.
‘New Ways of Working – the workplace of the future’ analyses the boundaries that define traditional and future workplaces and organisations. Increasingly, employees work from the office, home and third workplaces; they work in private offices and open offices as well as from hot desks and touchdown points. Meanwhile, mobile devices are overtaking the laptop and the PC as our primary interfaces to the digital world.
“The accelerating pace of change is driving a wedge between managements’ vision of the workplace and the reality experienced by workers. Most workplaces are not designed to efficiently or effectively evolve as the dynamics of business change. Facility management professionals will have a key role to play in ensuring that workplaces are continuously aligned with core organisations’ changing needs,” observed Jeffrey Scott Saunders, futurist, senior executive advisor, Head of Strategy and Innovation at Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies.
The new white book builds upon the earlier findings from the ‘ISS 2020 Vision: Scenarios for the future of the global Facility Management Industry’, which concluded that future workplaces will change significantly over the coming decade.
The findings of ‘New Ways of Working’ were developed in partnership with IFMA through qualitative research and subject matter expert interviews and several workshops with customers. The study also presents external expert assessments from the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies of the strategic themes shaping the future work, the workforce and the workplace towards 2020.