Quite simply, our workspaces will have to change to digital workspaces. And only a few companies like Microsoft and IBM are talking about this. What I’ve seen in my research with executives and MTC Directors is that the world is moving faster, product cycles are shorter, and yet the workplace is still built for slower moving organizations. I can say with confidence that the workplace has to change dramatically in order to remain effective.
Here are 10 reasons why:
1. We’re going to be measuring emotional IQ in the workplace:
Happiness and sentiment for the enterprise? Sounds sappy right? But it’s going to happen. There are companies working on this now -because you get what you measure. And if you measure employee happiness to changes in their work and physical environments, management can make the necessary changes to increase productivity. Using the data, ethical leaders will rebalance the work environment to support greater collaboration, serendipitous encounters, informal knowledge flows and more profit.
Environmental Changes Needed- Sensors in the workplace that measure how people are using spaces and infrequently query employees on sentiment for a given topic.2. The right information will find us:
The user interface of the workplace is a major inhibitor to growth. Because people are not working on the most important things at the optimal time with the optimal people that can solve the problem. Why? Because we don’t know – what we need to know – unless we know to search for it. But information in the future will find us by checking our calendar for meetings and people, looking at our activity streams for trends, and studying the rest of the organization for information and people that may be important to our job.
Technological Changes- Big Data will become Smart Data and all of that information being aggregated by social platforms (SharePoint, Connections, Yammer, etc.), email (harmon.ie, Gmail, etc.), sensors in the workplace and mobile devices will soon be used to increase workforce effectiveness.3. The workplace will reinforce corporate goals and strategy:
Based on a recent study by Chris Zook of Bain, only 40% of the workforce knew about the corporation’s goals, strategies and tactics. Imagine if you had a football team, where only 4 in 10 knew what the game plan was. A physical environment that reinforces strategies and tactics and prioritizes them is paramount.
Environmental Changes- Using Smart Data analytics, digital screens and surfaces in the work environment will automatically display goals and strategies in the context of a meeting. Changes to strategy will automatically be sent to an affected employee’s mobile device in order to reduce inefficiencies.4. Employees will provide vastly higher levels of real time feedback:
Command and control management models will disappear over time. Employees will gain the ability to provide real time feedback to management through social platforms, mobile devices and automatically through their digital behavior (Smart Data will capture this). These feedback mechanisms will be built right into their work flow processes. Management will use that feedback to become more agile and adaptive to changing market conditions.
Cultural Changes– Management will encourage employees to provide consistent and relevant feedback on projects, customers and the organization’s strategy and tactics.5. Mobile devices will interact with our physical environments:
Why is it that we still can’t capture and interact with notes produced in our physical environments? Sure we can snap a picture of a whiteboard, but the picture doesn’t understand the contents of the whiteboard. That’s going to change. Harald Becker, who leads business strategy for Microsoft Office Labs showed me how mobile devices are interacting with smart boards and screens placed around a room. The technology enables bi-directional content sharing from screen to mobile devices with the press of a button. This will enable far greater collaboration and information capture for both manager and employee.
Environmental Changes- Digital smart boards and screens will need to be placed around the workplace. Mobile apps will need to be downloaded in order to interact with them.
