Today, culture is so enmeshed with a company brand that it’s hard to discuss one without the other. It is what you stand for as a company leader and an organization as a whole. Beyond benefits and vacation time, company culture is an environment of support, transparency, and enthusiasm. And it cascades from the top. It’s a huge part of your role to set the tone for how employees feel, how they treat each other, and how they perform.
Hot desking has become a popular practice for growing companies as a way to save money, improve efficiency, and create a more agile work environment for their employees. Office space can be pricey, and in more traditional office models space is often under-utilized. Hot desking capitalizes on the growing agility in today’s workplace to help save companies money by moving away from the 1-to-1 seating model in the office. Rather than have assigned desks, employees operate out of an open workspace where they can reserve a desk for the day on-the-spot.
The definition of workplace security has expanded greatly in today’s digital age. Companies must not only consider employee, customer, and financial safety from external forces – fires, natural disasters, chemical spills and contamination, civil disturbances, terrorism – but also from internal forces – workplace violence, employee theft, intellectual property theft, and data theft.
There are many security risks that could happen within the walls of your office and systems. Your priority must be to provide a safe and secure work environment for your employees and visitors. By law, that means your company must provide an environment free of health and safety hazards, as well as psychological hazards.
Most of us are already familiar with a hierarchical, or centralized organizational structure. From the government and military to large corporations, a centralized management system has long been the norm. However, more and more organizations of every size are starting to value more egalitarian organizational landscapes. As technology increases agility in day-to-day business operations, decisions need to be made with equal agility, and many are finding that it has become necessary to adapt.
As of 2017, Millennials—those born between 1981 and 1996—make up the largest generation in the workforce. They’re bringing with them new talents, capabilities, and work ethics. They’re also bringing a number of expectations about the type of companies they want to work for, the offices they want to spend their time, and the style of working they want to execute.
The modern workplace of today bears little resemblance to the modern workplace of 50 years ago. Just think about the mid-day booze-swilling, male-dominated, Mad Man-era office setting compared to today’s increasingly diverse, kombucha-sipping, dog-friendly open spaces. Some changes have evolved slowly like workplace diversity and others have cropped up seemingly overnight like gourmet coffee bars and company kick ball leagues.
We’ve written a lot about the environment of today’s modern workplace, but as you strive to keep your company attractive and competitive today, it’s critical to plan for what’s going to make it shine in the future. The last thing you want to do is invest in a full-scale office remodel, only to find what you consider modern today is outdated thinking five years from now. Making those predictions may seem like an exercise in futility which office worker in the 1970s would dream that ping-pong tables would replace conference room tables and cubicles would relegated to the depths of office hell? That’s why we’ve put together a guide for planning for the office of the future.
