Organizations should be supplying employees with choices — in both their digital and physical workplaces — to support multiple working styles and collaboration needs.
That was the main takeaway from a recent event I attended in downtown Toronto, cohosted by Microsoft and global business furniture company Steelcase. While the combination may sound odd at first, Steelcase not only provides office furniture, but also designs workspaces. Steelcase's research group, 360 Research, also works with Microsoft on topics ranging from how technology works in different physical spaces to how the Internet of Things (IoT) can enable smart buildings.
Aside from the opportunity to explore the impressive Steelcase space and play with the latest Microsoft technologies — from Surface tablets and Surface book laptops, to wall-mounted Surface Hub interactive displays and even HoloLens Augmented Reality systems — the highlight of the event was a panel discussion on the nature of modern work and workplaces with representatives from Microsoft, Steelcase, market research giant Ipsos, and Compugen, one of Canada's largest IT services companies.
Blending Physical and Digital to Promote Collaboration
The conversation focused on questions of how the mixture of technology and well-designed workspaces can enable and promote creative collaboration amongst "knowledge workers," to how we get these same benefits down to the task-based process workers on the shop floor, who might not have a corporate device such as a laptop or tablet to work on. The discussion reminded me of the simple Venn diagram I created for an article last year, “You Can’t Plan a Digital Workplace Without Thinking About the Physical.”