MIT’s new accelerator facility that helps create opportunities for scientific and tech breakthroughs. Image courtesy of SGA.
Happy New Year, WDM readers! Work Design publisher, Bob Fox has again spent the month of January picking the brains of industry experts, clients, and peers while reviewing patterns in the market to round up his predictions for the biggest workplace trends in 2019. His list of five major trends include some new and some continuations that he expects will make an impact on the workplace this year. Make sure to check out his predictions from last year to see how things stack up!
We will be checking back in with more articles on this topic to see how accurate the predictions were and how/if they’re being executed in the workplace.
Wellbeing
Employee wellbeing is becoming one of the important considerations in workplace planning and design. Companies are widening the tent for planning and design teams to include HR and wellness program stakeholders, and research is proving that a well workplace is a healthy workplace.
Recruiting and employee retention is a crucial goal for workplace design, and wellness features and consideration of environmental factors are something incoming generations of workers look for and evaluate in choosing where to work.
Healthier workplaces have a positive impact on the financial bottom line. Companies now realize that not only is this the right thing to do as a matter of corporate social responsibility, but it is another feature potential employees value.
More research studies on the correlation between the physical workplace environment and employee physical and mental health will be forthcoming and will influence how designers approach workplace design.
We will see more product designs that contribute to a healthier workplace as many manufacturers are investing in R&D relating wellness to product design from an ergonomic and materiality point of view.
There will be a significant increase in outdoor space that is available to individual workers. Not only is there a health and wellbeing benefit, but it is an attractive amenity for office and work environments.
Coworking
Coworking continues to be a game changer in the workplace design and real estate world. Some aspects of this concept that are rolling out include:
Options for companies to acquire space without committing to long term leases and providing services for employees based in coworking spaces.
Landlords re-working space and providing spec suites with short term spaces and expanding on shared amenity spaces for building tenants.
Coworking providers are expanding their reach beyond shared workspace for startups and makers and are adding spaces specifically designed for enterprise clients.
WeWork (now We Company) is the largest tenant in many office markets and has expanded their services to bring brokerage, design and construction services in house. They are the leading proponent and provider of WaaS (Workplace as a Service) where the physical space and the support for workers is a package deal. Where WeWork may take up the most space (literally and figuratively) we are seeing many entrepreneurial people finding room to provide niche coworking spaces to meet local or community needs.
While the flexibility and ease of getting space is a primary reason a company may choose that option, the curated communities those entities work to provide is the most significant benefit to the workers in those spaces. Time will tell what will happen if there is an economic downturn which could seriously affect the commercial real estate market and the need for all the space that the coworking sector has consumed.
AI + Technology
Last year, I left technology as a standalone trend off my list, and a few people called me out on it. I had just assumed that it was a constant across a broad spectrum of tools and services. I did include Siri and Alexa. Their collected data may have been more of a prediction than a trend but now, I’m not so sure. Smart Speakers are now well integrated into many of our lives, but there are entirely new works of AI that are emerging.
Your Smart Speakers’ are listening. Data is being collected and I’m not sure if anyone really knows what they will do with all of that data. Smart Speakers’ learned response will continue to improve, and we have to accept that there will continue to be changes to the way we work as AI learns how to respond more accurately.
As the use of AI enabled technology is becoming more present in the workplace, and the changes may be far-reaching. We are not that far away from technology taking on many of our daily tasks such as scheduling meetings or producing reports. We are seeing more apps developed for use in the workplace – everything from smart space booking systems, to intercommunication platforms for finding or communicating with co-workers. As technology becomes more sophisticated, it may drastically alter what we do in the course of a workday and may impact how we design the spaces where people work.