Current Issue

The iOffice

Today is yesterday’s tomorrow and this year, we can expect to work very differently than we did a mere five years ago – and it’s all thanks to mobile technology. ‘Work is no longer a place you go, it’s something you do’ is set to be the by-line as the burgeoning Cloud, and social demographics keep changing the flow of work – or, how and where we work.

Take for example this Ed Note. It was hammered out in Shanghai, China. Put in the Cloud, sent to our head-office in Singapore before being re-directed to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for layout by our graphic designers. Nothing unusual as this is today’s work place. Influencing this shift further are an aging workforce; middle-aged Gen X and Gen Y, the most socially and technically conscious — and the ‘greenest’ — generation ever.

At the last Neocon (June 13 – 15, 2011, Chicago), North America’s largest Contract Furnishing trade event, a slew of seminars and forum addressed organisational structures and the physical spaces of work to change. It seems that there’s good news for the many still stuck in the vestiges of square cubicles, pigeon-holed by an assigned role: Change is coming your way.

The workplace has no choice but to respond to the massive shifts in our cultural and technological underpinnings. ‘The Office Furniture Is Thin’ by Nigel Scott Williams (pp 10) makes an engaging read as virtual distances and collaborative efforts take on a different plane.

With the advent of Cloud Technology, the change that is set to revolutionise the office contract industry as we know it, will be raising even more eyebrows. Besides the substantial reductions in the real estate of a physical office, rapid advances in technology has shifted the paradigm from a organised standard, to a highly individualised and, customisable, work area.

People share ideas and communicate faster in the workplace when spaces themselves are no longer stagnant and inflexible. Conference calls via Skype, webinars, and places to brainstorm are the norm. Meetings no longer take place in a meeting room, but over continents where people speak to each other via Skype, compare notes collaboratively via Evernote and the Internet.

Welcome to the iOffice! The office of the future where the malleable workspace supports a different type of workflow. There are no cubicles, but ‘pods’ where executives and senior managers possess little or no private space at all. Managers of forward-thinking organisations say to lead or to participate they must be where the action is. While private spaces are still necessary for work that requires various degree of concentration, open spaces are also a must for interaction or collaborative team work.

The call for offices with mesh wall separators, short term basis offices, and open workstations is about building an effective work environment for tomorrow. As more organisations discard the relics imposed by the ‘This is the way we’ve always done it’ attitude, a whole new era of the iOffice opens for those operating in the office contract arena.

Eileen Chan
Group Editor