Smart Offices To Conquer All!
Could your office benefit from being smart? Unsurprisingly, the answer is almost always “Yes”. Learn more here…
Last month, the BBC announced it will revive iconic technology show Tomorrow’s World. This 20th century TV series often gave audiences a first glimpse of forthcoming technologies. The show featured ATMs, mobile phones and home computers. It was also an early champion of the ‘smart office’ . Or at least the principle that technology can optimize workspace potential and staff productiveness.
Offices Deserve A Makeover
It’s surprising to think how little modern technology has changed our places of work, apart from web access and email. People still sit at banks of computer terminals under harsh strip lighting, maintaining hard-drive data siloes and sending documents to a network printer. Even though modern technology is capable of much more than intranets and video conferencing, office design hasn’t changed or evolved much in the last twenty years.
Consistent year-on-year growth in the global smart office market is being driven by increased awareness of how technology could improve our workplaces. Industry leaders like Siemens, Cisco and Schneider are collaborating and sharing resources as tech firms finally drag our working environments into the 21st century. This industry was worth $30 billion last year. Benefits of scalable infrastructure and automation are becoming evident. But we have to ask, what might this mean for today’s chilly open-plan offices with their spaghetti-like cabling?
What is a Smart Office?
A truly smart office embraces technology throughout its environment. From responsive lighting and ventilation through to efficient space management and wireless hardware, the term smart includes it all. For instance, global studies have indicated only 49% of office desks are in use at any given moment. Giving employees laptops that can be docked on peripheral-equipped hot desks could result in smaller offices, with lower running costs and greater efficiencies. Companies like Deloitte are using VR apps to predict how workspaces should be laid out before they move in. This optimize space efficiency and maximize practicality for staff.
Today’s smart offices capitalize on the Internet of Things, enabling workers to remotely manage everything from localized temperature and lighting, to projector screens and entry systems. Not only does this empower staff and increase job satisfaction, some estimates suggest it could potentially cut energy usage in half. While that’s clearly a positive for everyone, growing privacy concerns mean the IoT’s potential for surveillance and monitoring is likely to be curtailed. Orwellian technology, like keystroke logging, is unlikely to take off.
Remote Convenience
Many jobs can be performed equally well from satellite offices or on the move. This is why smart offices are adopting collaborative cloud-hosted software to maintain channels of communication from any location. This necessitates high-speed broadband, with the UK government promising a full-fiber rollout and extensive investment in 5G. Some observers argue the next generation of wireless communications will render hardwired broadband infrastructure superfluous. We’ll certainly need more bandwidth to cope with the estimated 30 billion IoT devices due by 2020. This is especially true when an office includes printers that can reorder ink or toner cartridges.
Freedom To Work And Thrive!
The growth of wireless communications and remote working may also mean society finally evolves away from the outdated model of Monday-to-Friday office work. Flexible hours and remote working are increasingly viable nowadays. Many employers maintaining office-based roles out of habit rather than necessity need to think again. Indeed, the smart office of tomorrow’s world might look more like your spare room than an open-plan city center workspace…