Blogs

“Work is not a place, it's what you do - and when and how you do it”. We've been talking about the office for years, but now we're changing the conversation. We've moved from a place-centric view of the office to a work and human centric one. It's not that we don't need to have an office anymore - it's that we don't need to have one in the same way.

For the last 1.5 years, those of us used to working in office spaces have been participating in a global experiment of remote working. What we managed to see is that a lot of the work previously classed as ‘impossible to do remotely’ is actually doable! A lot of companies and employees noticed that one can do their own job - or majority of it from home or restrictions-permitting anywhere else.

We are now over a year into a pandemic-induced workplace (r)evolution. To no one’s surprise, views on the role of the office are still polarized. Within commercial real estate, many corporate leaders are hoping for a return to old ways of working. However, inflection points are simply part of life. Covid-19 is a huge inflection point for the office world. Now it’s the customer, both tenant companies and end-users who are in the spotlight, who will have their turn to write the next chapter of what it means to “go” to work. For those whose income and business model is tied to supplying or servicing the world of offices, a beginner’s mindset has become necessary, to survive.

According to a study by the World Economic Forum, the number of emerging jobs will increase from 16% to 27% between 2018 and 2022. At the same time, one tenth of the existing job descriptions will vanish. It has been forecast that more than 65% of the children starting school today will come to work in jobs that do not yet exist at the time when they start school. Work is falling apart at an accelerated pace.

In a four part series of blog posts called “Mobilize!” I examine flexible working and what it is, why it makes sense and how to get started. In this first part, I want to encourage discussion about the concept of flexible work, and what it’s all about. Stay tuned for more!