Whilst tools now exist to allow the traditional white collar workforce to successfully embrace mobile working, many companies still like the security of the single shared office. The reluctance to embrace the possibilities of the mobile working revolution is largely due to traditional and somewhat outdated perceptions. Fears are focused around data security issues outside of a central hub, and, a perceived lack of cooperation and cohesion among employees who would no longer be working side by side.

The introduction and application of smart workspaces are changing attitudes to mobile working and assuaging some of these fears. A smart workspace is a uniquely designed work environment that provides necessary office services, such as broadband connectivity, conference capability and facilities as well as worksite food provision and child care. Smart workspaces provide an environment for the successful integration of people and technology. A key component of these workspaces is their location, mostly in suburban areas, removing the daily torture of the dreaded commute. These sites also provide the opportunity to work collaboratively with others from a variety of companies, helping to contribute to greater productivity. Smart workspaces have been a huge success in Amsterdam where more than 120 of these workplace environments can now be found. This number continues to increase as employee awareness and demand grows. Smart workplaces are one of the final pieces in mobile working jigsaw, enabling employees to bring together empowering technologies in an environment that works for them.

Smart workspaces are bringing together people and modern technology in a manner that shows us a glimpse of workspaces in the future. These workspaces are changing the way people work for the benefit of employers and employees alike. The application of these smart workspaces will continue to grow as the mobile working revolution continues to gather speed,  so do not be surprised, in the next couple of years, if you find a smart workspace in a suburb near you!

Our cities have historically been shaped by natural resources and human endeavour.

In London, for example, rivers and tributaries of the Thames shaped the urban plan. The river Fleet’s valley became Farringdon Road and gave its name to Fleet Street. Marylebone Lane follows the twists and turns of the river Tyburn. Wells and springs shaped the ancient City such as Brook Street; location in an age where physical rivers de-marked boundaries and borders… More online here.

Interaxon’s Muse headband can sense your alpha and beta brain waves… but does that necessarily make it smart?

‘Why would I buy a phone when I could have an i-Phone?’ goes the marketing narrative – and likewise ‘Why would I buy a 55 inch ultra-high definition TV when I could have a smart 55 inch ultra-high definition TV?’. I’m being facetious, but the point I believe is a real one.

The US Consumer Electronics Association’s Chief Economist and Senior Director of Research – Shawn DuBravac – noted in his insiders briefing at CES this month that ‘smart’ has generally been used to mean ‘connected to the internet’, or at the very least ‘networked’. This definition certainly fits with our experience of smart technology – but this raises a question: If I hook up a WiFi chip to my standard kettle, lamp or fork at home, would they become smart? ‘Obviously not’, you cry out. But maybe?

We saw smart versions of all three of these domestic appliances at CES, and many more. Yet we believe ‘smart’ has to mean more than ‘connected’. Hardware cannot be by itself smart – what makes it smart is the software. A connected fork is smart if it advises us on whether we are eating too quickly; a connected lamp is smart if it changes its output based on ambient light or if it can be controlled remotely with a phone or other device.

As our lives become ever more appified, some people feel that they cannot live without their phone. But if a phone breaks, any other synced device can immediately pick up where the old device stopped. It is the app – the gatherer of information and curator of output – that they cannot live without. Is a smart TV smart if it can access the internet to play back programmes on demand? We would say no. Is a TV smart if it makes good suggestions for other programmes, services and information sources based on what you have watched – and tailors these for each person in the household? Now that’s more like it.

What does this mean for the smart workplace? The smart workplace needs more than a collection of smart devices affixed to the walls, ceilings, floors and desks. It needs more than a collection of flexible working and BYOD policies. It is the full integration of people and technology to provide measurable and useful outputs which will define the truly smart workplace in the coming few years.

Smart technologies are here today – but it is worth asking one final question; what does ‘intelligent’ technology look like?

Natural light is also an important factor in this. Developers still often construct buildings whose footprint occupies near enough the whole area of the site – creating large floor plates with huge central cores. No amount of floor-to-ceiling glass can counteract the effect of a stiflingly large floor plate which only has perimeter light. Occupiers know this and are increasingly choosing to create natural light sources throughout the building – with light wells and central staircases. Macquarie Bank’s London head office is a prime example of this, where they punched through 10 floors of a new building to allow light in, and created a beautiful asymmetric staircase to bring the activity of the business to the fore.

The central tenet of belief in this realm, it seems, is that more light is better. Two rays bad, four rays good.

Yet in the midst of all this focus on light, we have seen a fascinating example of a workplace which has concluded that darker is better. No, this is not a photographic studio nor is it a cinema. EA Games’ global headquarters in Redwood Shores, California (part way between San Francisco and Silicon Valley) is a campus of four buildings set around a green central square. Nothing out of the ordinary, you might think. But in a significant part of one of the buildings – where the game developers work – there is darkness. Or at least that similar level of darkness achieved in a teenager’s bedroom with the curtains still drawn at midday. Which, explains EA’s Vice President of Global Real Estate Curt Wilhelm, is exactly the point. The people who are drawn to game development (and the people EA wants to attract) are those who have grown up being semi-nocturnal and playing games for hours and hours on end in the semi darkness.

So EA Games has created a home from home for them, with very little natural light, low ceiling lighting and three-quarter height cubicles. Walking round there is an odd calm and silence, yet when you look closer, simultaneously one of activity and creation. You or I may not wish to work in the dark, but it seems there are some who do. Is it time to consider their needs as strongly as we currently do for those who want sunshine and light wells?

Conceived in an era of command and control, constrained by paper and fixed technology, reflective of hierarchy and order with a culture of presenteeism and paternalism, the traditional fixed and stratified office is evolving to embrace more fluid and intuitive ways of working… More online here.

The theory is that through forcing us to make changes to avoid the predicted additional 1 million daily visitors (a staggering 2 million extra armpits daily on the tube!), we will think about how we work. And how we can work more flexibly. Once we have done this once, why wouldn’t we do it after the crowds have receded and the excitement calmed?

It is a tempting argument to agree with. A sudden change forces individuals to change their well-established habits – and then settle into the new habits thereafter. A line of worker ants coming across a new stone in their well worn path comes to mind – and is strangely reminiscent of train cancellations on the Northern Line. But there are two powerful factors pushing the other way. In a time of continuing economic uncertainty, presenteeism in the office is on the increase. People are feeling a greater need to be seen in the office to show they are a productive and important part of the team. If people are not seen, will they be forgotten? And will they then be the first to be ‘let go’ if the worst happens? Are individuals prepared to take the risk that their managers understand how to judge by results and not by presence?

Secondly, flexibility at work is only achieved when both the organisation and its management embrace a new way of working. Will disruptions over the 17 days of the Olympics and more minor disruption over the Paralympics really change the minds of corporate boards regarding the workplace? It’s very possible that there will be instances of this happening, but will it be widespread and herald a pervasive change?

The drive towards new ways of working within an organisation usually has a strong champion in the management hierarchy. In most cases, without the charisma and energy of such a champion, change simply doesn’t happen. Or the change is so piecemeal that the benefits of flexibility are not felt by the individual or the organisation, and are not measured. If benefits are not measured, the smallest cost increase or budget cut can end a flexibility programme. The Olympics will be an opportunity for any new ways of working champion (or champion-in-waiting) to launch a campaign to bring change in an organisation’s workplace – and will provide a fantastic start off the block. But how many champions-in-waiting are there?

I suspect that Locog’s legacy team don’t list workplace change and innovation very high on their catalogue of Olympic legacies, but arguably if the Olympics does have a widespread influence on flexibility at work, it will be the most tangible daily legacy that the majority of the population feel.

The real impact of the Olympics on the workplace is very difficult to predict, whatever the strong views on either side. It’s a penetrating question whose answer will affect millions. Who knows the answer? This is, as Mayor Boris keeps reminding us, ‘the big one’.

Credit Suisse in Cabot Square, Canary Wharf have been piloting new ways of working on one of their floors, as part of which they have done just that – created a lively and energising lobby which echoes the theme of the floor’s design with images of London icons. These images and other London icons are visually repeated and manifested physically throughout the floor, including two London telephone boxes with both Bakelite and VoIP phones inside. The new ways of working floor which Credit Suisse has created is an impressive space for 250 employees, with a variety of zones nestled in amongst each other differentiated by elements of design which show instinctively what mood and activities each caters for.

There are lounge zones for small ad hoc meetings (complete with great coffee machines), quiet zones for concentrated individual work, project zones for intense collaboration, bookable and non-bookable meeting rooms, individual soundproof pods for conducting teleconferences and other confidential work in, drop-in pods for those 15 minute gaps between meetings, as well as ‘traditional’ open desk zones.

Two spatial innovations I was particularly impressed by were the ‘garden’ zones and the ‘view seats’. The garden zones had individual workspaces nestled in amongst a variety of plants. The zones were partially enclosed, creating an incredible impression of being in a walled garden, albeit 18 floors up and with great views over London. I know which zone I would head to each morning. The view seats are also an interesting idea – though not practical for every office space – these are individual seats with a small table looking directly out over London, allowing employees to drop-in for some creative thinking, for five minutes away from the buzz of the rest of the floor, or just to eat their sandwiches with a view to look at.

There are some great innovations in the technology throughout the floor, alongside the elements which are necessary for new ways of working – universal laptops and pervasive WiFi access. The power source of each of the ‘desks’ have several plug sockets but also include USB power sockets, making the charging of phones, tablets and headsets far easier. The individual lockers (the only 1:1 ratio on the floor!) are locked and released by an electronic PIN mechanism, avoiding the need for padlocks. Finally, there is a ‘laptop hotel’, a room where employees can leave their laptops in secure drawers plugged into power and the network, allowing them to access the network remotely through their laptops.

The floor is part of a global programme currently in three locations – Singapore (200 users), Zurich (2,700 users) and London (250 users). I look forward to seeing the long term results of the programme as it is rolled out even more widely across Credit Suisse offices globally. The results from pilots have been very positive with a large majority of users preferring this new style of working.

Now the cable is dead, at least for voice and most data.  People are used to wireless technology – indeed they rely on it; the iPad has no Ethernet port!  And smart phones, tablets and new ultranotbooks synchronise with the cloud over wireless.  The fears over performance, speed and security are now largely gone and people have embraced the flexibility and mobility that wireless technology brings.

Applications and data from the cloud will just work in the background – unconscious synchronicity will become the new normal, and a wireless ‘bearer’ will just work behind the scenes to keep everything up to date.

But 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth are not the full story. A range of new wireless technologies are set to enter stage, from wireless display or WiDi to 4G LTE or long term evolution.  Add to this Zigbee, Z-Wave, Ultrawide Band, Near Field Communication, RFID, WiMAX, WiGig and more and an exciting future is in store.  We predict that most innanimate objects will soon have embedded wireless which, with a unique address, will let them communicate with each other over the internet – so called machine-to-machine or M2M communication.

And now the last bastion of cordless technology, wireless power, is set to become a reality as well.  A new global specification called Qi (pronounced “chee”) has been launched – Qi means “vital energy” in Asian philosophy – and there are already products emerging that can power devices from kitchen blenders, mobile phones, handbags and even cars without any physical connection.

The future is wireless…

Find out more at our upcoming briefings at www.unwired.eu.com

So Mr Baker took the opportunity to unveil the government’s new ‘Anywhere Working’ initiative. He stated that a change in psychology was needed in business and that a lack of confidence underpinned the lack of real change in attitudes to agile working. By providing hard evidence, easy to use guides and powerful advocates, the Minister is hoping that companies will be encouraged “to see reward where they once saw risk”. Evidence from Microsoft, who reduced their travel by 27%, and Eversheds, who saved £1.3 million by reducing travel, are facts that should encourage even the most sceptical Luddite.

If concerns about growing carbon emissions are not enough to stimulate business to make a change to the way we commute to and travel at work, the economic downturn could be just the incentive needed. Norman Baker has a no-nonsense approach to the issue: “Something’s got to give. The situation is becoming unsustainable both environmentally and economically”. The government’s initiative is a move in the right direction and in some instances they are leading by example but are they doing enough to support the new ways of working? It seems that an instructive web site and proactive policy is all we’re going to get for the moment, but Mr Baker reminded us that we are all in this together and “we all have a role to play in changing psychology”. Better make sure you don’t forget your umbrella then

Norman Baker is Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Department of Transport and Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes