Blog 1.: Megatrends

Does your workplace keep up with changes?

Why is this question so actual?

In our global, accelerated, web based 24/7 word a paradigm shift is going on, which has a massive effect on people and the methods of getting a job done. These differences transform all our lives, the next generation’s working attitude and their idea of workspace.

The increased flow of information and sharing, as well as the heightened demand for cooperation transforms our image of office space. The workspace has become more important than ever, as it becomes strategically helpful, especially if consciously formed. The focus is no longer that everyone has their own desk but to have a space where colleagues can work together and concentrate or chill out and recreate. The work space now has to be a complete system (Eco-system). This system has to contribute in a way to attract and motivate workers, to optimize costs, to the brand-strengthening of the company, to increase work efficiency and last but not least to be a part of a healthier lifestyle.

In our next series we will show which megatrends change our world, which then have an impact on the ways of work and on the preferences of employees. During these reviews we will examine how can today’s office become an ‘Eco-system’, as a strategic tool.

In Today’s blog we will describe the megatrends taking place in our world.

First, the technological change, rather shift is what we need to mention, specifically the ‘disruptive shift’. The first one to use this term is Clayton M. Christensen, professor at Harvard Business School (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDrMAzCHFUU). Mr. Christensen is classified amongst the most outstanding thinkers in the world. Among others, he also inspired Hungarian-born Andrew Grove, Intel co-founder, and also Steve Jobs mentioned Mr. Christensen in his biography. The point of the disruptive technology is that the expensive, complex things are replaced by something new which is easy to handle and available for masses. The mobile widgets we use every day and with the ever-expanding internet-based services allow us to hold the world in our hands, so that anyone at any time can access any information. Out of the 7 billion people on Earth over 5 billion has a mobile phone. A process of ‘webification’ started. New services, terms appeared, such as ‘Cloud’, ‘Big Data’ and ‘BYOD’. By this practically the access to information and technology democratizes, equally on individual, corporate and societal level. Knowledge is no longer the privilege of few, as in the case of Maya rulers or medieval ecclesiastic dignitaries.

The importance and impact of technology in the business world is best demonstrated by IBM’s world-wide survey every two years (more than 4000 CEOs are surveyed from 70 countries),( Global C-suite Study:  http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/en/c-suite/csuitestudy2013/). The last one was in 2013, in which ”CEOs consider technology the single most important external force shaping their organizations” for the second time.

 The accounting of the change of technology and its influence on work attitude (we are more and more flexible) is inevitable when constructing office space. By 2015, more than the 30% of employees will not have a need for a dedicated desk to do their job efficiently. Instead, new needs appear! The provocative question is, is your workplace ready for these changes? This question will be covered in a later blog post.

2.Volatility

Besides the shift in technology we have to discuss the other big trend: volatility. The increased flow of information intensifies the addiction to and the vulnerability of globalization, which leads to a more uncertain and unpredictable environment. In this complex word everything is connected to everything. One’s speculative thinking also increases volatility. Just as their ambition to gain full control of their surroundings. This leads to the point where unexpected and uncontrollable events appear more and more often both in economy and politics. Nowadays it is getting harder and harder to predict our future by using mathematical or statistical models derived from data from the past. The “Gaussian bell curve” is history. Everything goes through a change and we can’t predict that which event will trigger what flow of events (Butterfly-effect). Nassim Nichola Taleb calls these incalculable events “black swans” in his book The Black Swan (translated to 32 languages, and sold more than 3 million copies, been on the New York Times Bestseller list for 36 weeks). Just as the dissolution of the Soviet Union, 9/11 or the economic crisis in 2008, the more frequent natural disasters or the influence of iPhones are all parts of this. According to Taleb these ”black swans” have three distinct features: unpredictability, they have mass effect and we can only explain them after they happened.

One of the morals of the book is that even if we would like to live in an “Averagistan”, where everything is predictable, we have to survive in “Extremistan”, where we have to prepare for sudden events. The challenge is to prepare for events that are unforeseen. In today’s world one of the most important skills is resilience which we have to develop. This is partly tolerance, partly adaptability so that we are able to convert our morals and knowledge from the past so that we are still able to function in the new situation. This concerns oneself, company or larger systems.

The question appears again:how much is your office space prepared for the changes?The good news is that the office can also be made resilient, if formed consciously. This will be covered in a later post.

The third significant change is the shift of demographic patterns. It’s a known fact that our Earth’s population rapidly grows. When writing this post, the Earth had 7,239,580,776 inhabitants (source: www.worldometers.info/hu). In the last 40 years, population has doubled. Some demographical speculations say that by 2050 the human population can reach 12 billion. This brings up other important questions in connection with humanity’s sufficiency such as sources of energy, nourishment and freshwater supplies. In the developed countries the rate of population growth drastically decreases, as well as the absolute population. However, in the poor, illiterate regions the number of live births is increasing every year. Currently the main engine of the Earth’s population and economic growth is the BRICS countries (the Third World: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Among them, India (1.27 billion) and China (1.39 billion) alone make up 1/3 of the total world population, despite the fact, that India was the first country to introduce family planning policy in 1952, and China to institute the ‘One Child Policy’ in 1979. Only in China, due to the mentioned policy allegedly been prevented 700 million births between 1979 and 2010.

Another interesting data, that Generation Y employees (born between 1980-1999) rate: 430 million in India and 220 million in China, while this number is only 70 million in the US. If you play with the numbers a bit, they will show that the Generation Y population from India and China – the fresh workforce – takes around 88 % of Europe’s total population (around 740 million people). This is food for thought! After this it is understandable that soon, Europe has to start to consider its immigration policies. We are more and more diverse culturally.

In general humanity is aging, and we live longer. This is due to the development of pharmaceutical industry and medicine, as well as to the improvement of public health, drinking water supply and hygienic conditions.

As mentioned earlier, in the developed countries fewer and fewer children are born. This means that if the younger generation is unable to supply the older population, we will have to work longer, and retire later. The dominance of the utilization of opportunities provided by the consumer society is increasing. Observable trends are the clustering of cities and the ‘single’ way of life. FMCG companies have to adapt to single-person packaging for the consumers.

This is the age of individualism.

In this fast-paced, digital world the generational differences of lifestyle no longer originate from the father-son respect but the 15-20 years age difference.

The demographic shift mentioned above also appears in the working world. At today’s workplace 4 generations have to work together (veteran, baby-boomer, Generation X and Y). Never before was there such a wide gap between the active workers. This challenge is only intensified by the cultural differences from the free movement of labour.

The question again: does your office environment support a multi-generational and culturally diverse workspace? In a later blog post we will find answers for this question.

Kis Károly | Károly Kis

ügyvezető partner | Managing Partner | BLUE Business Interior Kft.