The Future of the Office

3/18 – NS

If you would have told someone 20 years ago, that you could handle work calls, manage your office, and save your business money, all from the golf course, they would have called you crazy. They might remind you that you were forgetting about putting on a suit, struggling through the commute, briefing your secretary on your schedule, and sitting behind your phone waiting for calls. Fortunately, they’d be wrong. In 2017 work is happening everywhere and anywhere except traditional office spaces, and employers and employees are loving it.

More and more, the brick and mortar office of the past is adding up to be a poor decision in the current fast paced, technology driven business world. The trend line is clear. Offices are falling by the wayside and new services are replacing them. Research from Global Workplace Analytics reports that work being performed out of an office and in nontraditional spaces has increased 103% among non-self-employed workers since 2005. The reasons behind this trend are easy to see. The costs of a traditional office are simply too much for some small businesses or start-ups and increasingly, entrepreneurs are rejecting these unnecessary expenses for more efficient solutions. Besides costing less, the advantages of virtual space are higher productivity and general job satisfaction. Anyone would be happier taking a work call while relaxing on the couch rather than in an office!

However, while the physical idea of the office is changing, the implications and thought process behind the word are not. People are interactive and social beings and still need a way to communicate face to face comfortably and efficiently. For this reason, the traditional office is dead but the temporary office space, conference facility, and hourly business setting are all alive and well. Working remotely and using technology doesn’t eliminate a need to present a professional office image occasionally, but it does make it foolish to pay for a traditional space year-round, 24 hours a day.
Maybe we’re a little ahead of our time here at Officense, offering creative alternatives to the traditional office for nearly 10 years. But it’s like Shel Silverstein said, “If you’re behind the times, they won’t notice you. If you’re right in tune with them, you’re no better than they are, so they won’t care much for you. Be just a little ahead of them.”