By Irene Gaitirira
Published September 12, 2019
Though offices in Africa have been evolving from the dreary cubicles of workplaces past, experts say the next ten years will see even more dramatic changes.
The last thing the office of the future in Africa will look like is an office.
Yes. You read right. And this is no fake, made-up or fictitious news.
Researchers MoreySmith and The Future Laboratory, in a document titled Workplace Futures Report, identify three main social and demographic trends that will mean the workplace of tomorrow looks more like a home or hotel, than like the white-collar factory of today.
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Under pressure from wearable devices that record and analyse our daily routines and life patterns, the report says, workplaces will integrate with our personal technology to track our emotions and productivity.
Secondly, as working lives grow longer, a wider spread of age groups will be represented in the workplace – from starters in their 20s, to parents in their 30s and 40s and veterans in their 60s and 70s. Each group will need different kinds of spaces.
Thirdly, workplace design will aim to filter out digital distraction so that productivity grows without leaving workers feeling deprived of their devices.
The combined effect will be offices that are multi-generational live-work-eat-sleep hubs for men and women of all ages, the report says.
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The report also predicts three ways that the modern workplace will adapt and evolve to reflect these trends.
The first suggests that the workplace will become more like a living being in its own right (‘the sentient workplace’).
The second explores an office that feels and behaves like a community destination (‘the hospitality workplace’).
The third imagines a space designed for a workforce that ranges from twenty-something to seventy-something (‘the flat-age workplace’).
Many – perhaps most – will be a combination of all three. Together they will transform the way we work.
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The sentient workplace
The sentient workplace is probably the closest to becoming a part of today’s everyday workplace reality.
While offices were once passive, hostile places that forced workers to adapt to fit into them, the workplace of tomorrow will work the other way around. It will adapt itself to its occupants’ needs and will be designed and built to incorporate thousands of sensors that interact with workers’ wearable devices and smartphones.
“The result,” predicts the report, “will be a playground for personalisation, forming atmospheric bubbles around individual workers.”
MoreySmith says that apps that interact with the sentient workspace will be ubiquitous – not only to replace entrance cards and passes, but for greater worker satisfaction.
This is already happening at Deloitte’s Edge building in Amsterdam, Holland, where an app controls parking, daily desk allocation, locker access and food ordering.
Deloitte believes this has led to 60% fewer absentees, a fourfold increase in job applications and a substantial increase in talent retention.
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The hospitality workplace
By the mid to late 2020s the hospitality workplace will also be a routine part of our working life, MoreySmith says.
Instead of the heavily-patrolled entrance and a strictly staff-only feel of today’s offices, the hospitality workplace will mix public and private spaces in a happy relaxed blend. Workplaces will include public restaurants and cafes, rooftop terraces, art galleries, barber shops, nail bars, and even hotels as the workplace enters the sharing economy.
New office amenities will matter, providing variety and release from routine.
In Dublin, Ireland, both California (USA)-based software house Workday and Dropbox have already introduced well-equipped music rooms. The Dropbox music suite is a cross between a recording studio and a smoky jazz club – not what you normally find in an office block, according to bisnow.com website.
According to psychologist Michael Corballis, quoted in the MoreySmith report, these new workplaces will help us by providing the right kinds of distraction.
“In adapting to a complex world, we need to escape the here and now, consider possible futures, mull over past mistakes and understand how other people’s minds work,” he says.
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The flat-age workplace
With life expectancy growing, and working life extending into the 60s and 70s, the workplace of the future will be populated by several generations.
By the late 2020s the last of the baby boomers will be rubbing shoulders with the dominant Millennials and the digitally-native Generation Z in a mix that will mean soundproofed spaces for those whose patience with youthful hubbub is low, and mentor pods to help pass on information from the older to the younger, and vice versa.
Diversity Incubators – spaces with a strong advocacy agenda, helping people into unfamiliar or challenging areas of work as described by dsq-sds.org website– will become mainstream, says the report.
The needs of women are particularly important in the flat-age workplace – driving a change of emphasis and of amenities. Sound-proofed crèches, baby-feeding facilities and buggy and scooter parking are all being added to new office schemes, along with wellbeing rooms and gathering spaces.
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Choose your tribe
While top interior designers and space-planners acknowledge the findings of the MoreySmith report, many say it understates one key part of the workplace of tomorrow: the tribal way human beings think.
International Workplace Group (IWG PLC), a Switzerland-based company that specialises in commercial real estate around the world, says it is getting ready for the future by creating the new style of office space across Africa.
“Workplace design ultimately comes down to tribes,” says Joanne Bushell, Managing Director and VP in charge of Sales in Africa with IWG Plc. “We’re all in tribes of various kinds, and we all want to feel surrounded by the rest of our tribe – be it our colleagues, our industry or our wider network.”
“That’s why community is the key to the office,” she says. “You need to focus on the people inside the workspace, and the people outside the workspace, and how they relate to each other through the amenities and design.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t something that can be easily touched or felt.
“The tribe is a transient and truly agile thing, and catching it is like trying to catch a butterfly,” she says.
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To meet growing demand for the office of the future in the 21 African countries in which it operates, IWG plc says it is offering its franchise model to ‘landlords, private equity firms, multi-brand franchise operators and high-net-worth individuals … at attractive returns’.
IWG says it has already opened a franchise centre in Angola and that it is opening new ones in Guinea and Djibouti in September 2019.
