Fall has begun with exciting news for the world of work. From the construction of smart workplaces to the implementation of smart technologies such as occupancy sensors, a lot has happened.
Last week, Tom Randall of Bloomberg Business gave us a peek inside “the Edge,” Deloitte Consulting’s offices in Amsterdam. The building is controlled by an app that shapes the way the consultants work: it recognizes their car and tells them where to park, it knows what meetings they have and guides them to the desks they should occupy and even understands how the consultants prefer their coffee and office temperature.
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Het nieuwe werken
But although Tom called the Edge the smartest and greenest workplace in the world, not everyone is convinced by what the Dutch coin “het nieuwe werken” or “the new way of working.” On the contrary, Shane Ferro of The Huffington Post suggested that this building is actually stripping employees of the last bit of control they still had at work.
Tech Crunch
In other news on the future of work, TechCrunch recently reported that we are entering a new era of workplace technology characterized by artificial intelligence (AI). AI-powered apps, or software capable of doing the work that we would think only humans would be capable of doing, are becoming increasingly popular among businesses. They can anticipate employee needs and can, for example, schedule business meetings. With this evolution, we can expect to see many of the mundane logistical parts of our days vanish.
It’s clear that everything the average worker, and indeed many employers, thought they knew about the workplace is being disrupted. There is no way around it: innovative smart technologies combined with new workplace research are stimulating more companies to transform their approach to workplace optimization.
Photo Source: Bloomberg Business, Photographer: Ronald Tilleman