Coming innovations mean that work will be unconstrained by a building, free to expand and evolve, to shrink and transition. Given the evolution of technology, we will continue to work from anywhere and across multiple time zones. In fact, in the next decade, estimates suggest that upwards of 40 percent of the workforce will work remotely or within a distributed work model.

Paradoxically, the new workplace is also about community, social interaction and culture, because as people work more remotely, they encounter new points of interaction. Perhaps people want a place to gather, a place that fosters community brainstorming, and a place that would allow for deeper interpersonal relationships to develop.

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Even a new office can underperform.

In a new office, a first office or just a much better version of the old one, too many companies assume the aftermath of a workplace decision is out of their hands.

What happens when you neglect the office—even a new and shiny one? It drifts to places you didn’t anticipate or you find that it doesn’t perform to the level you hoped it would. What’s worse, it’ll be another big project before you come back to this stuff and now you’re stuck with a huge workplace investment that just doesn’t perform.

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So you’ve made the decision to make an office move. It’s an exciting time, filled with opportunities to reinvent, reset and renew. At the same time, the site selection process can be overwhelming. There are several factors at play, including neighborhood, space size, layout potential, availability of sophisticated technology, proximity to amenities, parking and public transportation.

In fact, many of our JLL offices are going through this process ourselves. Just last year, our El Segundo office in the LA area reinvented its space, and right now, our San Diego team will be moving to a new space soon. Each had to determine which of these factors were most important to our employees during the site selection process. For our culture, we knew it was critical to ensure the space could accommodate a variety of collaboration spaces, including conference rooms, lounge areas and cafes.

Read the blog post on jllblog.com >

The sun is setting on the American cubicle.

Millennials have already overtaken baby boomers as the largest living generation in the U.S., and they're poised to dominate the workforce — according to a report by Jones Lang LaSalle, millennials will be the dominant demographic by 2020. And as Boomers retire, so too is the outmoded office design that came to define their generation's corporate work environments.

Since the emergence of the modern startup at the turn of the century, tech companies like AOL, Google and Facebook have led the charge in reimagining the rigid formalism of traditional offices in favor of more flexible, human-centered workspaces. As a result, traditional corporations are following suit with ambitious design aimed at fostering work-life balance, retaining the best talent, and inspiring greater productivity.

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Research shows that educated millennial professionals are moving into more densely populated urban environments both for work opportunities and for quality of life. The energy of cities inherently drives innovation. A recent New York Times article describes a trend of large corporate campuses returning to cities to create a new style of workplace and attract younger talent. On a more distributed scale we see the burgeoning of shared work spaces led by WeWork. In both of these trends, the growth of the sharing economy is key. When people live and work in close proximity, it allows for the efficient sharing of cultural, leisure, social and professional amenities. 

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We know that sitting in front of a computer screen all day doesn’t do our health any favours, but recent research published in The Lancet has again highlighted the true cost of a sedentary lifestyle: those who sit for eight hours a day have up to a 60 per cent higher risk of dying prematurely compared with those who exercise for an hour daily. For businesses, the cost of poor health is lower productivity, which is why the issue has found its way into the boardroom and subsequently into the workplace.

But telling employees to exercise at the start or end of their day isn’t a realistic solution. Nudging them in the right direction by providing workplace initiatives and a healthier environment is much more feasible. We’ve seen a rise in employers and landlords promoting wellness within the office itself. This goes far beyond subsidising gym memberships; very often it’s changing the very way the office is designed.

Read the blog on savillis.co.uk >

PICTURE a set of Lego that covers 50,000 square metres (540,000 square feet), costs over one billion Danish kroner ($150m), and has a mini-golf course on its roof. In reality the new global headquarters of the Lego Group will be of real bricks and concrete, but its boss, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, describes it with childlike glee. It will rise up in Billund, in rural Denmark, he says, as “a great facility, not opulent, very playful, for children too.” “People house” will be a totem of the firm’s success.

Read the article on economist.com >